For This Reason

On his Daring Fireball site, John Gruber commented about another USA Today columnist, Kevin Maney, who had written about his (Maney’s) problems with viruses and such on Windows.

Maney had commented that “…for whatever reasons, Apple Computer’s Macintosh and Linux-based computers hardly get infected or invaded at all.”

Gruber jumped on that — specifically, the phrase “for whatever reasons.”

The reasons are arguable, he said, “But you can’t argue about the net effect: Windows users, especially with their home computers, are plagued by insidious malware; everyone else is not.”

But I think the reasons are fairly obvious, and important. The reason Windows PCs are “plagued by insidious malware” is simple: They make up 90-95 percent of the market. If you’re going to write a virus, or a trojan, or whatever, are you going to target three percent of the desktop computers out there?

Windows is attacked because it’s big. If everyone switched to Macs or Linux machines, those would be the target of these people.

Of course, that does make a good argument to switch to a machine with less market share. But the arguments to use the OS with the majority of market share are, for most people, more compelling. For now.

In other words, the argument “Switch to a Mac (or Linux box) because of viruses” really boils down to “Switch to the less popular system because it’s less popular.”

Which will work, as long as everyone else doesn’t do it.