Concrete reasons for the lack of virus problems on the mac

Adapted from David Pogue at the New York Times:

- "Windows comes with five of its ports open; Mac OS X comes with all of them shut and locked... These ports are precisely what permitted viruses like Blaster to infiltrate millions of PCís. Microsoft says that it wonít have an opportunity to close these ports until the next version of Windows, which is a couple of years away."

- "When a program tries to install itself in Mac OS X... a dialog box interrupts your work and asks you permission for that installation -- in fact, requires your account password. Windows XP goes ahead and installs it, potentially without your awareness."

- "Administrator accounts in Windows (and therefore viruses that exploit it) have access to all areas of the operating system. In Mac OS X, even an administrator canít touch the files that drive the operating system itself. A Mac OS X virus (if there were such a thing) could theoretically wipe out all of your files, but wouldnít be able to access anyone elseís stuff -- and couldnít touch the operating system itself."

- "No Macintosh e-mail program automatically runs scripts that come attached to incoming messages, as Microsoft Outlook does."

Pogue writes, "...the conclusion is clear: Linux and Mac OS X arenít just more secure because fewer people use them. Theyíre also much harder to crack right out of the box."