Bill Gates on Mac OS X security

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Bill Gates, trying to “turn their reputation for swiss-cheese security around on Apple” (as TUAW puts it), claiming:

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

When I read that interview for Newsweek, I knew it wouldn't take long for John Gruber to respond: Lies, Damned Lies, and Bill Gates.

It’s either an angry, slanderous lie, or Bill Gates is an uninformed jackass.

He he. Exactly as John points out, I've yet to see a single exploit in the open that allows a stock Mac OS X 10.4 to be taken over. Not that there aren't any security issues in Mac OS X (or risks in Unix if you leave the door open). But as far as I'm concerned, Apple stands way higher than Microsoft (and Unix vs Windows) in terms of security, and that has been true for a LONG time.

Oh, and I love to hear that the next version of Windows after Vista will be more “user-centric”. I guess we'll all get an idea of where they're heading when Mac OS 10.5 goes out this semester :p.