[JohnTHaller]

I never claimed that Windows or Mac OS X are more or less secure than the other. I very specifically said the following:

"Most of the infections on Windows aren't due to some huge security issue on Windows that Macs are magically immune to. They are due to the users themselves installing adware or malware-infected software from sites online."

This is 100% accurate and what most home users have to deal with in terms of issues on Windows. The vast majority of Windows issues that end users experience and get frustrated over have nothing to do with Java or Flash flaws or needing to compromise a system. The users themselves give the apps permission to install and do their thing.

It's also worth noting that Java and Flash don't provide much of an attack vector for the majority of Windows users you and I know anymore either. Firefox won't permit outdated versions of the Java or Flash plugins with security issues to run and will direct you to update. Chrome has its own version of Flash built in and automatically updated with the browser and disables Java by default. Even Internet Explorer blocks outdated ActiveX plugins like old and insecure versions of Flash and Java these days.

[nkozyra]

I still don't think that's true - visiting a malicious site without any action still provides far more of a risk on Windows than it does on OSX.

Are there improvements on the browser and OS side that are helping? Sure. Do those impact the vast majority of Windows users? Probably not. Look at browser & OS version usage and you'll see that the "users you and I know" are probably not indicative of the majority of users in general. At least not yet.

[JohnTHaller]

All major browsers on Windows block outdated Flash and Java by default. All major browsers on Windows are automatically updated to the latest version by default. So, for the vast majority of Windows users, the attack vectors you're mentioning simply don't apply anymore. That means users you and I know and most users we don't.

What I'd meant by that line was that this doesn't apply to users in other countries where the majority of users are still using hacked (and completely insecure) versions of Windows XP. Sadly, Windows XP still represents about 19% of online users. Thankfully, most of those users are using a 3rd party browser as IE 6 is down around 1%.