[wvenable]

But it was true; many years ago it was prevailing wisdom that Mac's were just virus and spyware free.

I'd like to think most technical people realized that Mac was simply not popular enough to be targeted. But most users were simply under the impression their choice of OS was magically protected. From article: "Since it is actually Unix under the hood, OS X has some native protection against the worst types of viruses." Hey look, it's got Unix, I'm totally safe.