If the Internet's bad guys ever decide to pummel OS X with the same intensity that they've pounded on Windows for years, the free ride for Mac fans may end. But for now, this fact is indisputable: A Mac owner who uses no security software at all runs less risk of being infected by spyware or a virus than a Windows user who obsessively protects his or her PC. In the last week alone, two Windows-using pals have been crippled by attacks; I've never heard even one real-world horror story from a friend about a Mac security meltdown.

Windows is an infinitely better operating system when it isn't smothered by the demoware, adware, and other unwantedware that so many PC manufacturers splay onto the Start menu, the desktop, and the System Tray. Macs are utterly free of such junk, as well as native-to-Windows irritations like word balloons burbling out of the System Tray, Windows Activation, and User Account Control. And while PC manufacturers sometimes fix things about Windows that weren't broken--take the inscrutable Wi-Fi utility that Lenovo bolts onto Windows Vista--Apple wrote OS X in the first place. You can't tamper with your own OS.