Given the structure of the core OS, they have also asserted that a successful virus attack would be capable of doing less damage to an OS X box than it would to a windows box.

Spyware and adware are, to my mind, more insidious than viruses on Windows. My wife has to clean her computer on a daily basis due to the crap that mere web browsing pulls down to her machine. I have yet to find anything on my OS X boxes that I didn't explicitly put there.

Symantec's assertion that hack attacks against OS X will increase is tantamount to saying that the sky is blue. Of course they will! The significant issue is this: Unix-based systems have had over 20 years of serious beating on to work out the security vulnerabilities inherent in the platform; Windows is playing catch up due to it's relative immaturity and the fact that's its code base is constantly evolving.

On the flip side, the Mac community has not been very smart about this. Constantly exclaiming immunity to hack attacks is simply waving a red flag at a bull. Somebody is going to pull it off just to prove it could be done - and to have the bragging rights of being the first to do so.

But the plain truth is still that the primary vectors for virus infection in Windows (Outlook's handling of attachments, the ability to edit executable files and to execute data files, ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer, etc) are more numerous than in OS X. So while security will never be absolute, would you want a system is slightly secure or reasonably secure?