Cate had a major meltdown this morning and the idiot light on my gas gage came on when I turned on the car. Those two events kept me from beating the morning rush hour commute as I usually do. Just to put the cherry on top, it’s raining cats and dogs during rush hour and my Dehydrated Idiot Theory was in full effect on the ride in this morning. All things considered, I decided accept my fate, got comfortable, and listened to NPRs Morning Edition while I slogged my way through commuter bliss. In mid slog, I was rewarded with a short but interesting article on Apple.
Apple just had an incredible quarter. Analysts were expecting earnings of $0.86 a share and Apple produced $1.01 a share. The only thing that might have helped their stock more was if Alan Greenspan publicly announced he was switching to a Mac. The other remarkable point in the piece was that Apple has historically owned approximately 2%-4% of the PC market. They are now claiming 8% of that market. Reportedly, much of that growth was driven by iPod sales. People buy an iPod or an iPhone and they run OK on Windows, but they’re made for a Mac. That connection helps people make the switch.
Heck, it’s working on me. I bought an iPod at the beginning of this year and I’m considering making the switch because iTunes is one of my most used applications. I’m also influenced because I’m starting to get into my photography more and Macs are the traditional platform for photographers, graphic designers, and other creative types. That’s my way of saying that I understand the practical and emotional drivers behind Apple’s increased Mac sales.
Macs have another benefit going for them and that is that they tend to be more secure than Windows machines. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that they are more ignored than Windows machines. A Mac’s primary security mechanism is a technique called “security through obscurity”.
I’m not convinced that Apple’s software is any more bug free than Microsoft software, but fewer people use Apple stuff. This is significant because hackers are businessmen now. They’re making money with their compromises. While it would be very cool to compromise a Mac, there just aren’t enough of them out there to make it worth while.
Here’s an example. For the sake of argument, let’s say it takes forty hours to create a remote root exploit regardless of platform. Also for the sake of argument, let’s assume that if you focus on a Windows exploit, you have hundreds of millions of systems you can potentially compromise that include both servers and workstations. If you spend that same forty hours on a Mac exploit you have millions of systems you can potentially exploit, most of which are workstations.
If Mac continues to grow in popularity, their security through obscurity edge will start to dull. That means that we will start seeing more pieces of malicious code developed for the Mac. This malcode will include both worms and standard exploits. Having not used a Mac extensively, I would guess that in addition to OS X, the iLife suite would be a likely target, and some of the .Mac services, especially the Back to My Mac service, which looks like a remote desktop tool.
If Mac’s popularity continues to grow, I suspect that they will follow a path similar to Firefox. Firefox started out as a small player in the browser market owning 4% of the market in 2004. It is currently used by 35.4% of Web users according to W3Schools.
At first you could surf with impunity because nobody was wasting their time exploiting Firefox. However, as Firefox became more popular with users it also became more popular with hackers trying to exploit it. While it is still relatively safer to surf with Firefox compared to Internet Explorer, it’s not as safe as it once was. The bad guys are starting to realize that it’s becoming worth their time to exploit Firefox too. I predict Mac could be starting down the same path.
Word on the street is that Google is coming out with its own mobile phone and that details will be announced on Monday. Reportedly, Google’s main goal is to make the mobile phone environment an open platform just like the WWW. This is an awesome goal and I can see the tremendous upside, especially for a company like Google who will just expand their market further through this initiative. I already use Google services on my Motorola Q extensively and find myself annoyed when I can’t find a mobile service I’m looking for. 
