HAH.
The only reason, and I really mena the ONLY reason why Mac has had a good OS (notice that i say HAS, since their latest one is balls) is because they do not compete on teh same level as Microsoft.
Windows is the way it is for a reason, compatibility concerns and safety concerns.
If Apple reaches even a tenth of the market share that MS has, the hackers will surely come out of the woodwork, and then we'll see how good apple is. Because as of right now, you can buy a suped-up pc through Maximum-pc like falcon northwest, maingear, cyberpower, alienware for the same price as a mac that will blow the similarly priced apple out of the water in terms of processing/rendering power and are just as stylish if not more so. (also alienware can be bought with a lifetime warranty)
Vista has its problems, but lets not turn this into a mac vs pc war, because there is no war. Macs are safe because nobody cares, HOWEVER....

Some hackers are now targetting mac not for money involved but because of Apple's arrogance.

XP didn't have a bunch of "XP Capable" machines incapable of actually running it IIRC.

Vista was PR nightmare for MS. 

Best to just move on to the excellent sounding Windows 7 and sweep Vista under a rug.

I would have to disagree with this.  The reason Mac computers are so expensive is that they do not gear their computers to the budget market.  If you priced a PC with the same processing power, HDD space, RAM, mobo ect. that a certain Mac has, you will find thier prices to be comparable.  I remember reading an article about this on tomshardware.com with the comparison.  I will see if I can find it.

I would agree that Mac OSX has less viruses because of a smaller user base.  However, Mac OSX is made in a way to prevent infection.  One thing that comes to mind is the lack of dependance on extentions Windows has that hackers can exploit.

I'm glad this topic was bumped. I also wanted to add that Vista is also kind of a status symbol, and that's another pro for it. "Yeah baby, my computer runs vista like it's going out of style."

/instantly laid

There are several reason however i must disagree with two of your points.

1. I can build a PC for roughly half the price of a Mac, and I can find you a company built pc that performs to the same level as a Mac for less price. Of course non of those pc would be a dell, gateway, compaq, or vaio. Each of those is entirely priced way too expensive for the service and product they actually provide.

A 600$ compaq literally costs compaq about 300$ and they get bonus revenue from all the software that they shovel into the pc. so on the one hand i would agree and say that mac's are better than most best buy circuit city pcs, but then i would also disagree because, just as an example, I can build a pc with the power of a mac for maybe 2/3 of the price. These pc giants make large revenue, whereas other companies like i've mentioned earlier give you a lot more bang for your buck.

Also, even though mac OS is built that way, it limits compatibility dramatically, now if you want to use pc programs on a mac, yes that is entirely possible, but guess what, you now have virus risk compounded by the fact that there is going to be little to no online support for your apple because they do not have the same definitions available and such.

Mentioning Falcon Northwest and Alienware in a discussion about value/dollar is silly.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/apple-mac-leopard-windows-vista,1985.html

This is the article I was talking about.  As for you being able to build a PC for less, I can't argue against that in a reasonably amount of time.  There are two many variables such as quality of parts, part comparison, cost of operating system, features compared to cost, ect.

Complaining that Windows programs won't run on a Mac is like complaining that you can't put gasoline in a diesel engine.  Windows applications are coded for Windows.  Macintosh applications are coded for Mac.  They are not interchangeable unless you get an emulator of some sort.  Even then, Viruses made for Windows will generally not work at all on a mac.  How is a virus going to infect c:/system32/restore on a Mac?

You are right, in more than one way, there are too many variables including saying that a lot of mac viruses are designed to target macs emulating pcs and that one of the biggest reasons apple uses to take over pc users is to say that pc programs can run on mac.

My whole point is that Apple seems so up in arms about this whole situation when they don't realize what a good place they are already in. They should just crank up the price and make up for the loss of computers they shouldn't be selling because as it stands now, all those security holes they have been plugging up were noticed after outside hacks, which are only going to increase in regularity and devastation as mac market share increases.

I only have one problem with my Vista, and its a big one. For some reason Vista does not play nice with my audio and the AudioDG process (this handles 3rd party audio processing) starts taking 20 or so percent of my CPU power at odd intervals, making it impossible to play most games on it.

It's been well over 5 years since I've even worried about viruses on my computer strangely enough. 

If not for the kind posts of Rubang and NFG, I might actually forget they exist entirely.