I'm trying my best not to be rude here, but you're definitely making it more difficult to do so. Sure, it's probably true that Mac's don't get as many viruses as PC's. PROVE IT. Stating that is still an OPINION, until you can PROVE that Mac's don't get as many viruses as PC's. Also, as my buddy here pointed out, doing a Mac to PC comparison is basically the same as comparing the Chinese population to the Lebanese in terms of which country is smarter, or sicker, etc. Chinese population: 1,331,460,000 Lebanese population: 4,224,000. Also, as brought up by my buddy, the computers in the Department of Defense use PC's. Now, as we know the Department of Defense has some pretty fantastic firewalls. Will they get viruses? Probably not. That's not to say they wont. But without the firewall, would a Mac working at the Defense be attacked as much as a PC? Use your imagination. You're comparing a mountain to a hill, and then stating an opinion that the hill is safer, with no evidence. "Windows, uses a monolithic old and busted OS design and is not modular or flexible"....blah blah blah. That's an opinion. Opinion. "It is more tried and proven than any OS out there, period." OPINION. Dude, you need to understand the difference between a fact and an opinion, seriously.
*sigh*
No dude it is a fact. Do you know and understand what POSIX is? What the OS does to the file system in the inode level? Do you understand how the kernel works with intricate parts of the OS itself? I have clearly explained this, and if you did a little google searching you can verify these facts for yourself. Every security expert in the world will tell you, that Windows is the least secure OS out there. The argument is that it is used the most and therefore targeted the most is not really the whole reason. When you allow a technology, like Active X, directly access the kernel via kernel hooks, with out any form of authentication you are asking for your OS to be rooted, period.
Now, most attacks on OSes these days are web based and usually attack some browser exploit. This is because browsers depend on a lot of different things. Code like php, html, css, and so forth. Frameworks like Java, and proprietary support for things like flash. There is so much code that goes into everything a web browser does there are always security leaks.
As for the DoD using Windows, you are right they do. It is not because Windows is secure either. It is because they are the government,and very bureaucratic and slow to adapt new technologies. Also, each department of hte government does their own thing, there is no unified decision making going on. The Army understands this, and has actually started to purchase and integrate Macs into their environment. Like I said, Microsoft did something or didn't do something which made Google switch over to 100% Macs. I know this because I interviewed with Google for a job to admin the Macs. They told me this in the interview but would not disclose the reason why.
Sources for you to read:
http://techmiso.com/271/dod-has-no-desire-to-mitigate-windows-dependency/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10444561-245.html
http://www.suite101.com/content/mac-security-vs-pc-security-a1926
http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/windows-inherently-more-vulnerable-malware-attacks-os-x-489
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/22/security_report_windows_vs_linux/
http://www.biznix.org/articles/winlinsecure.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ft-map-shows-PCs-botnet-infections-world.html
I will try to explain this again, and yes these are actual facts. Look them up in white papers and read on the inner workings of Windows, Unix, Linux and OS X. First of all, Windows was never really a multiple user platform until Windows Vista. In Vista, they got rid of the Documents and Settings folder, and actually started giving users their own home folder. However, system processes were still spawned under the same users in Vista, and ran as root. In Windows 7, Microsoft is migrating to more of a Unix platform, and yes security did deeply improve. The user SYSTEM in Windows is the equivalent to the root user in *nix OSes. That user can run anything, and has super user privileges, it also has no password. If you can escalate something to SYSTEM, you have immediately full control of the computer with out it ever asking for a password, which is why script kiddies root Windows boxes. This is a fact, and it is well documented.
Linux out of the box is not as secure as one would think. There are tons of things you can do to make your Linux box more secure. Same thing with a Mac. Things like POSIX and ACLs to restrict access to certain parts of the system to specific users and groups. Windows now has this stuff also built in, but it is not fully matured yet. Previously Windows did not have any of this.
Open source code has way more many eyes looking at it. Which means bugs are generally found better and *nix based OSes tend to have less security holes than Windows does. However, I will give Microsoft credit where it is due. They have the best patching and updating system out there. They keep their OS up to date and patch their security holes fairly quickly. After all, they have had plenty of practice doing this.
A lot of what I am talking about may not be applicable these days in security. A lot of what I am talking about doesn't always come into effect when security loop holes are used. Most of today's attacks are done by socially engineering the end user to click on something or install something that looks legit but is really a piece of malware. No OS or platform is safe from a dumb user, period. A lot of attacks don't exploit the OS as they used to, and Windows has gotten a lot more secure over the past 2 releases, and that is because it is adopting a Unix-like file system and starting to limit what a local user can do and require authentication (via the security center, allow, deny) for things to run. However, I still think Windows has a bit to go to catch up.
In retrospect Apple has a bit to go on getting their exploits fixed in a faster motion. The DNS exploit and the ARD Admin bug, were both sitting there un-patched for about 6 months and were widely known throughout all the Internets but Apple has never suffered a major hit from an exploit being used to crash and hack machines.
Microsoft does do well on their server side products. They basically stole NDS from Novell and turned it into their product Active Directory, and it gives system admins robust options for managing users. It is superior in many ways to use it as a platform to manage users. Also, they are smart with marketing and they had stiff competition from Novell, since Novell did it first, but Microsoft basically stole their technologies and then stole their business because Microsoft was way better at business than Novell. Since then, Microsoft has put itself in a permanent place in server infrastructure. Most businesses do run some sort of Windows server with AD. And it does it's job great.
However, more recently companies have been switching over to virtualization systems, with Unix and Linux backbones and giving their users a choice of what client the want, Mac or PC. Universities, some military, NASA, and some major companies are switching to Macs, because for the first time you can integrate a Mac and have it authenticate against an AD server.
Macs, are still by design more secure, period. I have been in IT and working and administering Linux, OS X, and Windows for over a decade now. I have hands on and professional experience with all three platforms. I actually prefer Linux or OS X as my main OS because I think Windows performs the worst and is the most bloated, but I always keep a Windows box in my home to keep up to date, develop code for Windows, and of course to play video games. I have put in my time, and gone through the trials with all of the platforms out there. Linux doesn't necessarily have a higher learning curve than Windows does, it is just different. So many people never take the time to fully understand it. Furthermore, if you want to argue there is a high learning curve learning how to use a Mac, you maybe should get rid of your computer and get an iPad or the Android equivalent because Macs are by far the easiest computer to use, and there are so many similarities to Windows that if you can use Windows you can use a Mac pretty damn quick. I have done my time, and I have lived through virus attacks on PCs, even when a PC was deep frozen.....I have never had to deal with a Mac virus in my 10+ years of working in IT. I have read about them for the old classic OS. I have also never seen a virus for Linux or Unix either, and there are also zero known viruses in the wild for any Unix based OS. Unix based OSes run the Internet, why would they not be targeted by hackers?
If you cannot accept that, then I guess this conversation is over.
That being said, to the OP, buy what you want. It is your money. I recommend the Macs, they are great machines. Yes they are more expensive and no they aren't invulnerable to hardware failure, but they are high quality and their OS is light weight, snappy, and runs for a long time on current and older hardware. The overall cost of ownership of a Mac is cheaper if you take into account everything you get, the resell value, and the life cycle of the Mac.