"Vulnerabilities just don't equal attacks," said Craig Schmugar, a threat researcher at McAfee, in an interview. "Some people are saying the Mac is less secure than Windows because there have been more vulnerabilities in it than in Windows, but there are far fewer attacks reported on Mac OS X than Windows."

Last year, McAfee reported that the discovery of vulnerabilities in the Macintosh platform increased by 228 percent in the past three years, from 45 found in 2003 to 143 in 2005. In the same period, Windows had a 73 percent increase. And this month's Symantec's "Internet Security Threat Report," which covers the six months from last July to January, showed that Mac OS X actually was lagging behind Windows XP when it came to issuing fixes. According to the report, Apple took an average of 66 days to patch vulnerabilities, while operating system rival Microsoft took an average of three weeks. Apple's patch response had slowed down from the previous six months when it took the company an average of 37 days.

While Apple's numbers may not be what they were, it doesn't mean the Mac suddenly has become a risky operating system, according to Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute and chief technology officer for the Internet Storm Center.

"It's still safer, but not as safe as Apple pretends it is," he told InfoWorld. "Some features, like the firewall, aren't all that great. But, yes, it's still pretty safe."

Schmugar, Henry, and Ullrich all say it's too early to compare the Mac's security to Vista. Enough simply isn't know about Microsoft's new operating system at this point.