Boy howdy, can we call 'em, or can we call 'em? Just yesterday we predicted that the alternative (and DRM-free) iTunes Music Store interface PyMusique, newly hobbled by Apple, would rise again as soon as the programmers could scrounge up ten minutes to work around whatever Apple had changed to block it; not a day later, faithful viewer Reefdog informs us that, as reported by Engadget, PyMusique is indeed back in action. Let the epic game of Code Ping-Pong™ continue!

The only thing that surprises us about this is that, so far, no antivirus company has seized upon PyMusique's return from the dead as a shining example of Apple's inherent insecurity and the imminent viral doom awaiting all Mac users who don't immediately shell out crazy ducats to protect their systems. After all, faithful viewer Moogintroll informs us that, according to ZDNet UK, Symantec is "warning that Apple's OS X operating system is increasingly becoming a target for hackers and malware authors"-- without actually producing a single example of a Mac OS X virus, of course, but hey, that's totally irrelevant. The important thing is that, "contrary to popular belief, the Macintosh operating system has not always been a safe haven from malicious code." What? Oh no! Suddenly we feel Fearful! And a little Uncertain! And we may even be experiencing the faintest twinge of Doubt!

Why do we get the feeling that Agents have cut the hard line and bricked over all the windows? Maybe because this is the exact sort of "security through obscurity" FUD that another antiviral company (Sophos) tried to spook us with two years ago: the notion that Macs are no more inherently secure than Wintels, and as soon as there are enough Mac users to represent a large enough target, the virus-writers will strike and we'll all be even worse off than the Windoids because we'll be so woefully unprepared. Unfortunately, that claim kindasorta completely ignores the fact that Mac OS X is more inherently secure than Windows-- maybe less so now than before XP got Service Pack 2, but those in the know (at least, the ones who aren't trying to sell you Mac antivirus software) generally agree that several aspects of Mac OS X-- needing an admin password to install system-modifying software, for example-- do, in fact, make it tougher to write a successful virus for our happy lil' platform than for Windows.

But here's Symantec, making spooky "Ooooooo" noises while waving its hands at that Opener rootkit that does nasty things when installed on a compromised system-- without showing a single way in which a Mac could be remotely compromised to run Opener in the first place. Symantec harps on the "37 serious vulnerabilities" previously found in Mac OS X, while conveniently neglecting to mention that few, if any, of those vulnerabilities could be exploited by a stranger over the Internet like so many Windows holes can... or that, unless we missed something big (which we admit is quite possible), none of the Mac holes-- all long since patched-- had ever resulted in even a single real-life exploit outside of a lab.

Not that we're denying the central point, here; sure, if Apple gains market share, there's a greater likelihood that evildoers will try to mess with us. But that's a far cry from the Windowsesque spiral into spyware, viruses, and madness that Symantec and Sophos seem so fond of hinting at in order to separate Mac users from their wallets. Not one virus; not one exploit; gee, it must be time to panic!

Remember, kiddies, a healthy paranoia is always a useful thing to carry around, but keep it in perspective. Mac OS X may not be 100 percent hackproof, but it isn't just more obscure than Windows; it really is fundamentally more secure. And the next time you feel like buying into that whole "Windows isn't less secure, it's just more popular" argument, take an Analogy Trip and ask yourself these related questions: 1) How many worms, especially really nasty ones that ground the entire planet to a sludgy halt, have propagated by attacking and spreading via Microsoft's web server software? 2) How many more web sites run the open source Apache software instead of Microsoft's? And 3), now that you've established that Apache is loads more popular than Microsoft's IIS (and always has been), how many crippling Apache worms have made the evening news in the past decade or so?

Just something to think about.