It’s a very long article, so I’ve only skimmed the answers that their chosen experts gave, but it’s very odd to me that the answers were so varied. Market share was brought up several times, as an argument for a Mac (or Linux, though that was barely mentioned), but others said that market share matters a lot less now than it used to. Others mentioned that applications are the important ingredient nowadays, not OSes. And several pointed out that social engineering works the same on any OS.
Probably the most interesting response, to me, was the one from independent researcher Dino Dai Zovi:
Neither. Consumers should see if Apple’s iPad or the forthcoming devices based on Google’s Chrome OS suit their needs because both are significantly more secure than any general-purpose desktop system, Linux, Mac, or PC.
He’s got a point, but I can’t recommend an iPad, at least right now. The same features that make it “significantly more secure” also make it significantly less useful, in my opinion.
I would think of recommending an iPad to my Mom or someone else who’s technologically unsophisticated. Not for myself though, at least not as a primary computer. (Maybe to fill the second-computer netbook space.)
Without Flash, I wouldn’t dare recommend it to anyone who I have to support. Too much chance that they’ll come to me after a few days with it and say “I tried to run this online game, but I just get this blue lego icon…”
Yes, but that’s a simple support issue, and shouldn’t take more than a simple “your computer can’t do that” to solve. Compare that support issue to someone getting some nasty malware…
If I tried to tell those people that the expensive computer-thing that I recommended they spend their money on couldn’t do everything they wanted, I’d be lynched.
Yeah, I guess people are used to smartphones not being able to do everything they wanted (iPhone) but not computers. Maybe the iPad is a niche product as-introduced.