While every few weeks there is a false bomb threat about a new OS X vulnerability which is usually a lab creation of some security company that exploits holes in the system that have long been closed, in the real world, OS X is still as secure as ever.

According to a recent Security Threat Management Report issued by security vendor Sophos, Apple's computers are still a safe heaven for people who wish to escape the onslaught of online security threats. While there have been a few documented pieces of malware coming out this year, it "has not spread in the wild and not heralded an avalanche of new malicious code for Apple's operating system." Despite there being theoretical threats that the media blew well out of proportion, Apple's OS stood its ground.

However, this as not as rosy everywhere… "Hackers remain happy to primarily target Microsoft Windows users and not spread their wings to other platforms. It seems likely that Macintosh will continue to be a safer place for computer users to be for some time come."

Microsoft's upcoming Vista has had viruses written for it within days of its release to the test groups, and while Vista does introduce a lot of changes, and malware writers will have to adapt to it, the one thing that everyone is sure of is that they will adapt. With the community previews of Vista, the time it took to adapt was a few days.

"Just be a matter of time before the bad guys learn enough about Vista to build rootkits or other malware with the equivalent degree of stealth capability," said Sophos.