Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Yosemite Edition

What OS X Gives You

These days, a key attraction of the Mac—at least as far as switchers are concerned—is security. Viruses and spyware are almost nonexistent on the Mac. (Even Microsoft Word macro viruses don’t run in OS X.) For many people, that’s a good enough reason to move to OS X right there.

Along the same lines, Mail, Mac OS X’s built-in email program, deals surprisingly well with spam, the unsolicited junk email that’s become the scourge of the Internet.

If you ask average people why the Mac isn’t overrun by viruses and spyware, as Windows is, they’ll probably tell you, “Because the Mac’s market share is too small for the bad guys to write for.”

That may be true (although 80 million machines isn’t too shabby, as targets go). But there’s another reason, too: OS X is a relatively young operating system. It was created only in 2001, and with security in mind. (Contrast that with Windows, whose original versions were written before the Internet even existed.) OS X’s built-in firewall makes it virtually impossible for hackers to break into your Mac, and the system insists on getting your permission before anything gets installed. Nothing can slip in behind your back.

But freedom from gunkware and viruses is only one big-ticket item. Here are a few other joys of becoming a Mac fan:

• Stability. Underneath the Mac’s shimmering, translucent desktop is Unix, the industrial strength, rock-solid OS that drives many a Web site and a university. It’s not new by any means; in fact, it’s decades ...