Rich Mogull shreds the myth that Mac users think OS X is invulnerable. The first time I met Rich the very first thing I asked him was “What do you think of Apple’s security policy?” He did not think much of it and, having recently read the deck from an Apple security briefing I had to agree.

Rich lays part of the blame for the perpetuation of this myth at the feet of some members of the security industry who ironically “promote AV as providing the same immunity they say Mac zealots claim for ‘unprotected’ Macs.”

The Mac OS is not invulnerable! Only by getting our software will you be truly invulnerable!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost six years since I came up with Artie MacStrawman, the stereotypical Mac user as viewed by Apple critics, but his first characteristic was that he “Says the Mac is utterly invulnerable to any and all malicious attack.”

Which was a joke. Because, except for a few nut cases, we don’t actually believe that.

But here’s an anecdote to show how pervasive the myth that we all do believe that is. After I wrote that post, someone riffed on the idea and made an Artie MacStrawman blog which George Ou, then writing for ZDNet, found and thought was real, basically because it validated all this ridiculous preconceptions about Mac users.

Six years on and some people still think Artie is real, if not in name.