It's more like we're talking generic terms, and you're splitting hairs. Viruses per the classical term are practically nonexistent now.
Well, your instructor apparently taught you this generic use of "virus", but, it is not correct. Sorry. Correct usage does matter in this case. This is not splitting hairs.
They're nigh impossible to get on OSX, and don't show up all that often (if at all) on modern Windows machines. But the term has stuck around, and has more or less become a blanket statement for any type of malicious piece of software designed to screw over you or your computer nowadays.
There are O(1000000) Windows viruses still in the wild. You are correct that (up-to-date, patched) Vista/Win7 don't get them. If only we could kill off all previous versions of Windows before I die ...
You know what form most bugs take these days? Socially engineered malware. They don't actually exploit any OS weakness. No. They go after the weakest link of security of any computer: the user. I mean why spend all this time trying to find a hole in an operating system, then spend even more time finding another when it's eventually closed when it's so much easier to scare the hell out of someone and trick them into installing the ... malware themselves?
... But you do want to target the largest demographic most likely to install it. Right now, it's Windows. Macs users are more the enthusiast types, and are more likely to know better. Windows, by dint of market share, is more likely to be used by people who aren't quite as comfortable with their machines, and are thus more likely to grab something they shouldn't, and freak out over a popup saying they're infected with a virus.
Agree 100% that for Vista/Win7 systems, more modern approaches are much more effective.
Now if you were a malware manufacturer, which platform would you prefer to take advantage of? The OS with the smaller market share, used mostly by professionals and enthusiasts, or the OS most commonly used by millions of gullible grandmas?
And if Macs are selling a million a month, do you think all those sales are to professionals and enthusiasts?
Ultimately, what you'd have is the Windows malware scene, transplanted to OSX. It's all about who's using what the most. Malware programmers don't give a damn about which OS is better. They don't argue about it. They don't care. What they do care about are credit cards and exploitable email addresses. And they're going to go where the action is.
Course it isn't all doom and gloom. If Apple were to sale a billion iMacs tomorrow, the Apple scene wouldn't suddenly turn into a stark wasteland of malware, requiring you to repair you OS install every other day. Ultimately, things wouldn't be much different for most of us here, besides getting updates a little more often than what you used to. What you would have is a bunch of moms and dads running en masse to the Apple store, cuz they all want to know why Buddy Bear The Freeware Game Genius is sending midget porno to grandma and asking for their social security number to make it stop.
Yes and no. Recently it has gotten much more difficult to attack kernels, whether Linux, OS X, or Windows (Vista/7). That is why browsers, PDF and Flash are so inviting, even if they "only" attack user space. Especially if you are mainly looking for user data (Quicken data, credit cards, etc) anyway. This is where the next level of protection, sandboxing, will help somewhat. Some forms of phishing will never go away.
But, at this point, there is no known method by which OS X and/or Win7 will become like the "stark wasteland" that Windows (XP and older) has been.
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