There’s a six-month security report out on how Vista is doing, and according to the report, Vista is the most secure operating system out there. The report shows Vista to have fewer “high severity” vulnerabilities than OS X 10.4, closely followed by XP, and then various Linux brands. The catch: this report was authored by a Microsoft executive. Gee, I wonder if it skews the facts at all?

Naturally, criticisms have started to come out as to the validity of this claim. For example, the definition of “high severity” vulnerabilities is being challenged; if a Vista vulnerability allows someone over the web to take over the computer, and a Mac vulnerability allows a physically present user with an admin password to take over the computer, can both be grouped together in the same category? Some “high severity” vulnerabilities are far more easily exploited than others. Then there’s the fact that the report discounts third-party vulnerabilities in Windows, which depends more heavily than the Mac OS on those types of apps. The count does not touch on all of the viruses, worms, spyware, or other malware which counts for the bulk of attacks that most people suffer from. And it does not factor in how many of the vulnerabilities are actually exploited in the wild.

In other words, just about every way the list could be skewed in Vista’s favor, it has been skewed. Skew things the opposite way and Vista could be made to look like the worst OS ever. For example, this article sifted through the data released in the Microsoft report and discovered that Vista had fixed only 12 of 27 total vulnerabilities, unlike in XP, where in the first six months, 36 of 39 had been fixed.

But the fact remains that whatever you say about vulnerabilities, Vista is still susceptible to, and has been attacked by a wide variety of viruses and other malware, including adware and spyware, while the Mac has not suffered a single actual virus or worm attack in the wild, and has zero spyware or adware. The bottom line is that if you buy a Mac today, you’re not going to have to even think about security, while if you get a Vista machine, you can still easily get infected by a lot of malware out there. And in the end, that’s the only thing that matters to actual, real-life users.