Interesting... I have an almost morbid fascination with how this will pan out. I use and love a Mac, and I don't plan on switching to a different machine, but I'm curious as to how Cupertino will respond.

I'm betting this doesn't get much traction, and that Apple with individually prevent and manage infections through Software Update. I also doubt that the Macintosh market is big enough and easily infected enough to be significantly targeted by malware.

We'll see.

I'd love to know how this compares with the going rates for other architectures. I assume Macs are at a premium, but by how much?

Virtual machines, anyone? :-)

I imagine the type of person who would install a random "Mac Codec" on their machine isn't going to start up a VM with OS X running to test it out, first.

No, I was more thinking about you installing it yourself on your Vm, then reinstalling it on anohter etc... thus cheating the system ;)

Does OSX work in a VM?

It seems so, but following the policy you'll have to host your vm's over an OSX server edition.