The battle between Microsoft and Apple in the computing market has raged on for decades. While Microsoft has a commanding lead in the operating system market with Windows, Apple isn't exactly backing down with OS X -- in fact, the Cupertino-based company continues to grab market share and a large portion of the $1,000+ computing market.

When Windows and OS X users get into arguments on the web, Windows users often point to OS X's tiny market share while OS X users point to how vulnerable Windows operating systems have been in the past to exploits. However, according to security guru Charlie Miller, OS X users should subscribe to the idea that "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".

Miller claims to have found no less than 20 zero-day exploits within OS X. Miller will present the exploits at CanSecWest next week in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Miller told Heise Security, "Mac OS X is like living in a farmhouse in the country with no locks, and Windows is living in a house with bars on the windows in the bad part of town."

"They sell lots of computers and nobody [shies away from] Apple computers because of a perceived lack of security," Miller added. "So in their minds, they don't have a security problem until it affects their bottom line, which hasn't been the case, yet"

OS X has made the news plenty of times over the past year for security holes. Last June, Apple finally fixed a Java exploit which went unpatched for nearly a year. In late August, Apple shipped Snow Leopard with a version of Flash that was susceptible to outside attacks.

Miller also took Apple to task last year saying that security protections in OS X weren't quite up to par with Windows 7. He noted, "It's harder to write exploits for Windows than the Mac, but all you see are Windows exploits. That's because if [the hacker] can hit 90% of the machines out there, that's all he's gonna do. It's not worth him nearly doubling his work just to get that last 10%."