The biggest benefit to being "virus free" (even though it's not), is the package management. On windows, most software installs, updates, etc., rely on you executing a random .exe file, downloaded from some random page online, while on linux, you trust the team of maintainers (who usually know what they're doing) to keep repositories relatively safe.
The same idea came for apple and google, and their software stores, but google mostly fucked it up by allowing a "flashlight app" to access your contacts and gps location, and apple fucked up by not allowing you to sideload a program at all, even when you know what you're doing and trust the software.
Did apple really fuck up or are they actually succeeding with iOS being the most "safe" mainstream end-user operating system by far.
Arguably they fucked up by bungling the Mac App Store so running executables downloaded from the web and software updating itself is still common.
I mean... sometimes you want to install 3rd party, non-appstore software, and not having that possibility is a fuck-up for me (and a reason not to buy apple).
The same idea came for apple and google, and their software stores, but google mostly fucked it up by allowing a "flashlight app" to access your contacts and gps location, and apple fucked up by not allowing you to sideload a program at all, even when you know what you're doing and trust the software.