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Web Serving
Overview
Both Mac OS X and Windows XP (Pro) offer built-in software for setting up and managing a web server from your local system. Having your own web server allows others to access files from your computer over the Internet.
Mac OS X
OS X offers Apache for web serving, Perl for web scripting, and WebDAV for access to compliant web servers easily. As Apple releases updates to OS X, they bundle in updates for these projects as well.
Your built-in Apache web server's start page contains a quick start guide.
You can turn on Personal Web Sharing in the Sharing Control Panel. Once on, it tells you how to view your computer's web site as well as your own personal web site. View either in your web browser to learn how to edit your sites. Sadly, their overview on how to create web pages only mentions commercial applications that create web pages (probably because OS X doesn't ship with a full-fledged HTML editor).
Apple provides QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS) and QuickTime Broadcaster for video streaming. Neither one is part of OS X, but are free downloads from Apple. Broadcaster is a video encoder for live video events, while QTSS will stream live and on-demand video (including MPEG-4) and MP3s. Create your own online radio station for free! QuickTime Streaming Server is available for Mac OS X Server, Linux, Solaris, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. According to Apple's FAQ:
QTSS will "run on Mac OS X (Desktop) but this configuration is not supported by AppleCare."
Windows XP is not mentioned.
Windows XP
XP Professional ships with IIS 5 as an optional install. XP Home does not (nor does it ship with Personal Web Server), and Microsoft does not support installing PWS/IIS on XP Home. IIS has a decent management console, as opposed to Apache's text-based config files. However, IIS is not intended for personal web sharing, and thus is not pre-configured for easy, one-click web sharing.
For video streaming, XP users can use Windows Media Encoder, offered as a free download from Microsoft.
XP users can download and run Apache, Perl, and WebDAV on their computers; however, they will need to keep track of updates manually.
Web Server Vulnerabilities
SecurityFocus is the web's premier site dealing with Internet security issues. Their Vulnerabilities search engine allows you to look up all known security vulnerabilities for just about any version of any application on any operating system.
In February 2006, we looked up the vulnerabilities for the most recent web servers for OS X (Apache for Mac 1.3.14) and Windows XP Professional (IIS 6.0). Both listed four known vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
Mac OS X and Windows XP Professional are evenly matched when it comes to built-in web serving. Microsoft does not support installing XP's web serving tools on XP Home Edition, however.
Mac OS X: 7 (8)
Windows XP Pro: 7 (8)
Windows XP Home: 1 (2)