Apple issues flurry of security patches

[hugh]

Apple continued to issue a series of year-end security patches this week by issuing fixes for its Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard operating systems.

Apple has now released 36 security updates this year versus 22 patches in 2006. Is this because they have become sloppy or are hackers turning their sites to Apple and finding more flaws?

[QuickSilver]

Increasing market share I think leads to more scrutiny of the OS and it's bundled applications.

In my opinion Apple has lost some of its luster to me. Guess I will wait for January to see what they can pull out of their sleeve to impress me.

[outinthornhill]

While it may seem on the surface to be a crack in the "invincible" OS, a quick look at the list of patches is interesting; many are duplicates depending upon which version of OS-X is running - yes it's three patches but any computer would only need one. At least Apple is issuing patches for an older version of OS-X long after it has been withdrawn from the market. And there is at least one patch in the list for Windows - in that case for QuickTime running in Windows. A deeper look makes the list a lot less intimidating.

I installed the latest patch this morning. Installation took less than 30 seconds, + a reboot at my convenience. That's speaks volumes about the Mac experience.

[PokerChip]

Quicksilver, you are more than welcome to sell your Macs and switch to Vista. Good luck with that.

I'll take my chances with Apple. I've been a satisfied customer since the late 80's and in my opinion, things have only gotten better with time. The early to mid 90's were a little rough, but Apple products (hardware or software) are still way better than the alternatives, IMHO.

The fact that I don't need to run a Firewall, a virus and spyware protection on my Macs is reason enough to stick with OS X (and the very good hardware that runs it).

Security patches are a reality, and at least, they are proactive about it. Not sure how anyone could complain about that.

[QuickSilver]

PokerChip no where in my post did I say I was dropping OSX in favor of Vista. I simply stated that in my opinion as Apple grows to be an entertainment company more than software and hardware I have found their products to be a little lackluster. I run Vista and Leopard on numerous machines in my house with no problems.

Leopard did not wow me. Once again my opinion. Like I said I will see what comes during Macworld.

[que3jxp]

I know that this is likely to start a bit of a donnybrook but it needs to be posted so that the illusion that Steve Jobs sells can be torn down...

So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious. Clearly this goes against conventional wisdom because the numbers show just the opposite and it isn’t even close.

[stampeder]

Well, to quote Larry Dignan from his article:

I used vulnerability statistics from an impartial third party vendor Secunia

which is where all the trouble with such OS comparison articles comes from due to Secunia's report-gathering process:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/1...logy-is-absurd

The problem is not necessarily Secunia's. The problem is the simple-minded abuse of their data.

[PokerChip]

Thanks for clearing this up Stampeder.

que3jxp:

As I've said before, I run NO firewall, NO virus protection software and NO spyware protection on any of my 3 Macs and I'm not the least bit concerned.

Quote whatever article you want, but put your money where your mouth is and see if you dare do the same on a machine running XP or Vista.

[lawman]

Some of these Apple fixes were not perfect for some reason. On my aunt's MacBook Pro, I updated all these fixes, but somehow, the fixes broke Safari. So, had to figure how to correct this, and after trying everything that I could find on the Web, it still failed, so I had to install a alternative browser - Firefox. Firefox was much faster and more updated. I looked online, and found that many other Mac users had experienced the same problem of Safari not launching after the updates.

I think after I had Firefox installed, I could have fixed this by re-installing a new Safari. But I did not have much trust in the updates.

I don't understand why the Safari beta browser was packaged together with the OS security fixes. They should keep these as separate updates. Grrr....sometimes Apple is becoming too much like Microsoft. The error message was pretty funny - and useless.

Anyways, this is a rant that not all Apple updates are perfect as indicated as above. There are the occasional hiccups that cause you to pull your hair out when you find out that without an alternative browser on a Mac laptop, its hard to download a patch/update/program!

Had to use a USB key from another laptop to download Firefox for Mac and install it that way.

[outinthornhill]

Hmm Safari is not a beta product in Leopard. Are you saying there is still a beta version kinking around for Tiger or Panther? Or had your aunt just not upgraded since installing the beta version? Leopard and the final Safari have been out since October.

Installing a security patch without ensuring the applications are up-to-date - especially beta products - is inviting trouble. There is a reason they are called beta versions and why users are warned not to trust them for critical needs.

[lawman]

The updates is all non-beta from Apple. If you google the problem, you'll notice others saying the same things that Safari did not work after updating with the latest updates.