Apple to Fix Security Holes in Jaguar

Simon Cozens writes "Yesterday's unsubstantiated report that Apple is refusing to supply security upgrades to Jaguar turns out to be untrue; Apple told MacCentral they will be fixing the bugs turned up by @stake. Next conspiracy, please!"

Comments

Good to hear

[AvantLegion]

There's no question people were gratuitously jumping the gun on the last story, but it's good to hear official confirmation that the fixes will be made available for Jaguar. There would not have been a story here at all if not for nonsense speculation.

However, the story makes reference to Jaguar specifically, but what about OS X releases before that?

were they always going to?

[dirk]

Now the real question is whether they told @stake they weren't going to fix them and changed their mind after the because of all the talk about it. It is as wrong to assume they were always going to fix it as it is to assume they weren;t going to fix it. I would tend to believe they told @stake that, and then when word got out and everyone screamed, they changed their minds right quick.

Re:Well hell

[feldsteins]

Mac fans can't win on these stories. First an alarmist article claiming that they are "forcing" paid upgrades by not fixing security holes in existing systems. Hundreds of Apple-bashing posts later, it comes out that they are indeed patching the existing systems. You come on here to point this out and say "see? They ARE fixing it!" and someone comes behind you and says "big fucking deal! this is what everyone else would do!"

Following Apple-related discussions on Slashdot is like riding on a bus with no steering: it careens onto the right shoulder, heads back toward the middle, only to screetch onto the left shoulder, back toward the middle...

Apple DID NOT initially plan to patch Jaguar

[McSpew]

According to David Goldsmith of @Stake, "In my initial conversations with them [Apple], they said they weren't going to fix 10.2, but I wouldn't be surprised if they change that."

In other words, this isn't just some sort of overblown speculation run amok. Apple did initially tell security experts they didn't plan to patch Jaguar. That was a stupid plan, and even the security experts didn't expect that to last, but that doesn't change the fact that someone from Apple did claim Jaguar wouldn't be patched.

What I find amusing is the fact that Apple zealots are using this story and its development as further evidence in the conspiracy against Apple, when even the much-hated (and deservedly so) Microsoft has been known to back-port security and even many stability patches to the current and previous versions of their OSes as they're working on their next generation products. Does anybody remember that MS backported lots of fixes to NT 4.0 in SP5 and SP6 based on work they'd done developing Win2k?

Unlike Apple, however, MS didn't make NT 4.0 users wait until after Win2k shipped before bothering to release the fixes for NT 4.0. Jaguar users shouldn't have had to wait until after Panther shipped to get those security fixes. They're still waiting, aren't they?

Re:Apple DID NOT initially plan to patch Jaguar

[buysse]

I'm paranoid, I'll freely admit, but this is the same l0pht^H^H^H^H^H @stake that canned someone who was critical of Microsoft? Hmmp.
$credibility{'@stake'}--;