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Apple Patch Released, But Is It Enough?
entenman writes "Apple Computer's security update train rumbled into the station with fixes for a whopping 43 Mac OS X and QuickTime vulnerabilities. The Security Update patches 31 flaws in the Mac OS X, most of them serious enough to cause 'arbitrary code execution attacks.'" Unfortunately, InfoWorldMike writes "InfoWorld.com reports that Independent researcher Tom Ferris said there were still holes in Safari, QuickTime, and iTunes that he reported to Apple but were not patched in the latest release on Thursday. Ferris told InfoWorld he is considering releasing the details of the unpatched holes on May 14 on his Web site. He also says he has found new holes in OS X affecting TIFF format files and BOMArchiver, an application used to compress files. He did not provide details about the flaws or proof of their existence."
I think that this is inevitable. Mac OS X is a desktop OS, desktop customers demand shiny new features and Apple needs to compete with Microsoft in adding such features, otherwise it will fall behind in market share.
I don't think Apple has much to worry about in the features department. It's Microsoft that has been playing a long, slow game of catch-up-to-apple for the last 20 years. Windows came out a year after Mac OS and it wasn't as good (couldn't have overlapping Windows, etc). It took ten years for Windows users to get a trash can, another six to get desktop icons that snap to a predifined "grid."
Apple's operating systems are consistently 5-10 years ahead of Microsoft in the feature category. I used to laugh at all the Windows/PC fanboys that would make fun of Apple, labelling their solutions as something for children. In 2001, the joke was on them, when Windows XP, the most kiddie, fisher-price-y looking OS that has ever existed came out. The color scheme is horrible, the OS itself is plagued with security holes which revealed that XP is merely a new, colorful dress on the same old skank.
Apple has released 4 distinct versions of OS X, Microsoft has released 1, and it looks like the next one is going to be another year still. Apple keeping up with Microsoft? What a joke.