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Many Mac OS Users Not Getting Security Updates
AmiMoJo writes "According to security company Sophos, around 55% of home users and 18% of enterprise users have updated to Mavericks, the latest version of Mac OS (10.9). Unfortunately Apple appears to have stopped providing security updates for older versions. Indeed, they list Mavericks itself as a security update. This means that the majority of users are no longer getting critical security patches. Sophos recommends taking similar precautions to those recommended for people who cannot upgrade from Windows XP."
Hardware becomes obsolete, or at least too old to run current software. That's a fact of life, always has been. You logic is fatally flawed. Once your android phone is not able to be updated (hell it already may be) are you going to switch to something else? Once you Lenovo laptop is too old to run Windows are you going to switch to some other OS? Do you expect to pull an old 386 out of the basement and install Windows 8 on it? You're fucking stupid.
It is unfortunate that Apple didn't think that one through a little further. If they are adopting the model of "the OS Upgrade IS a security update", then throw it in their normal update mechanism rather than having people seek it out. Since they didn't, [. . .]
It is unfortunate that you didn't think your post through a little further.
I'm running Mac OS 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) on two machines, and I am notified once every few days by the "App Store" application (which is the update mechanism for OS X starting with Mac OS 10.7 Lion) that Mavericks is ready to install.*
In other words, Mavericks *is* included as part of Apple's "normal update mechanism" and "normal people" do not have to seek it out; Mavericks seeks out them.
*I've not upgraded these two machines because they are running production software that is not yet ready to upgrade. One of my other personal machines has gotten the Mavericks update.
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So he uses Windows right? The point is Mac fanboy's say OS X does everything you need it to then they tell you well just install Parallels or do a Bootcamp install. So pay a premium for the hardware then spend loads more getting a non-OEM install of windows and potentially a license for your VM solution. That isn't want I call "just is good" that is what I call "a workaround exists". In corporate environment they then have to insure both OSs are getting updated properly, have a directory service and other access systems setup to play with 2+ different platforms etc.
I have an iMac at home boot camped to Win 8.1 and virtualbox copies of XP as well. I got sick of the performance of a VM solution and waiting for a reboot whenever I wanted to do some heavy lifting. So I run windows exclusively. I'm yet to have a reason where I had to boot into Mac to get something done but I had the problem every day or two when I tried to use Mac exclusively. The point is the platform: if one has complete coverage of everything you need and the other only misses a small amount you end up having to VM, swap between etc. Much simpler to stick with the one that covers your needs.
Similarly Windows Phone isn't a winner because their are hundreds of important apps that only exist on Android or iOS. In a lot of ways I like the UI better, I definitely like the development and development toolset better for Win Phone but I probably won't develop anything for it because I don't want to piss away my weekends so I can make 10's of dollars on Windows Store when I can make 100's of dollars on iOS.
So after the 22nf of October 2013 when Mavericks was released they don't seem to be back-porting all their patches for either the OS or all apps.
From what I can tell, the list you're citing disproves every single claim you made, rather than affirming them.
They backported their Apple Remote Desktop security update (did you think they updated 3.5.4, which runs on older machines, on the same day as 3.7 just for fun?). Same goes for the Safari update, which saw versions of the app intended for older systems getting updated (again, did you miss the whole 6.1.1 in addition to 7.0.1 update thing in your list?). The Keynote security update was related to a feature introduced in the Mavericks-only version of Keynote, so backporting wasn't necessary. Likewise for the OS X Server 3.0 update, from what I can gather (though I'll admit I may be incorrect on this point).
Note that the 16th December patch to Mavericks appears to fix bugs that exist in older versions of Mac OS, which did not receive an update.
At this point, it's pretty clear you just decided to make stuff up about what was in the Mavericks update, since the entire security update for Mavericks consists of this one bullet point:
OS X Mavericks v10.9.1 includes the security content of Safari 7.0.1.
I.e. The Mavericks and Safari updates are patching the exact same security issue, hence why they were released on the same day, and as I already pointed out, the Safari update that was released was intended for older systems. How you can claim to have knowledge of what the Mavericks update fixes while not knowing that it was the exact same as the Safari update is beyond me.