Time to Patch Quicktime, iTunes, Mac OS X, and Panther

Having to deal with 200+ Windows Machines, mostly on NT and Windows 98 + 15 NT servers and all the security headaches daily in contrast to my personal mix of MacOs 9.x and Mac OS X machines which are well covered with Apple's automated update service I also find the article an exaggeration. No operating system is invulnerable to attack but the article gives the false perception to the layman that the security issue on Apple's side is as bad as in Windows. Nothing further from the truth. Although in both cases obsolete versions of OSs, (non current), are involved, Apple invested the resources to give Mac OS 9 an update service late in that operating system's life while MS cut NT, a still widely used platform, from that kind of support..

Having read the links at the originating sites, I only found one mention of QT (playing a malformed movie could cause QT to terminate; no escalation or other weakness mentioned; no mention on Secunia site). Nothing about iTunes.
BTW, Panther is a version of OSX. Saying "time to patch.. Mac OSX, and Panther" is like saying "time to patch Windows, and Windows XP".
Sure, installing these patches is a good idea, but they appear to fix services which are almost all off by default, unless someone could demonstrate differently. That's rather different from the exploit I was shown today which lets one take control of IIS 5 using any open port...

Charles

Good goodness. *One* *buffer* *vulnerability* in Apple's OS X and Quicktime Library is worth a ticker report here? Gosh, given that standard you'd have a *lot* of messages to write on Windows. Hmm. Lemme translate your headline: "Time to patch MS DirectX, Media Player, Windows, and Windows XP" (by the way - what's up with the differentiation of OS X and Panther? Is Windows XP not Windows? Duh.)
Not a very interesting headline, is it? Who would read that? Everyone knows you need to patch a MS program or OS on an almost daily basis just to reach a minimum level of security. No one bothers. For that matter, you'd need that as a standard permanent headline on every Windows centered website.

Guess this is again one of those items written by a poor Windows journalist who desperately needs to attract Apple audience to his website.

Well, good luck.

Thurrott is a fool. He seems to write at least one article per week that poops Apple Computer. He never has anything positive or optimistic to say about Apple. He is blatantly and continually biased, and that does not meet the code for a true analyst or journalist. The company who he works for also looks foolish by letting his persistent negativity reflect on them. With obvious bias, noone takes any of you seriously. Thurrott is a fool and it is so obvious that it appears that someone is paying him off to continually poop Apple Computer.



Editor's note: I didn't write this article. Who's the fool again? --Paul