In the last episode we talked about Apple patching the Quicktime vulnerability. We also did not know if the patch would have to be manually downloaded and installed by users or if Apple would push it in updates. I got the answer to that question tonight by accident.

The answer is that Apple are pushing the update. I was working away and I got a notification that an update was available and sure enough it was the patch for the Quicktime bug. I have been meaning to chase it up since the patch was announced but have been busy. So that was good work by Apple. They also need to be congratulated as to the speed of this bug being patched, it left Microsoft for dead. Word vulnerability comes to mind, total of 4 now and counting the as yet to be patched vulnerabilities.

I am starting to be more and more attracted to the Mac platform, for me this is another nail in the Microsoft OS coffin. Perhaps Knightwise has a point that Microsoft are pursuing a "slack-patching" (nice term BTW Knightwise - did you invent it?) strategy as a marketing ploy. It is a disgrace that Windows users are somewhat neglected in regards to timely patching of applications and operating systems.

Another example of this farce is the 284 days last year that Internet Explorer was vulnerable compared to the 9 of Firefox. We also talked about that in show number 33. I am truly getting tired of this trend, perhaps Vista might make a difference, touted as the most secure OS to date from Microsoft. Only time will tell and at this point in time Vista has hardly been tested.

Sure I don’t think that users expect that our OS’s will be secure 100% of the time. It is a reality that there are going to be times when vulnerabilities are found and need to be addressed. But I believe that users should be able to expect to have their systems and applications patched in a timely and efficient manner. The 27 days that it took Apple to patch Quicktime is a good example along with the 9 days of Firefox for last year. Telling that one of these is an open source application and the other is in direct competition with the biggest OS distributor in the world.

Vista or switch to Mac? The big question.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 10:11 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.