Think you're all done patching? Not if you have any Apple gear Apple has joined the likes of Microsoft and Adobe in releasing patches for dozens of security holes in its products. The Cupertino design studio has posted updates for nearly all of its product lines, fixing security holes in iOS, OS X, watchOS, tvOS, Safari, and Xcode. For OS X users, the update is packaged as El Capitan 10. …
Right you are! Apple has now patched well over 150 vulns in iOS safari alone! And several hundred others for all manner of things. And there is a major jail break supposedly out there that some scumware outfit said won their contest to collect a million dollars. The arrogance of Apple engineering has left them in a bad position. Or maybe it is a general corporate attitude that prevails. Whatever the case, walled gardens can and are breached all the time,and Apple has lost a lot of developer support over these past few years.
>For OS X users, the update is packaged as El Capitan 10.11.2 or Security Update 2015-008 for Yosemite and Mavericks.
Mavericks released on October 22, 2013? Boy I bet Microsoft would kill to only have to supply security updates for OSes released in just over the last two years. Nothing beats every year a service pack pretending to be a new OS all the while praying you get to stay in the cool kids club (and not be thrown to the wolves with no further security updates short of doing the sane thing and installing Linux which will support the hardware a hell of lot longer than Apple). Nothing is less hip than LTS.
Well, either the software is much, much better than Apple, MS or Google can write or, something else.
The Ubuntu 14.04 system I have has a rather large list of updates waiting to go. I just don't want to reboot it since I am using it for work and it has nothing on it I worry about.
>If you have anything that uses OpenSSL
You will be patching that POS sieve until the end of time. Even LibreSSL with the OpenBSD security experts is just turd polishing. That API is total garbage. What an epic fail it got rooted so deeply into the internet infrastructure.
Unless someone with ultimate domain admin rights patches the human psyche (long overdue), there will be assholes looking to exploit flaws until the end of time, or at least civilization. As complexity in software increases, no one is capable of releasing a product without flaws. (especially with rushed dev schedules) So I imagine that we will be saddled with updates for everything we own that's more complicated than a can opener for the rest of our lives, along with all the hassle and frustration of updates that go wrong.
Oh, and Quicktime in any of its incarnations is a reeking P.O.S.
The frequency of each reiteration of their OS has been a compromise in the overall quality that is negatively affecting their users experience. I sincerely hope that Apple reconsiders it's desires for a new OS on a yearly basis. They could just release a new featured theme for it once a year and a more thoroughly debugged OS once every two years. This way they could increase the compatibility between versions, improve security and provide a user experience more in step with the quality expected of products under the Apple name.
I'd have to agree that Steve Jobs is probably spinning in his grave over some of the releases (both software and hardware) that have come out of Apple lately. I think the man was a raging asshole, and I'm no fanboi, but he kept Apple on course and would never have stood for the bendy, fragile iPhone 6, for example IMHO.
Re. OS releases on a yearly basis, everyone is releasing before they're ready to meet some nonexistent cry for more features that is apparently mostly driven by marketing and the need to hold the public's interest. *Cough* Windows 10. *Cough* All of the recent product and OS releases are kind of a premature ejaculation with the subsequent sheepish "Sorry, I'll make it up to you, I promise."
For God's sake, try to remember that when Google or Microsoft release updates or patches, it's because the software they produce is buggy shite that desperately needs constant revision to avoid dying on it's ass and you were a fool to buy it. When Apple release patches, it's because they offer excellent post-release support for the entire lifetime of the device and each new software version is like a gift from the gods. Or something like that; tbh I never really managed to grep the justification for this.
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