My co-worker Steve sent me this tonight and I wanted to scrape some of it to display, I think this is just way too important to let get looked over because it’s not running on MSNBC.com or something….
Computerworld.com: Microsoft vs. Apple: Who patches zero-days faster?
Excerpt:
Apple’s teasing commercials that imply its software is safer than Microsoft’s may not quite match the facts, according to new research revealed at the Black Hat conference on Thursday.
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology looked at how many times over the past six years the two vendors were able to have a patch available on the day a vulnerability became publicly known, which they call the 0day (zero-day) patch rate.
They analyzed 658 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and 738 affecting Apple. They looked at only high- and medium-risk bugs, according to the classification used by the National Vulnerability Database, said Stefan Frei, one of the researchers involved in the study (PDF format).
What they found is that, contrary to popular belief that Apple makes more secure products, Apple lags behind in patching.
“Apple was below 20 [unpatched vulnerabilities at disclosure] consistently before 2005,” Frei said. “Since then, they are very often above. So if you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple.”
That just needs to be out there. Not that I am sucking up to my employer, but seriously folks, the idea that buying a Mac makes you not a virus target anymore is BS.
On my main machine I had installed Safari for Windows for testing purposes. Knowing that, I was not surprised when Apple’s update software alerted me that 3.1 was available for download. I updated and all was right with the world.
I saw update pop up on my wife’s machine this week and noticed Safari in the list of updates, no biggie I thought, perhaps she had installed it also.
It was when I saw the software alert on my 64-bit machine that alarms went off. Apple was telling me there was an update for Safari to be installed when Safari had never been installed previously.
Now I may be splitting hairs here, but adding new software under the guise of an update seems to be pretty shady to me. Someone that isn’t paying much attention might bet getting all sorts of software that he or she never intended.
If I remember correctly, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back with Limewire and labeled it as Mal-ware. I am not saying that Safari is dangerous, but given the state of browsers and the constant attacks the receive, they very may well be, but since when does “update” mean, install whatever you want.
So you drop $2,000 on a laptop and it’s beautiful. Then 4-5 months in, the finish starts wearing off of the latch. Well, mine did. I took it into the Apple store this weekend. While it’s considered normal wear and tear, and not covered under warranty, the guy at the Genius Bar and his manager agreed that the laptop had been completely babied with not a scuff or scratch to show anywhere.
Hard to wear and tear the finish off of a latch so well kept. Without a single whine or complaint on my part, they waived the $196 repair fee and ordered the part to replace my latch.
That’s service folks.
UPDATE: My beloved Macbook Pro has it’s pristine sophisticated appearance again. I dropped it off on Tuesday afternoon, and it was repaired by Wednesday evening. Go Apple.
