I pass along the following not to mock Mac users but to point out a simple fact: Security updates affect everyone. Today’s example courtesy of TechWeb’s Gregg Keizer:
Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday issued a security update for the Mac Pro, the top-of-the-line Intel Xeon-based system that the company rolled out only two days before.
The fix, dubbed Update 2006-004 for Mac Pro, adds 5 patches included with the Aug. 1 security upgrade for the Cupertino, Calif. company’s other systems, to Apple’s newest and beefiest client computer.
Two sections of that update — four patches for the ImageIO component to defend against malicious TIFF files, and one fix for the OpenSSH server — weren’t included with the version of Mac OS X 10.4.7 pre-loaded on the new Mac Pro machines.
No computer is inherently secure. No operating system is inherently secure. That applies whether you run Windows, the Mac OS, or any flavor of Linux.
Ed Bott 