Slew of OS X vulnerabilities found, Apple says to fix you must buy Panther for $129..

[Q Classic]

Q Cubed - $130/yr is peanuts to maintain a computer that you claim you're serious about.

actually, no it's not. i maintain my dell with less than $50 a year, not counting electricity or inet (which i don't pay for in the dorms). where does most of it go? about $10 in those compressed air thingies, which i don't use all of anyway, so i have enough left over to share, and maybe about $5 worth of paper towels that are just slightly dampened with water or a $2 bottle of rubbing alcohol.
software upkeep? since i have a lot of it automated (using a legit copy of systemworks2k3 doing speedisk, nav, and windoctor), and since i check the windows update site every week, the total cost does boil down to less than $50. thus, $130 isn't peanuts compared to the upkeep of a computer.

Do you have a job?

well, before i erased some of my posts, i mentioned twice that i am working two jobs.

Consider it a necessary expense.

note that i also didn't say that it wasn't, and that i probably would pay for it, albeit grudgingly.

And next time you go to buy a laptop, don't overspend so much.

i didn't buy a laptop. laptops have a mean time to failure of only about three to four years--not something that could last me from first-year college to at least mid-grad school. desktops, on the other hand, are far more resilient/robust: where i work as sysadmin, we're still using 12 pentium-90s on winxp.

Some decent apple laptops go for $1090. You wasted what, $700 just on the laptop in the first place. How responsible...

only a fool would spend more than $1000 on a computer that dies in three to four years. don't assume you know much about my hardware.
if you want deals with laptops, you can get a decent wintel one for about 700 to 800. would i spend money on that? fat chance.

[Wiglaf]

actually, no it's not. i maintain my dell with less than $50 a year, not counting electricity or inet (which i don't pay for in the dorms)....thus, $130 isn't peanuts compared to the upkeep of a computer.

I wasn't referring to physical upkeep. Your Dell is not evolving, it is staying dust-free. Great. If you go and buy a new version of Office or networking software or what have you, then you spend more than $50.

only a fool would spend more than $1000 on a computer that dies in three to four years. don't assume you know much about my hardware.
if you want deals with laptops, you can get a decent wintel one for about 700 to 800. would i spend money on that? fat chance.

You missed the point...desktops are cheaper anyway. You can get a damn good apple desktop for $1000. You overspend by $700 and yet you want to ***** about a cool $130 being over your head. You remind me of my grandmother, quite a feat since not even her name reminds me of her anymore.

And ASHER - admission by omission - I WIN, you lose. If only Q Cubed would just go to jail for his software crimes I'd be looking like a pro right about now.

[Asher]

Yeah, you sure showed me Wiglaf.

Demand details of buffer overflows when you know Apple doesn't release it, and in the lack of evidence they are clearly minor.

[Q Classic]

I wasn't referring to physical upkeep. Your Dell is not evolving, it is staying dust-free. Great. If you go and buy a new version of Office or networking software or what have you, then you spend more than $50.

actually, there's a great benefit to going to launch events. i'm getting office 2k3 pro + one note free, without even having to pay for s&h. windows came for $15--two years ago at the school (site licensing). this year thus far i've not spent more than $50.

You missed the point...desktops are cheaper anyway. You can get a damn good apple desktop for $1000. You overspend by $700 and yet you want to ***** about a cool $130 being over your head.

(sigh) no, see, you're missing the point entirely. $1700 or so is a one-time startup cost. once you pay for it, it's yours. you don't have to pay for it on a yearly basis, you don't have to do much beyond that.
the "cool" $130 for what really amounts to a yearly update is a recurring cost. that's why it's not just peanuts. where did i say it was over my head? several times i said that i probably would end up forking over cash for it. what i did say was that i wouldn't enjoy it, and that $130 is not easy money.

also, what you consider "damn good" is really only fair to middling. sure, i could get one with comparable specs for less than $700 from a wintel vendor. would it be able to last me five, six years? perhaps, but not as well as a $1700 one does: and let's not forget, some of that $1700 went towards a monitor purchase and a printer purchase. hardly luxury purchases, unless there's a way i can usefully use a desktop without seeing what's on screen.

i don't have the prices, or the depreciation rates, but my bet is that the sub-$1200 computers, be they mac or wintel, end up depreciating a lot more, both in price and utility, than one closer to $1700 or $2500. when software purchases for the os over a yearly basis become a sizeable fraction of the computer's value itself... i honestly fail to see how that makes a "cool" $130 "peanuts".

[mrmitchell]

$130 * 4 = 520
1000 + 520 = 1520 for a stinky smelly Mac
or 1700 for a fresh smelling clean scent PC

[Wiglaf]

$130 * 4? What the hell is that? I am tired of dealing with idiots. Some people, not to name anyone in particular, are just morons. I cannot make sense of it.

also, what you consider "damn good" is really only fair to middling. sure, i could get one with comparable specs for less than $700 from a wintel vendor. would it be able to last me five, six years? perhaps, but not as well as a $1700 one does: and let's not forget, some of that $1700 went towards a monitor purchase and a printer purchase. hardly luxury purchases, unless there's a way i can usefully use a desktop without seeing what's on screen.

The new emacs come with a monitor, thank you very much, and the printer might bump it to $1100. Hardly $1700. Imagine how much easier $130 is to cough up if you have $600 left over from your computer purchase...

And if staying current is your concern, you can't be poor. That's just the way the cookie crumbles. Go with MS and be a cheap bastard if you want, but keep in mind your security patches aren't directly paying anyone's bills.

Depreciation values are irrelevant. What the OS costs in relation to your computer's estimated current worth is the dumbest, most irrelevant ****ing statistic I have ever seen in my life. Not only because the OS outlasts the computer but also because the computer's worth has no impact on your ability to pony up the dough.

Moving on --

Asher, there is such a thing as a responsible journalist, and I am realizing as I type this that you are neither responsible nor a journalist, so what I'm about to say is unnecessary and impertinent, but if you as a responsible journalist want to accuse someone of something, you should have proof, and a lack of proof doesn't equate itself with guilt, there is a thing called the fifth ammendment for that. Get out of the minors and find the smoking gun - a memo from Steve Jobs to his goons if you must. Don't waste people's time with this guilty until proven innocent jibber jabber.

[Asher]

From Ars Technica.

The only thing I disagree with in this rant is how he attributes the OS X vulnerabilities stuff as "FUD", since Apple themselves had said they would not patch it and then changed their minds. But the rest of it sums it up well, what I have been saying:

Apple's quality assurance testing

Does Apple seem to suffer from more than its fair share of bugs? Just this week, news hit the street of a potentially nasty bug that affected some owners of Firewire 800 drives with the Oxford 922 bridge chip. It seems that data on a quite a few of those drives connected to computers during Panther installation was lost. Utterly lost.

Now many of you are well-acquainted with the geeky pleasure of laying down a fresh install of your OS on a newly-formatted hard drive. The procedure is familiar: back up your data, reformat your drive (maybe even indulging in the "zero all data" option), do a clean install on the squeaky-clean platters, then restore your user settings from your backup. I did it with Panther. I have two Firewire 400 hard drives hooked up to my Mac, one of which is for backup, and the other used as a scratch disk. I ran Carbon Copy Cloner (one of the shining stars — even a quasar — of the Mac shareware universe) to back up my drive, and then installed Panther. Everything went quite smoothly, and after doing a bit of copying from the backup to my main drive, I was up and running with a nice fresh install.

Imagine following OS installation "best practices" only to find that you had no backup from which to restore. Such was the fate of a number of unlucky early Panther adopters.

Apple by no means is unique in having its users being bitten by bugs. All platforms and OSes occasionally suffer from some undetected bit of nasty code. It sneaks up on its users like a small child crawling under the covers next to you at night only to awaken you from a deep, restful slumber by peeing in the bed. However, bugs such as the Panther/Firewire drive and the Windows 2000/iTunes installation issue come at a particularly inopportune time for Apple. Indeed, some long-time Mac users are wondering if Apple has been gradually eliminating its quality testing department as it seems that the amount of bugs has been growing over time.

The first Apple bug ever to bite me was one involving Mac OS 8.5. OS 8.5 was released in September 1998 and similar to Panther, was touted as a must-have OS upgrade for everyone (everyone using 8.1, that is). Sherlock made its debut with this release as did several other system and UI improvements. Unfortunately, there was a serious glitch with the install that essentially nuked the data on some hard drives. I learned the value of frequent backups that month, as my stock G3 minitower was affected and my hard drive rendered unreadable. Apple quickly issued OS 8.5.1 to remedy the issue, but several us were left scratching our heads wondering how such a major bug made it through Apple QA.

Let's join Macintoshian Achaia in taking a little trip down bug memory lane . . .

* iTunes 4.1 for Windows. iTunes for Windows is a beautiful application bringing the best of the Apple experience to the Windows platform (and look for a comprehensive review of the three new Windows online music stores here on Ars soon!). One bit that could have been left behind is a bug that caused some Windows 2000 systems to hang on boot-up after installing iTunes 4.1. The culprit turned out to be an incompatibility with some third-party CD-burning software, and Apple quickly released v4.1.1 to fix the problem.
* Mac OS 10.2.8. Also known as the system update that appeared, disappeared, and reappeared, this update broke network connectivity for some owners of older PowerMacintosh G4 systems. Additional issues included the update resetting custom file mappings and startup difficulties with some iMacs and eMacs. Apple pulled and reissued the update after ironing out the problems.
* Excessive fan noise on 1st-generation Mirror Drive Door G4s. Fellow Mac moderator kennedye (who has one of these towers) described this one as "WHHHHHHHIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRR," which was the approximate sound the first-generation MDD towers made after being running for a short time. Essentially, the fans in these units caused vibrations and produced an ungodly amount of noise. Apple offered free replacement kits with new power supply and processor fans.
* iTunes 2.0. iTunes 2.0 arrived along with Apple's first-generation iPod. The iTunes 2.0 installer had the problem of erasing some users' volumes. According to MacFixIt, the installer tried to nuke previous versions of iTunes (even though the installer instructed users to delete the old version prior to installation) using rm -rf with root privileges. Unfortunately, the developers didn't take into account that some hard drives would have spaces in their names, and some of those ended up having their data sent to /dev/null. Apple offered discounted versions of Norton Utilities to affected users, but a better-written installer would have better.

There have been other bugs in the Apple anthill, but the point of this exercise is not to delineate every single flawed OS and hardware release ever issued forth from Cupertino. Rather, it is to show that Apple has some ongoing issues with QA testing. The puzzling thing is that it's not the obscure bugs which are biting Apple in the keister. The issues enumerated above all could have been avoided with more thorough testing of the software and hardware in question with multiple configurations.

As I said earlier, everyone ships software and hardware with bugs at some point. So why devote an entire column to Apple's maladies?

Here's why: at a point in time where Apple is more strongly-positioned than any other time in the last decade, they are shooting themselves in the foot by releasing products without thorough quality assurance testing. Panther is a strong OS. In fact, it's the most enterprise-friendly OS release Apple has ever shipped. Panther Server offers a host of features that make it a realistic option for the enterprise and both Panther and Apple's hardware are getting unprecedented attention from IT departments and the tech press. However, if you are responsible for the IT infrastructure of your business, are you going to be willing to put your professional reputation on the line by bringing in a new platform if you see reports of data loss or loss of functionality with a simple OS update?

"Sir? We have a problem. All the G4 users in the design department are reporting that they can no longer see the network after we installed the patch that appeared in the Software Update app."

The iTunes 4.1 for Windows issue with Windows 2000 installs points to another ramification of not catching bugs: potential converts and/or customers are ultimately turned off from Apple and its products when bad things happen to them. One of the most-frequent comments heard in the days and weeks leading up to the release of the iTunes Windows client was "I hope it's better than QuickTime." Apple's Windows ports of QuickTime left something to be desired in terms of the UI and features, a fact which resulted in some trepidation among many a Windows user considering installing iTunes. If a company's reputation is already questionable among a targeted constituency, it's that much more crucial that their future products are released as free of blemishes as possible. While Apple was forthcoming in admitting the iTunes problem and issuing a patched iTunes 4.1.1, it could have saved itself a lot of grief by more stringent testing in the first place.

The other problem with Apple's unswatted bugs comes as a result of the increased scrutiny Apple is now under. When apps like iTunes for Windows have problems, tech news sites will swarm to the news like flies to a cow pasture. Like it or not, users are influenced by what they read, and the headlines popping up all over the Internet do not help Apple's cause.

What can Apple do about this? The first answer is glaringly obvious: they need to do a better job with testing. Obviously, it is not realistic to expect Apple to test against each possible hardware and software configuration. At the same time, Apple should not assume that every Windows 2000 user will be running the latest versions of their CD burning software. Similarly, tens of thousands of older G4s are still in service. Is it not reasonable for Apple to make sure that OS X 10.2.8 runs just as problem-free on a dual processor G4 500MHz machine as it is on a shiny new Dual G4 1.4 GHz? Please, Apple — spend more time testing your software against different configurations, even if it means a ship date slips by a few days.

Secondly, when a bug does slip by unnoticed, be forthcoming about it. We at Ars (as did many other sites) reported on an obscure vulnerability that was repaired with the release of Panther, but was still extant in earlier versions. It began spreading across the 'net that Apple didn't plan to patch earlier versions of OS X. The thought that Apple wouldn't patch 10.2.8, which was Apple's shipping OS just one week ago was FUD, plain and simple. Unfortunately, Apple didn't help itself at all with its own actions. All it would have taken to stop the FUD was a simple press release as the reports surfaced stating that they planned to patch earlier versions of the OS, or better yet, a tech note when Panther was released. Then the headlines could have stayed confined to the rumors sites instead of being plastered across c|net and other, largers sites. When a bug is confirmed, Apple needs to say, "yeah, we've got it. Here's what you need to do . . . " and post the relevant info on their website instead of remaining silent and giving the FUD a chance to take root.

As I've said before in this space, Apple is in a stronger position than it has been in some time. Capitalizing on its position and growing its market share both in the home and corporate spaces requires an increased commitment to quality. Hopefully we have seen the last of Apple's QA faux pas for a while.

[Gatekeeper]

Asher:

I only brought up MikeS because he's a level-headed type of poster. He doesn't know anything about 'Poly, at least insofar as I know. If you're ever at MacCentral's forums, check out some of the stuff he posts and contributes to. Most Apple users are like him, at least in my experience.

Gatekeeper

[Q Classic]

wiglaf, i'll say this one last time.

$130 is not easy money that anybody can just spend.

how much do you make a year, anyway?

[FlameFlash]

And this is what I get for not being back on over the weekend...

skywalker
Not Asher's fault Agathon and Drake violate the rules and make fun of his SO

I agree, and they should be punished, but what does that have to do with Asher trolling for Mac anger?

Imran Siddiqui



Anyway, I don't think Asher's 'trolls' are any worse than when UR or Agathon post an anti-Microsoft post. It's just because Asher routinely whips them do I think that the Macheads resent his presence.

Actually, I have a high respect for Asher. From my very little monitorings, he remains civil until somebody else provokes him. That's why this thread disturbed me so much.

skywalker
Actually, in Asher's threads, it's pretty even in terms of numbers. Two or three people on his side (including him), two or three people on the other.

This is not a pure PC forum. Those mac boards are pure Mac forums.

Wish I could argue...

Asher

My best friend is a loyal Mac user, and he's very competent with computers (same year CS as me, builds RAIDs and computational clusters for the biochem research at the uni), and he concedes virtually every point when I debate with him about it -- his only response is "So? I like it". Which is basically the only valid response there is.

It's no wonder we see eye-to-eye on that then.

But then why encourage the commentary from the Mac camp? Most Mac users can shoot themselves in the foot well-enough when talking tech that they don't need any help and when they try to shoot down M$ you can be there to point out whose foot they actually shot.

skywalker
Wiglaf - microsoft fixes security bugs for FREE, and continues support for years. Apple doesn't continue support beyond the next release, and CHARGES to fix bugs.

Eh? When did this happen? What bugs?

10.2.8 (first build) was horrible, what'd Apple do? They made a new build.

9.1 was horrible (Classic) so they did 9.2 and the Mac-world cheered.

10.0 was horrible and so there was 10.1.

10.1 was horrible and so Mac users were charged for 10.2.

10.2 is stable, yet if they want to they can get 10.3.

Security flaws in OS X really don't matter that much. What kind of a hacker is going to really care to do something to a community that when the virus hits it may not even make the news?

skywalker
However, with the release of XP they are still releasing FREE security fixes for 2000.

See above...

Q Cubed
$130 is not easy money for everyone. but i guess i'm wrong about that, wiggy.

I concur. My cousin, who is in school studying computers (I know no specifics) almost constantly points out the lack of logic for me having such an expensive computer when he could build one for me at under half the cost. I refuse simply because I like Mac, but my little G4 500 has served me well and will continue to serve me well, so I don't care.

I'm just thankful that Apple offers student discounts or else I'd never be able to get X.3.

Urban Ranger
It wasn't bad, but a lot of older programs (mainly games I reckon) have problems running on XP.

And older Mac games have problems sometimes running under X.2/3, so?

Somebody even hacked SMAC/SMAX so they'd run native in X just to get around the problem some users might have.

CtP and CivII still work though, so I have no complaints.

Q Cubed
only a fool would spend more than $1000 on a computer that dies in three to four years. don't assume you know much about my hardware.
if you want deals with laptops, you can get a decent wintel one for about 700 to 800. would i spend money on that? fat chance.

Eh?

I have my G4 500 from spring of 2000 that's still running fine... about to drop a second HD in it, but other than that, I have no 'needs.'

My iBook 466 from fall of 2000 is working just fine still too...

Wiglaf
And ASHER - admission by omission - I WIN, you lose. If only Q Cubed would just go to jail for his software crimes I'd be looking like a pro right about now.

In an arguement of opinions there are no winners or losers... only hot heads...

Gatekeeper
Asher:

I only brought up MikeS because he's a level-headed type of poster. He doesn't know anything about 'Poly, at least insofar as I know. If you're ever at MacCentral's forums, check out some of the stuff he posts and contributes to. Most Apple users are like him, at least in my experience.

Gatekeeper

It is unfortunate that 'poly got a lot of the Mac fanatics somehow...

[Q Classic]

Eh?

I have my G4 500 from spring of 2000 that's still running fine... about to drop a second HD in it, but other than that, I have no 'needs.'

My iBook 466 from fall of 2000 is working just fine still too...

laptops, not desktops, have a mean time to failure of about 3-4 years. now, if you take care of it, it'll last longer. most people don't.

[FlameFlash]

Ah.

Which would explain why my iBook is still alive?

[Q Classic]

perhaps you take care of it? or, you're just lucky and have one of the ones that have a longer life than the mean, according to that bell curve thing.

[FlameFlash]

probably both.

Of course it almost never goes anywhere...

It's a laptop that sees very little lap action.

The keyboard has been replaced twice and the AC adapter once, but the keyboard was under warrenty both times and the AC adapter became a fire hazard so it was recalled.

[-Jrabbit]

This thread is incredible. (Or, incredibly predictable.)

I have a lot of respect for Asher's knowledge of PC hardware and software. What I don't understand is his compulsion to troll Apple users.

Gleefully detailing to its users the shortcomings of a platform he doesn't/won't use, is like telling a priest that you've disproven the existence of his god. So what? It's not going to change the priest's mind.

I can only assume this is how he gets his kicks. Kinda sad, imho...