The critical Java vulnerability in Mac OS X which we reported on earlier has finally been fixed by Apple. “Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 delivers improved reliability, security, and compatibility for Java SE 6, J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later.” The fix for this vulnerability is in there.
Where Windows, MacOS and FOSS/Alternative OS each have each 33% market share.
Security would be interesting (and Apple stock owners would be super rich, Bill Gates not so much)
But Apple counted iPhones as MacOS in the WWDC keynote, so Jim Zemlin from the Linux Foundation will likely soon count Linux cellphones, routers, TV sets and whatever and declare “Mission accomplished” on an aircraft carrier
Wait, when did that happen?
During the WWDC when showing the graph of OS X installs, the graph jumps up from 2007 quite steeply. That is when they added the iPhone and iPod Touch sales.
I guess I should watch the webcast of next keynote or special event in high res. I did notice that there was an increase in the growth of OS X install base in that graph, but because I couldn’t make out the numbers I didn’t figure they were counting iPhone OS too.
Regardless of the fact that iPhone OS and Mac OS X share very much in way of libraries, frameworks and core systems, much more than any other OS pair, it’s still somewhat disingenuous to lump the two together.
I’d probably say that as the hardware becomes more powerful on the iPhone/iPod Touch that you’ll see the differences between Mac OS X and iPhoneOS will decrease to the point that from a developers perspective the difference is indistinguishable. The iPhone 3G S has a 600Mhz processor and 256MB RAM; I wouldn’t be surprised if soon we see a dual core model within a year or two with total memory doubled.
I’m a bit perplexed as to why they can’t just fix these things in a timely fashion and continue with other development.
Certainly, at ~150 MB, they could have somehow within reason worked on the security pieces and left the others for later. It just seems as though they shoved it onto the plate of a single intern and let the user base suffer, just like with so many other security issues in the past couple of years.
I think eventually, people are going to change the phrase “better late than never” to “better Apple than never” given their tardiness.
Finally the Mac version of Java 6 is up to date! (Java 6, Update 13). Hopefully this means that JavaFX browser applets now load as smoothly as on Windows… Testing is in order.
Now we can only hope (or rather dream) that Java 7 on the Mac doesn’t lag a year and a half behind other OSes like Java 6 did….
It does indeed seem better.
The only issue is that on Firefox the applets disappear while a page is being scrolled. Also on Firefox, the applet stays blank until it is loaded–no loading message. Safari is moderately better–there the loading message shows, and the applets only flicker when the page is scrolled. (Of course, no flicker would be nice too.)
Edited 2009-06-16 06:12 UTC
Unless you are using a 64-bit browser, the Java6 updates would not affect applets in any way. Java6 on Leopard is available in x86-64 mode only.
So we are stuck with Java5 for applets. In my tests so far, Java6 has much better performance on Leopard than Java5 (even in 64-bit mode).
-Ad
hmm, maybe that’s why the applets seem better in safari… i’m assuming safari 4 for intel is 64 bit?
Apple is being very complacent about security. First the DNS bug being patched months after everyone else now this. Frankly I was wondering if they were going to patch Java before Snow Lopard.