Kapersky says Lion security is not as good as Windows XP circa spring 2002 which was before SP1 and before ILoveYou? Wasn’t that when IE6 was the latest version?
Mr. Bott: that sounds like hyperbole to me.
On another point, you project Apple’s support for legacy OS X versions, which have gone back two versions in the past, to meaning exclusion of Snow Leopard systems and the orphaning of Macs bought in 2009 and 2010. But, Mountain Lion will be dropped one year after Lion and the announcement is that future upgrades will also be annual. While you may ultimately be correct, at this time it is premature to assume Apple will only support one and two year old machines. I think when the dust settles, security update support will continue to go back 4-5 years.
Ultimately, what Microsoft does is irrelevant to how we judge Apple. Either Apple is doing the right thing or not: there is no grading on a curve. Microsoft’s supporting back 10 years does mean maintenance mode on three shipped operating systems. Microsoft is on a three-year schedule, with XP extended for the Longhorn debacle and netbook surprise. There were five operating systems before Leopard (.0 – .4) and they only account for 3-4 percent of active users. We must presume that despite the risks, they have decided to stick with their old machine and operating system and no one has made the false assumption of perpetual support. Indeed, I know some folks who were on XP when the recession hit in ’08 and those folks are going to be on XP until business gets back to those levels. When Microsoft withdraws all support, they will not take it as the cue to spend thousands of dollars to become current.
But, going back to Microsoft and its long good-bye to XP, am I misremembering when I think that many of the security updates required SP2, and if someone is running XP as sold in 2001, they are not getting any updates? Even Microsoft, rightfully praised for its stability and legacy support, will say that the maintenance is either too hard and costly or the user count too small to support.
I spent a lot of time addressing these two points. On the whole I am in agreement that Apple does need to do more with figuring out how to get users to update and having those updates ready on a timely basis. Apple still makes a very good computer and the applications I use are written to OS X. There has been progress. Mountain Lion is going to bring further security advancement. My next computer will be a Mac running OS X, because the benefits to me outweigh the risks.
Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/flashback-malware-exposes-big-gaps-in-apple-security-response/4904
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