Apple has taken iTunes to the Facebook platform, adding its brand as a "friendable" member of the social networking site and creating a Facebook application that hands out special offers to connected users.
Facebook users can become "fans" of iTunes, which installs the new "free on iTunes" app for them and provides a link to the iTunes Indie Spotlight Sampler, a free mixtape of 20 tracks.
The rumored Beatles songs were a no-show, but Steve Jobs -- Apple's own rock star -- is back. Jobs, Apple's CEO, delivered the keynote address at the company's invitation-only event in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, making his first appearance at an Apple event in nearly a year.
As high profile hacks of Apple products have surfaced again and again in recent years, Apple has been taken to task for what some say is an incompetent approach to software security. But the company's latest software slip-up seems to show something more than security incompetency: security apathy.
Apple on Thursday released an update to Java for Mac OS X Leopard. The update, number five, supersedes all previous updates and brings with it improved reliability, security, and compatibility for the cross-platform technology.
In particular, the update patches many Java-related security vulnerabilities, including some which allow untrusted Java applets to obtain elevated privileges via a Web page and potentially execute arbitrary code. There's also a patch for Java Web Start that prevents a buffer overflow from quitting an application or executing arbitrary code.
Apple has angered thousands of Mac users with the release of Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 because the new operating system has caused some computers to fail. After a startup failure, users are greeted with a continuous icon described as the "spinning ball of death."
Apple is moving quickly to patch holes and repair incompatibilities within Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, having already providing some developers with betas of the first maintenance and security update planned for the new operating system.
Three people familiar with the matter say the Mac maker issued the first external builds of Mac OS X 10.6.1 to a select group of developers on Monday, September 1st. The move comes just four days after Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard hit retail shelves.
Apple is pushing out an older, vulnerable version of Adobe Flash Player with its Snow Leopard upgrade, according to Sophos.
Snow Leopard, aka Mac OS X 10.6, hit the streets last week with much fanfare around improved performance. Apple also generated some buzz by including a malware scanner into the mix to analyze downloads for two known Trojan families.
Apple users have less protection from viruses and malicious software than Windows users do. But they’re still safer, security experts agree, because so few malware programs target the Mac.
Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system, which landed in stores Friday, adds a few security enhancements to protect Mac users from malware. But like previous versions of the Mac OS, Snow Leopard lacks security features that are built in to Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, such as full Address Space Layout Randomization to thwart attacks from malicious code.
Where there's smoke there's fire, and where there's remarkably convenient stock transactions, there's insider trading--or so the SEC reportedly says. According to a piece at the Huffington Post, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating potential cases of insider trading related to Apple's stock.
Snow Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s OS X operating system, gives users limited protection against only a handful of Mac-targeted Trojan horses but should not be considered a substitute for traditional antivirus protection.
“It’s an acknowledgment by Apple that there are some Trojans in the wild that affect Mac users,” said Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser at Sophos, an antivirus company. “It’s very, very basic.”
