Apple Releases Security Update 2004-09-07

[CmdrLaForge]

I am pleased to see Apple releasing updates such as this (with credits and CVE-ID), and applying them to Jaguar (10.2) too. Many non-technical and home users will still be running 10.2, and it's important they're kept as secure as possible too.

We need to adjust to the security environment we face. All operating systems suffers from defects and security issues, openly tackling them is the most effective way of dealing with the problem.

Would you rather there were less updates and your machine was less secure? Is ignorance really bliss? I don't think so.

Absolutly - therefore I don't understand why so many people are voting negative. At the moment there are 60 positive votes and 40 negative votes. Is that because a lot of people are having problems with this update ? Just would like to know that before I am installing it.

Thanks and Cheers
CmdrLaForge

 

[jsw]

Glad to see this update works with 10.3.4 -- 10.3.5 was unstable for me. FWIW, the Compusa site runs fine on my Ti400 with the security update and 10.3.4.

The site "fails" for me (yes, you can scroll down, but still...). Worse, it never seems to stop loading. This is on 10.3.5/Rev A dual-2.0.

 

[jsw]

BTW, it does eventually load for me - but it takes "forever". And I'm not sure where it's getting the list of keywords that shows up at the top (each one is duplicated). It's not readily (to this untrained eye) apparent from the source.

 

[Xtremehkr]

Wow, you people had me worried

I bought the iMac G3 I am using at CompUSA three years ago, and haven't had a problem since. I've learned more about Apple computers since but reading this thread had me worried. I had never heard of prebinding or 'fsck' before this thread. By the end of it I was wondering how much damage I had done by not having done these things before. Luckily though things are working about as well as they did before the update.

I did try the CompUSA site before and after and there was definately a change. After a restart the CompUSA page changed to a blue page with a list down the left hand side in black. The content is at the bottom but it's a change. Not that it matters, it was the first time I've visited that site.

I just wish that Apple would fix Safari. It's great but there are too many things I can't do with it as far as sites go. It doesn't work well with game sites, most car companies can't display content they have. It's a waste of time having 4 browsers sitting on the Dock because there isn't one browser that can do everything.

 

[djdarlek]

Ooh we are a grumpy lot in this thread today. .

lol, and i have learnt my lesson. DO NOT MENTION ANYTHING WINDOWS XP RELATED ON MAC SITES.

actually, as time goes on and Microsoft fades away (and with the Longhorn disaster its possible) maybe we should get Arn to ban the word 'Microsoft' in these bulletins? After all, we're all saine Mac users right? Why should we spend even 1 second talking about how the other half live. They've got a crap house with bad wireing and no door, as opposed to our sleek mansion with a lockable door.

Or at least get the word replaced with 'M$'

 

[mir]

Killed my apps ! Any help?

After update:
Safari crashes and I cannot launch most of apps, no ICal, DiskUtility, Iphoto, IMovie, SoftwareUpdate, not even message that app has crashed. It just makes few jumps in the Dock and that's about it. Launching of any app takes forever.
Closing an app takes forever as well, if it closes at all.

I installed update on 10.3.5. I did repair permissions with panther cache cleaner.

Now I have to go for clean install I guess. Any sugestions?

Thanks

Miro
www.fotoserver.sk

 

[lazydesert]

Killed my ftp service.. can't log in anymore.. apple forums say something about where tnt looks for the passwords. apple - please fix!

 

[jsw]

I just wish that Apple would fix Safari.

While, granted, there are certainly Safari problems, note that a lot of the "bugs" in Safari are because it actually implements standards correctly. Most pages which don't load are IE-specific or are "broken" so as to work in IE. As IE is pushed to the back burner, perhaps more sites will actually use the real web standards when building their pages.

Use the W3C's Validator and CSS Validator to show how bad most sites are.

 

[jrober]

maybe we should get Arn to ban the word 'Microsoft' in these bulletins?

Glad you laughed, not sure that banning free speech is the way forward. I would love a little Microsoft icon in the reply to tool. This would put in your text a randomly generated Microsoft Emoticon.

e.g.

• >>>>>> :-( Sinking under the weight of viruses
• :-o Just saw the blue screen of death
• :-\ Imminent switching
• } Pleased with their new Longhorn features
• etc.

John

 

[devman]

Works for me - minor safari issue

15" Al PB, 10.3.5 all updates applied prior to this security update.

Installed flawlessly and rebooted without any dramas. as others have mentioned, compusa.com does have a rendering glitch but that's the only issue I have seen amongst all the main apps. I even tried ssh, sftp, etc. all fine.

FWIW.

J

 

[Lancetx]

I just wish that Apple would fix Safari. It's great but there are too many things I can't do with it as far as sites go. It doesn't work well with game sites, most car companies can't display content they have. It's a waste of time having 4 browsers sitting on the Dock because there isn't one browser that can do everything.

Unfortunately, this is the result of living in a M$ (IE in particular) dominated internet world. The problem doesn't lie with Safari so much, it's with all of these sites built basically to only support IE. They don't care if their site doesn't work well (or at all) with Safari because the overwhelming amount of their visitors are using IE. Hopefully this will continue to change for the better now that IE has started to see it's market share slip a little bit at least.

 

[Xtremehkr]

Cool

While, granted, there are certainly Safari problems, note that a lot of the "bugs" in Safari are because it actually implements standards correctly. Most pages which don't load are IE-specific or are "broken" so as to work in IE. As IE is pushed to the back burner, perhaps more sites will actually use the real web standards when building their pages.

Use the W3C's Validator and CSS Validator to show how bad most sites are.

That's good to know, I'll continue to recommend Firefox to every PC user I know. When are people going to get tired of using substandard products already? On a side note, I feel lucky not to have had any update related technical problems. Knock on wood.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

After update:
Safari crashes and I cannot launch most of apps, no ICal, DiskUtility, Iphoto, IMovie, SoftwareUpdate, not even message that app has crashed. It just makes few jumps in the Dock and that's about it. Launching of any app takes forever.
Closing an app takes forever as well, if it closes at all.

I installed update on 10.3.5. I did repair permissions with panther cache cleaner.

Now I have to go for clean install I guess. Any sugestions?

Thanks

Miro
www.fotoserver.sk

Hello Miro,

sorry to hear that, but thanks for the update. I will not install this !

 

[itsa]

Scratch that..... I'm just slow.
I did the update.. had no problems at all.

 

[nagromme]

It's more down to increased usage of these softwares that these fixes are being created, than anything to do with Mac usage (which I believe is actually falling a little?).

Actually, that's the common "user base" vs. "market share" confusion. Mac usage is increasing, not falling. More users does mean more chances to catch issues. The only way Mac usage could decrease is if more Macs were being thrown away than bought. Even when an old Mac is replaced with a new Mac it is sometimes (even often!) given to someone else or otherwise made useful, rather than thrown out. And lots of Macs go to people who never had one before (former PC users, "adders," and first-time computer buyers like students).

And if Mac usage is increasing, OS X's share of that is increasing even faster: it's not 100% of the Macs already out there, but it IS nearly 100% of the Macs being sold today. Also, an old OS 9 or lower Mac is far more likely to be thrown away than a recent OS X Mac. And people are switching some older machines from 9 to X too.

Current Mac buying is at a lower rate than current Windows buying--but that just means Windows is growing faster. Mac is still growing too.

And in fact, PCs don't last as long and stay usable--so old PCs are more likely to get thrown out than old Macs. So I wouldn't be at ALL surprised if Mac usage is increasing faster than Windows usage. Sales numbers don't tell us that.

 

[hayesk]

For those that are confused on prebinding. WHen a system update does "optimizing" it is just running the update_prebinding command that you are free to run from the command line.

This is *not* disk optimizing that Panther does automatically (for files under 20MB).

 

[hayesk]

I have a theory - can anyone back me up on it. Apple releases a new major OS update which is quick because it doesn't have to patch all this stuff. People find security holes and now all the patches get in the way and slow things down. It just seems like each time I install one of these patches things to slow down a bit. Any experience from anyone?

Uhm... no. A patch isn't like patching a tire. Apple doesn't add code to the system, they replace it. Your system isn't doing this
- run crappy code
- ooh! a patch, ignore crappy code
- run good code.

When you install an update, it replaces old code with new code. The new code usually only has a few lines added or changed - basically checking array sizes, etc. for overflows. It won't run noticeably slower.

 

[Sly]

After installing the update I now can not access the itunes music store UK (or any other countries for that matter). When trying to access the store itunes gives me the message "You must upgrade to the latest version of itunes to use the itunes Music Store", I am using version 4.6 and accessed the store earlier today. I am also having the web site rendering issues with the sites mentioned above, however it is possible to get around this by using a different agent. 800mhz imac

 

[oldMac]

Killed my FTP service, too!

The update killed my FTP, as well.

Of course, my file sharing between mac and pc has never worked quite like it's supposed to, so maybe I'm due for a re-install to try to work out those issues. That and how slow my machine has gotten lately.

Anyhow, the FTP issue looks like a major oversight in the testing for this update.

Killed my ftp service.. can't log in anymore.. apple forums say something about where tnt looks for the passwords. apple - please fix!

 

[Stewie]

Absolutly - therefore I don't understand why so many people are voting negative. At the moment there are 60 positive votes and 40 negative votes. Is that because a lot of people are having problems with this update ? Just would like to know that before I am installing it.

Thanks and Cheers
CmdrLaForge

I only vote negative to prove the fact that the ratings are meaningless. What does negative mean?

Does it mean I don't like apple, does it mean I don't like updates, does it mean I don't like to reboot my machine after an update, does it mean it hosed my machine after installing?

So I pretty much vote negative on every article. Unless of course most folks are voting negative, then I will vote positive. It is pretty much meaningless so I would never pay any attention to the positive/negative ratings.

 

[griz]

Fedex troubles

Fedex works ok ... about bestbuy and compusa ... is apple taking marketing tactics up? ... ... Apple must be working on that...

Every system in our office running Safari has trouble with the layout of Fedex.com after the update.
IE looks fine and systems pre-update look fine in IE or Safari.
Anyone know what is going on here??

 

[27ray]

Danger will robinson...

After update:
Safari crashes and I cannot launch most of apps, no ICal, DiskUtility, Iphoto, IMovie, SoftwareUpdate, not even message that app has crashed. It just makes few jumps in the Dock and that's about it. Launching of any app takes forever.
Closing an app takes forever as well, if it closes at all.

I installed update on 10.3.5. I did repair permissions with panther cache cleaner.

Now I have to go for clean install I guess. Any sugestions?

Thanks

Miro
www.fotoserver.sk

I had exactly the same problem on both a rev A DP 1.8 amd a Sp 1.25 G4

I did an archive install and got things working again. I am wonderng if this is related to the font issue that alot of apple aps were having. i have moved a few fonts in my systems. hummmm.

-ray

 

[wormed]

I suppose the security flaw in File Vault is not fixable with 10.3?

 

[AmigoMac]

Every system in our office running Safari has trouble with the layout of Fedex.com after the update.
IE looks fine and systems pre-update look fine in IE or Safari.
Anyone know what is going on here??

you're right, fedex became crazy... but scrolling down has helped, still is really terrible that kind of rendering...

 

[psingh01]

The biggest problem I noticed is that my ftp server died! I should have waited because that is a critical app for me now I have to wait until Apple fixes it!!! Is there a way to do a system restore like in XP??