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If it was simply a matter of keeping people on the latest, 10.4.10 would ship with Perl 7.

I don't think that it's only that it was Perl 6 vs Perl 7. It was the fact that the applications that were running the Perl module also were running as root. That's what took a crash and made it into an exploit.
 
I don't think that it's only that it was Perl 6 vs Perl 7. It was the fact that the applications that were running the Perl module also were running as root. That's what took a crash and made it into an exploit.

Code that you can crash is code you can exploit. Doesn't matter if you are running root or not.

Running apps outside of root would only address a small part of the security problems facing mobile devices like the iPhone (and others). Making sure apps don't run as root only makes sure that exploit can't install itself as a service.

However, in the classical Unix security model, your data is still wide open. The Safari vulnerabilities are all just as horrible on the iPhone now as they would be on an iPhone that ran apps as 'mobile'. Since that same exploit would let me at your contacts data, send them out somewhere, etc. I would just need to exploit your phone multiple times if I want to get at the data again, versus once with the current iPhone security model. Just one time is enough to make your day really, really bad (and many people who have been victims of identity theft can attest to).

In actuality, if you wanted to improve security on single-user devices, you need to sandbox the apps. Make sure that exploiting one app doesn't let you get access to others. /Something/ to make sure that Safari can't directly access private data it doesn't need to.
 
Interesting question.

My guess is somewhere around $90,000,000 - $110,000,000.

Whatever it is, it ain't cheap.
 
50 million. HAHA. 5 years of Vista development are estimated at 5-10 billion. It's more complicated, but not so extremely.



However, there is little doubt that there were at least two discrete (for the most part) OS X development teams if not more.

We know that because 1) Steve Jobs @ WWDC '05 said that OS X had been leading a double life - PPC and Intel versions, therefore separate teams. Now it's also been said that there are two teams developing the "working version" of OS X (which has been the PPC version up until recently). So the majority of the team that worked on 10.2 worked on 10.4, and the majority of the team working on 10.5 are the ones who gave us 10.3. It's how Apple is able to keep the break-neck speeds of releasing OS X every 18 months. So in reality

10.5 is a continuation of the 10.4 code + bug fixes + new stuff. I'd estimate that approximately 60% (just made that number up, but looking at the "new" features, it seems reasonable) of the code is completely recycled, meaning that 40% of the code is re-written from one 10.X release to another.

10.4 was released 4/29/05, if 10.5 is released 10/29/07, that's 30 months (a year late :p)

(I forgot where I was going with it...)

Anyway, Leopard is no where near what MS has spent on developing Vista.
 
Krevnik said:
(which includes full POSIX compliance)

No it doesn't.

Silly to zombify this thread, but even though I was wrong that it included POSIX compliance, it is interesting to note that Leopard is certified as POSIX compliant: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html (under the UNIX section).

So my original point that OS X has been getting better about standardizing the BSD layer still stands intact, even though my original 'facts' were wrong.
 
If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear does it make a sound?

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

How much did it cost to make OS X?

I guarantee you nobody knows the answer to any of these questions accurately. Not even apple.

Fun philosophical discussion though.
 
If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear does it make a sound?

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

How much did it cost to make OS X?

I guarantee you nobody knows the answer to any of these questions accurately. Not even apple.

Fun philosophical discussion though.

And to be perfectly honest, I don't care. How much does it cost to develop a new model car? Same thing.
 
oh that's easy..

One Hundred Billllllliion Dollars... (said in the fashion of Dr. Evil) :D
 
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