Android vs iPhone OS patching

I just finished reading the changelog for iPhone OS 3.0 on the Apple support-pages, and after reading the Google Android changelog from my recent Magic-update, Apple does not impress me that much anymore.

iPhone OS 3.0 (rls. june'09) had 38(!) vulnerabilities, many of them quite critical, whilst Android had a grand total of 2 vulnerabilities (critical announced ones that I can find online), which were even spread across 2 update-intervals 3 months apart...

1 of the vulnerabilities in Android involved applications having CAMERA-privileges without the user explicitly allowing it, and the other one involved maliciously crafted sms-messages that could reboot the device.

Most of the 38 counted vulnerabilities on the iPhone were critical. Involving post-actions ranging from a device-reset, to arbitrary code execution. What made me re-act was where in the system the bugs resided, which was just about everywhere!

The following sub-systems on iPhone OS 3.0 had vulnerabilities announced on the changelog: CoreGraphics, WebKit, ImageIO, IC for Unicode, IPSec, libxml, Mail, MPEG-4 Codec, Profile, Safari, Telephony, Exchange.

I'm really, REALLY glad I chose a device running an independantly developed open platform :) instead of a closed-source license-hog of a proprietary mobile overkill-system :P

Link:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3639

iDon't - iLOL!

Brilliant anti-iPhone campaign from Verizon :P

iPhone vs Google Voice

From what I gather about this case, various people were protesting against Apple Inc. for dismissing Google Voice for the iPhone. But the thing is, Apple is still studying the app using their thoroughly developed app approval-routine.

What's holding the app back for the iPhone, is telecommunication giant AT&T. Because, in the U.S., iPhone was not offered by any carrier except AT&T. Sending text messages, listening to voicemail, calling, etc. can ALL be done through Google Voice, bypassing the normal GSM telenetwork infrastructure, and instead, sending the data as TCP datastreams over Internet connections. So.., AT&T is *NOT* happy about ISVs developing software that unifies all their own lines of services in one package, utilizing free-flow data-connections to transmit, instead of their own service-dependant charged mobile carrier lines.

BUT, Apple has released some of it's notations about the Google Voice app for the iPhone, saying that it's a matter of user interface design principals and technical functions that differ from that of the standard iPhone development. But if it's uniformity they want, why can't they also abide to other operating system UI-guidelines when they port their own software? This is one of the main reasons why I don't use Apple software on my own computers. Unless.., I buy a Mac.

Link to article @ www.latimes.com