New and Noteworthy: Ars: Leopard not ready for April--'Barely beta, not final or Gold Master'; Symantec "Windows trumps

Ars: Leopard not ready for April--'Barely beta, not final or Gold Master' Ars Technica points to several signs that Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) wil not be shipping in the next several weeks. "Developers have not even entered into the constant seeding period. 'We still have the same seed we got 2 weeks ago,' we are told. 'I'd say it's barely beta, not Final or Gold Master.' Is it possible that Apple is keeping some of its key developers in the dark by holding back a surprise, nearly-perfect build? Sure. Anything is possible. But seems like just about the worst idea ever if the company wants anyone's software to work when Leopard comes out. This is not super-insider information either, say our sources. 'Anybody who has really worked with a Tiger or Panther seed will know the same stuff.'" More.

Symantec "Windows trumps Mac OS X security-wise" A Symantec report based on two questionable criteria: number of patches and turnaround time on patches, claims that Windows Vista has exhibited itself as more secure than Mac OS X in the past few months. "Praise for Microsoft's patch development was based on evidence that it took an average of 21 days to develop each patch, based a sample set of 39 vulnerabilities. While better than Sun, HP, Red Hat or Apple, it still represented a slow-down over the first six months of the year, in which it was patching vulnerabilities in an average of 13 days from notification. Apple took an average of 66 days to patch vulnerabilities. This metric was based on a sample set of 43 vulnerabilities, of which only one was considered to be of 'high severity'. Of Microsoft's sample, five were tagged 'high severity'. Again, Apple's turn-around slowed in the second half of the year, as it had been patching vulnerabilities in an average of 37 days between January and June 2006." More.

Media Reactions to Apple TV Playfuls has a roundup of early Apple TV reviews, stating "Even if opinions are so far quite antithetic, one thing is clear: technically, Apple TV has all the chances to become for video what iPod became for music. The only problem that Apple apparently needs to fix is that of video content." More.

Previously on MacFixIt:

• Mac OS X 10.4.9 (#7): System volume much louder; Persistent booting into Windows; more
• iTunes 7.1.1 (#3): Problems installing: Make sure iTunes is in root /Applications directory; Problems with AirPort Express streaming
• Mini-tutorial: Fixes for AirPort Express streaming issues -- Drops, skips and more
• Mini-tutorial: System will not startup from correct volume or partition: Fix

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