macOS Monterey Is The New Operating System For Apple Desktops

Last year, Apple announced a pretty major update for its macOS in the form of Big Sur. This year, the company announced the next macOS, called Monterey, during its WWDC event.

All in all, macOS Monterey is probably not as massive as the Big Sur that came before it. That being said, it’s still the culmination of the many other improvements announced on other fronts during WWDC. One example is Universal Control, which takes the company’s Continuity feature to the next level. By extension, the Mac running this new OS also acts almost like the control centre for all your Apple devices.

While Universal control is the biggest improvement that macOS sees with the introduction of Monterey, it’s not the only one. Other improvements include the FaceTime improvements, including SharePlay, as well as the Quick Notes we saw with the iPadOS 15.

And then there’s Shortcuts, which is what Apple calls the start of automation on Mac. There will be a number of prebuilt ones, but you are free to make your own. These can allow you to open multiple apps, and even play music, with a single click.

As before, macOS Monterey is available today in developer beta. The public beta will come in July, and the full release sometime by the end of the year.

Apple Unhappy With Malware Being Widespread On macOS

It’s been awhile since macOS stopped being the safe haven from malware the way it once was. And in the latest development in the Epic vs Apple legal battle, this was being used as the argument as to why iOS should not allow for third=party app stores.

Apple’s senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi claimed that the company finds the level of malware on the macOS unacceptable. He also goes on to say that iOS is safer because of its walled garden ecosystem.

As Federighi explains, macOS users “inherently download less software”. And this makes them “subject to a way less economically motivated attacker base”. He says that while things are worse on Mac than on iOS, the mobile platform will end up being a lot worse if it adopted Mac’s accessibility.

Federighi emphasised further that “even infants are able to operate an iOS device and be safe in doing so”. But for macOS, he says it can still be safe, but requires a lot of caution on the user’s part.

On one hand, it’s easy to see this as a form of exaggeration. After all, the macOS’ pool of malware still isn’t comparable to what Windows users have to deal with. But it’s rare to see Apple of all companies taking this sort of tone with its own platform.

Apple Rolls Out Update To Address WebKit Security Issue On iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS

Apple has rolled out a set of updates that are meant to address the security issue within WebKit which is the web browser engine that the company uses in its Safari web browser. Interesting enough, the issue seems to be affecting multiple Apple products at once.

The exact nature of the security issue which is labelled as the CVE-2021-1844 was not revealed by Apple although it has been described as a memory corruption issue that could provide space for a malicious website to run unauthorised codes. Its discovery was credited to Clément Lecigne from Google’s Threat Analysis Group and Alison Huffman of the Microsoft Browser Vulnerability Research team.

For iPhone and iPod Touch, the patch comes in the form of iOS 14.4.1 and similarly, iPad users can also obtain it via iPadOS 14.4.1. On another hand, the fix is being delivered to Apple Watch Series 3 and above through watchOS 7.3.2.

Mac users should keep a look for macOS Big Sur 11.2.3 for the security fix but if they are using an older version of the operating system such as Catalina and Mojave, the update is delivered directly to the Safari web browser. Once the update is applied, the build number of the Safari 14.0.3 on their Catalina machine will be refreshed to 15610.4.3.1.7 while those on Mojave will see build 14610.4.3.1.7.