14 DAY TRIAL // Apple this month gave iTunes some new abilities involving podcast browsing and playback, as well as general tweaks and enhancements. Following the release of iTunes 11.2, Apple saw it necessary to increment the app a couple more times to address newly emerged flaws. The latest such update is iTunes 11.2.2.
Rolled out a few hours ago for Mac OS X and Windows platforms, iTunes 11.2.2 (also listed as iTunes 11.2.2 build 3) reportedly “Fixes a problem where certain podcast episodes may download unexpectedly after upgrading and includes several stability improvements.”
Podcasts has been a handful not just for Apple but for end users too, especially on iOS devices where no one seems to be satisfied with the company’s thinking. The Mac maker continues to retouch iTunes, when it should actually be focusing on Podcasts for iOS (or at least focus on Podcasts in addition to iTunes).
For those who didn’t update to iTunes 11.2 when it came out, Apple has added the ability to quickly find episodes you haven’t listened to in the new Unplayed tab. A Feed tab lets users browse episodes that are available to download or stream, and everyone can now save podcasts for offline listening.
Episodes can now be automatically deleted after you play them, and there is a bunch of security fixes included as well. Affecting Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, and XP SP3 or later, a Set-Cookie HTTP flaw has been addressed, preventing an attacker in a privileged network position from obtaining iTunes credentials.
The advisory, posted on May 15, explains that “Set-Cookie HTTP headers would be processed even if the connection closed before the header line was complete. An attacker could strip security settings from the cookie by forcing the connection to close before the security settings were sent, and then obtain the value of the unprotected cookie. This issue was addressed by ignoring incomplete HTTP header lines.”
Later, when iTunes 11.2.1 was rolled out with new podcasts fixes and other tweaks, Apple squashed yet another flaw. This time, OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) was the target.
“A local user can compromise other local user accounts,” reads the summary. “Upon each reboot, the permissions for the /Users and /Users/Shared directories would be set to world-writable, allowing modification of these directories. This issue was addressed with improved permission handling.” As usual, readers can grab the latest iTunes updates from the links below.