If you take those published reports at face value, the vaunted security of the Mac OS is just an illusion. During the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest this past week, someone easily exploited a supposedly unknown vulnerability in Apple’s Safari on a MacBook Air within a mere two minutes, earning a ten thousand dollar paycheck for his efforts.

Now, because of a nondisclosure agreement, we don’t know just what vulnerability was present in Safari that was handled so easily, but it sounds to me like a put up job. If you believe the claim, the security flaw was so blatant that it was easily discovered, and that’s extremely unlikely.

Consider that, on the first day of the contest, nobody could attack any of the test computers, running the Mac OS, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux, remotely. Thus the original $20,000 prize went unclaimed. On day number two, the terms were relaxed, so the participants could actually work directly on the computers to locate and exploit possible vulnerabilities.

Now that severely lessens the seriousness of the flaws, because it means that you are granted direct access to the computer you’re going to infect. That severely lessens the danger. No direct access, no exploit, at least under the terms of this contest.

Although he’s not talking, I really doubt that security researcher Charlie Miller had a sudden flash of inspiration from upon high to access a hostile site in Safari and win his ten grand. No way could that possibly happen in a mere two minutes except by a divine or paranormal event. Instead, it’s clear to me that he had previously investigated possible flaws in Mac OS X and had discovered a security leak he could exploit on the spot when the time arrived.

So call it a good sense of timing.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

I suppose we ought to pity those who have been around the tech universe for a long, long time, such as yours truly. I mean, some of the things we accepted as state-of-the-art in those days, such as 800K floppy disks and 100MB hard drives, seem downright primitive today. Please don’t get me started about using tape drive for basic data storage, as opposed to backups.

And didn’t Bill Gates once say you’d never need more than 640K of RAM on your PC? In those days, when I got my first Mac with 8MB RAM, I thought I was in memory heaven. That was until System 7 came along, and I realized the system could take up to half that amount, and leave me a lot less for running real applications.

Well, certainly you don’t to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear. After all, personal computing has come an awful long way since then, and just having Macs running real Unix under the guise of Mac OS X has provided a huge dose of stability and security.

So I suppose I wasn’t surprised to get a comment from a reader about whether it makes sense to bring back Classic Mac OS features. The reader gave an emphatic no, as if anything that’s old is necessarily bad and all good ideas must be new.

Now I can understand that point of view, as someone who always lusts after the latest and greatest, assuming I can afford it of course. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that some really useful ideas haven’t been tossed away in the quest for something with a more recent creation date.

Take the Location Manager that I mentioned in yesterday’s commentary. Yes, I think that, in some respects, it was better in Mac OS 9, because it was more full-featured. Today it may be somewhat more seamless, but it’s also relatively simple-minded.

When I referred to improvements in the Open/Save dialogs, I mentioned Default Folder X, which is actually just giving you many features that it had in its Classic version, plus some more wrinkles to take advantage of the latest Leopard eye-candy, such as QuickLook. Indeed, when you look at this utility and Boomerang, that venerable dialog box enhancer of the 1980s and 1990s, you’ll see useful and time-saving features that today’s Apple has yet to grok.

That is really unfortunate, because there’s so much Apple can do to enhance your user experience without inventing anything really innovative. Just take what has gone before, give it a fresh coat of paint and see how it flies.

Another lost feature is the extensible Apple menu. Why must you depend on a third-party system enhancement such as Fruit Menu to allow you to add the items you want? Again, this is a throwback to a previous-generation of the Mac OS, yet it worked just fine. Why did Apple have to abandon it? It’s not as if they can’t write the code in a reasonably quick fashion, or that it can’t be done natively in Mac OS X. I suspect if they put a pair of software engineers to the task, they’d come up with a useful, fully functional and appropriately flashy Apple menu alternative in a matter of days.

Of course there’s a problem with some of the system enhancements that restore Classic Mac features, or perform other miracles in the Mac OS X environment. If Apple isn’t providing official system hooks to add those features, they have to do a little magic — sometimes a little mischief — and do a few tricks that aren’t really supported. As a result, whenever Apple releases a major system upgrade, the utilities become incompatible. Worst, if they’re still installed, they might seriously impair the stability of the new system, so you have to remember which ones you installed and make sure they’re removed before upgrading.

Even then, you may hold off reinstalling your system toys until you know for certain they will operate without difficulty in Apple’s new Mac OS X release. That, of course, is by no means certain, so you have to check the publisher of the utility, or your favorite (and we hope reliable) Mac troubleshooting site for a confirmation that it’s safe to restore.

Naturally, I don’t want to put independent developers out of business. While some do it as a hobby, others develop software to earn their way through college, or even feed their families. With such a difficult economy, you don’t want them to lose their sources of income.

At the same time, Apple needs to pay heed to what people use to dress up their Macs, and see if making them core system functions is a better idea. Sometimes it might be, sometimes not. But certainly if the solution comes from Apple and it’s native to the operating system, there’s a better chance it’ll be compatible. When Apple does an update, they’ll update all or most of the features as needed.

In the end, I do not for a moment believe you have to abandon everything that was left behind in the good old days. Not everything is obsolete. Maybe, as I said, a shave and a haircut is all they need to prove once and for all that everything old is new again.

You and I both know that the next great version of Mac OS X probably isn’t going to arrive until some time in 2009, if then. However, that doesn’t mean it’s too early to say something now. You see, with Leopard settling down for most of you, I rather suspect any updates from here on will be largely to fix those remaining defects rather than add new features.

Certainly, with the 10.5.2 release, they fixed the Stacks feature to incorporate most of the previous elements of handling folders in the Dock. That way you can make your own decisions how best to deal with the look and the feel. You can also turn off menu bar transparency (I’ve left it on), so some of your treasured desktop backgrounds can appear without making the menu bar invisible.

The Dock’s 3D look? All right, you have me there, but after all, if it upsets you so much, you can pin it to the left or right ends of your display or use a third party utility, such as TinkerTool, to turn it back to 2D. That ought to be sufficient to handle the most significant complaints.

Over at One Infinite Loop, you can bet Apple is busy working on Leopard’s successor. In fact, they probably began to draft the new system release long before Leopard was released last October, and they very likely have a basic idea what features might be incorporated.

One of the biggest problems Apple will face now is that a few frills among another 200 or 300 changes will not be sufficient to overcome resistance to yet another upgrade, even if it’s 18 or 24 months after Leopard’s debut. Certainly Microsoft has encountered similar difficulties getting companies to upgrade to Office 2007. Yes, there are objections to Vista too, and part of those objections relate to the fact that XP works pretty well for most Windows users. However, Vista also has performance and stability shortcomings, still, even after the SP1 update that was recently released. In fact, Microsoft has set up a free support program encompassing even customers who had the software preloaded on their PCs (in other words OEM versions), because of the rampant difficulties.

Apple’s huge dilemma is that Leopard, for the most part, has garnered a high level of customer satisfaction. More than 80% are extremely pleased with the upgrade, according to a survey published earlier this year. As Apple continues to sell over two million Macs a quarter with Leopard preloaded, you can bet it won’t be long before it holds a majority stake among Mac users.

So what do you do for an encore? Does Apple add more of the same, or do they go back and look at some core problems with previous versions and do something to address them? Now that Classic is history — at least for Leopard and/or Intel-based Mac users — what about restoring more of the lost features?

Well, chief among those might be a full-featured Location Manager. No, not just for storing your basic network and Internet settings as you can now, but something that would encompass an entire range of adjustments, such as the applications you’re using, the specific printers you require and any special system-related configurations you need at a particular place. This feature might use an interface reminiscent of Parental Controls, which allows you to customize the user experience for a family member, in order to monitor what they’re doing and make them safe from Internet predators.

So when you’re on the road, you can choose Hotel, Office, or whatever, and the things you need will be automatically configured. Maybe the system could do some of that for you, by sensing certain network configurations, such as the hardware address of an office router, to help guide you to the proper choice.

For me, this wouldn’t be a serious issue, but as millions of MacBook Airs hit the streets, I can see where there will be a demand for a Location Manager on steroids. I realize there are third-party possibilities, but this is something that is really Apple’s province.

That goes for the Help menus as well. Why, for example, do they use a smaller type face than the rest of the menu bar commands? I see no logical reason for that, but I think Apple needs to go farther to provide the help you need depending on your user level. This takes us to the controversial issue of Active Assistance that I’ve talked about before. It means that, upon installing Mac OS 10.6, or setting up a new Mac on which it’ll be preloaded, you’ll select what you regard as your level of expertise, and the nature of help you are given will be adjusted accordingly. System Preferences will offer you an opportunity to alter that experience level as you discover you’re really a power user, or confront the possibility that you know less than you thought.

The other feature sadly in need of rebuilding is the Open/Save dialog. Take a look at Jon Gotow’s excellent work in Default Folder X and you’ll see what I mean. No, I don’t want to put Jon out of work. He’s a great guy, a family man, and needs to earn a living. Maybe Apple would do well to hire Jon and discover some of his secrets and meld them into a revitalized Open/Save dialog for 10.6.

For starters, just being able to access recent files and having the dialog box rebound to the last opened file would be a great plus. Then Apple can incorporate more Finder-level features, such as the ability to rename a file before you open it.

Again, this list remains preliminary. There are fundamental changes we can talk about that Apple might be considering even now, such as a true 3D-style interface that incorporates the X-axis as well, perhaps to age your files and folders in the Finder.

The possibilities are endless, and your comments are welcomed.

When you see the names Apple and Microsoft, you are probably reminded of a great war between two technology giants, may the better company survive. Of course, in the real world, that’s not really what’s happening. In fact, these two companies have a long, if shaky history of actually working together when it suits their mutual purposes.

Take the ongoing development of Microsoft Office for the Mac. Microsoft’s 200-member Mac Business Unit is regarded as the largest independent developer of Mac software on the planet. Whether you like Office or not, it is an industry standard, and the Mac version is generally regarded as, in most respects anyway, superior to the Windows edition. It’s also a cash cow for Microsoft, delivering an estimated $200 million in profits every single year. So Microsoft keeps it going.

But make no mistake about it. Should the day come when Mac users prefer iWork or another Office alternative, you can bet that Microsoft will drop their Mac Office like a hot potato and redeploy the Mac BU to other departments in the company, or to the unemployment lines.

Now Microsoft is eyeing the arrival of the iPhone with dollar signs in their eyes. First, they made a deal with Apple to license ActiveSync for the iPhone. This means, come the release of iPhone 2.0 firmware in June, that you’ll have full support for a company’s Exchange email. What’s more, they’re busy looking over the iPhone SDK for possible application opportunities — applications you’ll be able to download, for a price of course.

Now doesn’t that put Microsoft’s own mobile initiative at somewhat of a disadvantage? Perhaps, but that’s no the point. You see, Microsoft earns the big bucks from Exchange Server licensing. In that universe, paying ten grand per company and lots more isn’t out of the question. So knowing the iPhone can access corporate email using Microsoft’s software will only encourage wider adoption of the package. So Microsoft’s bottom line is boosted. How much of an effect this might have probably isn’t certain, but as the iPhone spreads into the enterprise in the coming months, you can bet that corporations will seriously consider the Exchange alternative knowing it’s fully compatible.

I only wonder, in passing, why Entourage 2008 apparently doesn’t deliver 100% Exchange support, but I suppose it’s close enough not to concern most users. Or am I wrong? Well, if I am, I know you’ll be happy to correct me.

Another way Apple has really helped Microsoft is with the switch to Intel processors. Sure, that essentially killed development of Virtual PC for the Mac, but the truth is that Parallels acted so quickly in building a credible virtual machine alternative that Microsoft didn’t have time to compete. They don’t spin on a dime.

But no matter. Every sale for Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion means a potential sale for a retail Windows XP or Vista license. No, not 100%. Some of you already have valid Windows licenses, or prefer to run a Linux distribution or a different operating system instead. But certainly a lot of Mac switchers require Windows, if only as a crutch. That’s good news for Microsoft, since it earns far more money from retail licensing than from OEMs, where PC makers pay a mere fraction of the regular Windows pricetag.

So you can see that the greedy part of Microsoft’s leadership — and it’s a huge part — is enjoying the fact that more and more Macs are being sold at the expense of Windows boxes. Another factor: When it comes to something like Office for the Mac, support costs are far less too. That means that a larger portion of the dollars they receive can be used for purposes other than paying support people.

Now when it comes to the renewed browser wars, just how do companies profit from something that’s supposedly free? Well, with Microsoft, by attempting to enforce proprietary standards, they increase sales for their own products. With Apple and Mozilla, they get a little of that pay-per-click money from using a search engine embedded in the browser. Apple restricts the choice to Google and only Google, whereas Firefox gives you Yahoo, Answers and some others. In each case, your use of those search engines and, one hopes, clicking on one of the ads that appear in a search window, helps enrich them even further.

In short, neither Apple nor Mozilla are losing so much as a dime in providing free software. Together, they help enforce compliance with industry standards. As to Microsoft, well, one attempt to stem the erosion of Internet Explorer’s market share is version 8, now in public beta. That application promises improved support for those same Web standards. This means, if there’s widespread adoption of the new version of course, that Web developers won’t have to work so hard developing custom versions of their code to work in MSIE.

Now I don’t have to do a lot to make my sites compatible. But I also have better things to do with my time.

Meantime, so long as Apple can help enrich Microsoft, these two titular rivals will remain fast friends.