The Need for Recognition and iPhone

Roughlydrafted has a great piece on the iPhone and the final wave of hater reviews despite the complete lack of information on their part. One really interesting section discusses the idea of Safari on Windows and how that relates to the iPhone:

Apple Hacks the Hackers.
Mehta also noted, “There’s bugs in Safari for Windows. There’s speculation that these vulnerabilities will also affect the iPhone. And there’s a good chance that we’ll see vulnerabilities that affect the mainstream version of OS X affect the iPhone. That, to some degree, offsets the fact that it’s a closed development platform. It gives people with malicious intent something to look at and work off of.”

Of course, the bugs reported in Safari for Windows are primarily connected to the beta support libraries Apple ported from Mac OS X, not Safari itself, and so are not really related to Safari on the Mac, or Safari on the iPhone.

Still, if there were problems in Safari, it would be a good idea for Apple to throw it out there and have black hat hackers try their best on it before actually shipping the iPhone.

Surprise! You’ve been hacked, hackers! By trying to beat up Safari on Windows, you’ve helped Apple harden Safari in general, which is good for the Mac, but also good for the iPhone. Apple wouldn’t want your attacks on Safari to be linked to the iPhone in its first days of ultra hyped media coverage, so thanks for jumping the gun!

Tip of the hat to the RD reader who came up with that creative thought. I’m sure that could have been part of the plan but relying on the vast universe of Windows Nerds to reveal the worst bugs in your software is a really risky way for Apple to avoid future problems.