iTunes 7.5 and QuickTime 7.3 Released

In its usual shot across the proverbial TidBITS bow – or so we egomaniacally believe – Apple released updates for QuickTime and iTunes this afternoon. Details on both updates are sparse, which we have come to expect.

iTunes 7.5 adds the capability to activate an iPhone “wherever service is offered,” which is a reference to this week’s launch of the iPhone in the UK, and subsequent launches in Germany and France. iTunes 7.5 is available for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later (41.1 MB) and Windows XP SP2 and Vista (51.8 MB).

The update vaguely mentions “support for Phase, a new interactive music game” that’s meant for the third-generation iPod nano, the iPod classic, and the fifth-generation iPod. I synced a 5G iPod with iTunes 7.5, and saw no game nor a firmware update appear. I have no idea what “support for” means – perhaps an upcoming release on Tuesday, when Apple usually refreshes the iTunes Store content? Maddening.

Apple also released QuickTime 7.3 for Panther (51.5 MB), Tiger (49.3 MB), Leopard (52.6 MB), and Windows (20.3 MB). The update improves creating iPhone-compatible Web content without an explanation of what precisely was improved, works with iTunes 7.5, updates QuickTime plug-in JavaScript support, and fixes security-related bugs. The bugs included several that could allow “arbitrary code execution,” which is how an attacker
could insert a payload into an attack.

Apple thanks researchers, as usual, but also notes in several cases that researchers were working with one of several projects that pay for zero-day exploits – exploitable flaws that haven’t been patched – to avoid those exploits from being weaponized and used by malicious parties. The details of the security updates are detailed on this security update page.