Apple, AT&T, and the dangerous future of smartphone viruses

Apple says it will patch the iPhone security flaw that was revealed July 30 at the Black Hat Internet security conference in Las Vegas. TUAW, a popular Apple rumor source, noted that all carriers are likely watching this development closely. That's good news. Google told BusinessWeek it has already patched the hole, and Microsoft is investigating.

What's not such good news is that it took massive amounts of media coverage to prod the phone makers into action. Because smartphone security and reliability is a very different game than PC security and reliability.