Apple Finally Updates Third-Generation Apple TV

Apple hasn't forgotten about its old Apple TV media player users. The Cupertino-based company this week released an update, albeit with no significant changes, for the third-generation Apple TV device.

The Cupertino-based company released an update that technically is still numbered as iOS 7.2.1. It is not accompanied by a changelog, let alone an announcement, which suggests that it probably doesn't bring any new feature with it and aims for performance improvements. However, Apple on its support website does note that the update addresses some security bugs - though how many of them are exactly new is currently unknown. We are listing all the significant changes below.

The security patches include fixing a vulnerability that allowed a compromised Wi-Fi network to decode the networks an Apple TV had previously accessed. It also patches a bug in CloudKit that allowed a malicious app to access the iCloud user record of a previously signed in user. A bug in CFPreferences that allowed a malicious app to read other apps' managed preference has also been fixed.

Other vulnerabilities that have been squashed include holes in code signing, CoreMedia Playback, CoreText, DiskImages, FontParser, ImageIO, IOKit, IOHIDFamily, Libc, Libinfo, libpthread, libxml2, libxslt, location framework, office viewer, QL Office, WebKit and kernel among other components.

Users with the third-generation Apple TV were quite disappointed when Apple announced that their device won't support tvOS, the new operating system for the Apple TV that was introduced alongside the fourth-generation Apple TV. The iPhone maker has since largely neglected users of its previous generation Apple TV devices while aggressively rolling out new features and improvements for the latest generation.