Settling all doubts about Apple's lackadaisical approach to security, the company released massive security updates on Thursday, to patch 55 bugs in Mac OS X and Java, including one for the Safari RSS vulnerability. Nearly 32 bugs were in the initially non-Apple designed open-source apparatus or software.

As per the support document by Apple, Security Update 2009-001 deals with vulnerabilities that comprise "multiple vulnerabilities" in fetchmail and likely arbitrary code implementation in particular situations involving Apple Pixlet Video, ClamAV, CarbonCore, CoreText, Safari RSS, SMB, X11, perl, and python.

While 48 security vulnerabilities were patched in Apple's operating system and its components; four were patched in the company's execution of Java software from Sun Microsystems; two non-security flaws resulting from faulty code in Mac OS X 10.5.6; and one "proactive security measure" fix.

The announced updates by Apple are the largest by the company after March 2008 updates to fix 90 bugs. The Thursday count, which is more than two times the 21-fix updates released in December, is also a much higher tally than last year's other big security updates, including the October 40-bug release.

Users can either manually download the Mac OS X and Java updates from Apple's support site or install them via Mac OS X's built-in patch service; while the upgraded Safari 3.2.2 can be downloaded from Apple's Safari site.