Apple issued on Tuesday 48 software patches for a suite of applications including Safari for Windows, but probably the most important is the first update for the craved iPhone.

The patches address vulnerabilities in Mac OSX 10.3.9 (Panther), Mac OS 10.4.10 (Tiger) on PowerPC, and the Universal version of Mac OS 10.4.10, as well as the server versions of each of those operating systems.

Apple says all owners of these operating systems should download and apply the patches, because they address some serious security flaws that could allow for the execution of arbitrary code (easily compromising a user’s machine).

By far the most important patch Apple released yesterday is related to the iPhone, the smartphone launched on June 29. The patch will not be available though through the usual channels (Apple’s download center) but through iTunes, with the instructions on the company’s support site saying that "The updates will not appear in your computer's Software Update application, or in the Apple Downloads site When the iPhone is docked, iTunes will present the user with the option to install the update. We recommend applying the update immediately if possible. Selecting "don't install" will present the option the next time you connect your iPhone."

The iPhone bug-fix refers to a serious flaw discovered last week by Independent Security Evaluators, a security research firm from Baltimore founded by Johns Hopkins University professor Avi Rubin, which includes several Ph.D.s in Computer Science and in Math, as well as Masters degrees in computer science and security informatics.

ISE experts have managed to bypass iPhone’s thoroughly tested security modules, gaining control over the phone. Using a connection to a Wi-Fi network the security analysts have lured a user (a New York Times reporter) to access a bogus Web page that contained malware.

Apple also patched a few vulnerabilities in its implementation of Samba, a suite of programs that facilitate file-sharing between OS X and Windows computers, and some Safari for Windows security flaws, bringing the browser to version 3.0.3.