Fortune 500 Company Urging Employees Not to Upgrade to iOS 6 Over Exchange Bug

[jontech]

Originally Posted by hkenneth

That is what I am concerning about. My company's admins forced anyone who uses the exchange server to have a password on its phone. Why do I have to set a system-wise password just to access to one of my many mail accounts?

what happens if your phone is stolen?

Private information should be kept private.

[jt415105]

Steve wouldn't have allowed this.

[Geckotek]

Originally Posted by hkenneth

That is what I am concerning about. My company's admins forced anyone who uses the exchange server to have a password on its phone. Why do I have to set a system-wise password just to access to one of my many mail accounts?

Then don't connect your personal device to your company's mail servers.

----------

Originally Posted by nefan65

I may do this for kicks/giggles. I think people would actually thank me...

Second thing I saw this morning was a cancelled meeting. I loudly said "I love cancelled meetings" and got several chuckles from nearby cubes.

[HMI]

Originally Posted by Object-X

If I'm not at the meeting no one will be!

- Steve Jobs

[CWallace]

Originally Posted by jt415105

Steve wouldn't have allowed this.

He allowed it with iOS 4 and iOS5, so why not iOS6?

[deyjavoo]

hopefully, this is a reputable source I'm warning people at work now.

[pure3d2]

I can confirm the multiple meeting invites issue with my work Exchange account.

I was beginning to wonder why my coworkers were sending me 3 requests for the same meeting--they must REALLY want me in those meetings!

[nefan65]

Originally Posted by deyjavoo

hopefully, this is a reputable source i'm warning people at work now.

[1member1]

So far didn't see a problem like you mentioned.

[MH01]

Originally Posted by vkramer

If I could I would urge people never to touch Microsoft Exchange due to the fact that admins have the ability to wipe your phone with one click and no permission.

What a buncha ******** that is...

Nothing to do with Microsoft exchange or iphone.

An Admin can delete you from a corporate network with one click.... for all your devices.

And given they should only allow corporate phones on their network, if not your device, and they need the ability to remote whipe a device if its lost. And of the day it not your device or data, its that of the corporation.

Its not BS, its IT/data security device is not an issue.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by Daveoc64

The problem does indeed appear to exist, so it does not seem far fetched at all.

I'm just saying I'd like to know which large company sent out that memo to all of their employees.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost...5&postcount=73

"We received this memo that was sent out to all employees at a very large company:"

[MH01]

Originally Posted by hkenneth

That is what I am concerning about. My company's admins forced anyone who uses the exchange server to have a password on its phone. Why do I have to set a system-wise password just to access to one of my many mail accounts?

Ask yourself why you need a username and password to login into your work machine. Its data security, and it seems your company cares about it.

[KdParker]

So one person declining a meeting cancels the entire meeting? How can anyone who didn't create the meeting, cancel it?

This sounds like something that exchange should not ever allowed to happen.

----------

Originally Posted by deyjavoo

hopefully, this is a reputable source I'm warning people at work now.

I would test it out first.

[John.B]

Originally Posted by KdParker

So one person declining a meeting cancels the entire meeting? How can anyone who didn't create the meeting, cancel it?

This sounds like something that exchange should not ever allowed to happen.

Exactly. Even if the client has a bug that is sending some sort of a "delete meeting" message, the back-end server should never honor that for a meeting that was created by someone else.

It sounds to me like a classic case of relying too much on validation happening on the client side and not enough on the server side.

[deathsniper]

Originally Posted by batchtaster

You act like enterprise/organizations/IT do that sort of thing on a whim. Any organization has rigid rules about that sort of destruction. If only because the organization's data will be lost from that device, never mind the possible backlash. Where I work, it requires the IT Director to approve.

Yes, technically it can be done. But the mentality that thinks it just happens for no good reason or with no big internal drama - including review by Internal Audit - is the paranoid mentality that thinks that we sit there looking at your emails because we have nothing better to do. While, personally, it would amuse me to wipe out your device, you're not worth the paperwork and meetings and such that would result. You're just not that interesting.

BTW, it's not just Exchange that can do it - any MDM solution can do it as well, such as MobileIron or Casper. Something for you to fret over at night. Oh, and probably your carrier as well.

As the manager of Messaging team here in NA for more than 350k mailboxes, I have to say you nailed it. If my team had free time to worry about wiping peoples devices, I would make them L1/L2 support.

Furthermore, if OWA is deployed properly, the end user can wipe their own devices if they needed to.

FWIW - as much as I despise Blackberry, it has presented itself as a much more stable mobile platform than Apples deployment of Activesync. Multiple iOS's have had issues, so it's no surprise that iOS 6 has them too. What makes matters worse is that BYOT is becoming more prevalent, making my teams job that much harder to deal with.

[Iconoclysm]

Originally Posted by deathsniper

As the manager of Messaging team here in NA for more than 350k mailboxes, I have to say you nailed it. If my team had free time to worry about wiping peoples devices, I would make them L1/L2 support.

Furthermore, if OWA is deployed properly, the end user can wipe their own devices if they needed to.

FWIW - as much as I despise Blackberry, it has presented itself as a much more stable mobile platform than Apples deployment of Activesync. Multiple iOS's have had issues, so it's no surprise that iOS 6 has them too. What makes matters worse is that BYOT is becoming more prevalent, making my teams job that much harder to deal with.

There's a new Microsoft cloud based solution for managing "unmanaged" devices coming along that may make this a bit easier.

[BornAgainApple]

Originally Posted by gmanist1000

Apple needs to crank out 6.0.1 ASAP.

With as many bugs as they're finding, may as well just wait for the 6.1 update

[Gasu E.]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

I would hope a company of these sizes would not be recommending any x.0 software updates.

iOS devices are different from PCs, in that iOS devices are "personal" and corporate IT can't really control them. All IT really can do is try to slow users down. I know--I work in a Fortune 200 company that still has us on Windows XP, but only put a 72 hour hold recommendation on iOS 6.0--because that's about all users would stand for.

[iGrip]

So Apple is not a good choice for enterprise use? How is that news? The more things change, the more they stay the same...

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by vkramer

With iCloud you can choose to wipe your phone, with Exchange some ******* IT guy can wipe your phone without you asking.

What makes you think the IT guy couldn't have the iCloud passwords for a company-owned iPhone?

There is absolutely no reason they couldn't do it with iCloud just the same as with Exchange.

[natbarmore]

Stupid forum timeouts eating my detailed reply. So now you get the short version.

Originally Posted by John.B

And, if it did cancel the meeting for everyone when one person declined, that sounds like an Exchange bug.

In fact, I can confirm that this exact same behavior can be reproduced in an all-MS IT infrastructure. We've started seeing this problem the last couple weeks here, and it seems to stem from interactions between Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2010 [everyone is on Outlook 2010, but we're in the middle of a server migration, so some people are still on the older servers].

I personally confirmed that the person who declined did so on her computer (not on a smartphone), and according to the IT dept, her account is on Exchange 2003, while the other affected parties that I checked on are on Exchange 2010. (I didn't check every single one of over a 100 included people.)

Outlook/iOS/Exchange Server problems also aren't new with iOS 6. We've had a standing corporate policy not to interact with meetings via iOS for as long as it has existed--it just used to only screw up the calendar of the person who did it, not others.

If we can't be rid of Outlook, I wish MS and/or Apple could sort out these problems. Given that, according to MS, Exchange Server can't reliably manage recurring meetings with more than about 13 recurrences, I'm inclined to suspect that it's MS at fault here, but I won't be at all surprised to find out it's Apple or both of them.

(In researching the pre-iOS6 problems, I found more than one person who claimed to have traced the problems to a bug in how Exchange Server 2003 implemented the ActiveSync/Exchange protocol. They said that the bug was still there in 2007, but fixed with Exchange Server 2010.)

[johnnyicesae]

I work for a major company that is privately owned (if you travel or wrecked your car recently you've heard of us) but would probably be a Fortune 500 company if it was public. Long story short they sounded the alarm on this one ahead of the release... Being the rebellious spirit that i am I upgraded anyway. After a 4-day quarantine they discovered that it only occurs (at least on our setup) when an user has a delegate set up. They have since re-enabled access to those of us without a delegate.

[natbarmore]

Originally Posted by blackhand1001

Please point me in the direction of a better alternative. Thats right, there is none. There isn't anything close to the level of control, syncing, and versatility of exchange and active directory. These things work great when implemented properly.

MS's enterprise support, when we were having problems with long-recurring meetings getting corrupted, said that this was a known problem, and recommended that we keep all recurring meetings to 13 or fewer occurrences to avoid the problem. This was a known problem as of Outlook/Exchange 2003, and is still considered a limitation in Outlook/Exchange 2010, according to MS enterprise support. If they can't "implement properly", who can?

Anyway, for syncing and versatility, Google Calendars has Outlook/Exchange beat, without even trying. But, you're right, nowhere near the level of control. I work in healthcare, so the level of control is probably actually needed--but in lots of other instances, I think it's a poor choice (giving up the functionality for security/control, I mean).

[Swift]

Which I'm sure they will, because American business runs on Exchange.

Which is what I think is wrong with American business most times.

[ixodes]

Originally Posted by MacFather

iOS6 - worst update since iPhone OS 3.0

I would really like to disagree, and say it was a great new version of iOS, but it's not.

No way.

I'm really tired of so many issues, and so much negativity from Apple. Yet I will do what I always do, remain loyal.

As a serious enthusiast, I used to truly enjoy being able to speak highly of Apple.

My APPL stock alone has put me in a very strong position. Due to it's astronomical increase in value since I began investing in 1991, all my Apple purchases are now as good as free. With reserves beyond my wildest dreams. I would have never imagined anything like it.