As Microsoft sprints to the finish line for the General Availability of Windows 8 on October 26, it is updating all of the built-in apps.

For the most part, that process has gone smoothly. But one app—or, more accurately, one intricately related collection of apps—has been giving some users fits.

There are four apps in the Windows Communications package: Mail, People, Messaging, and Calendar. Those four apps are installed (and uninstalled) as a group. That integration is what enables you to use a single linked set of accounts to send email, carry on instant messaging threads, and update multiple calendars, all using an address book (People) whose contents are drawn from multiple services

The most recent update, delivered last week, appears to have broken some of the core features of that collection.

This thread contains a multitude of reports, and I’ve seen confirmation on Twitter and via email from readers. The most common symptom is that AutoComplete in email address fields doesn’t work.

The official answer, from a Microsoft support rep, acknowledges the issue:

Thank you for trying the Mail App update and reporting this issue. We recently became aware of this problem and the approriate people are currently looking into it.

The support post suggests two ways to work around the issue

• Go through the People App and send email to the contact you desire.
• Put People App in Snap mode with Mail App in fill mode and copy/paste the email addresses you want from People into the Compose window.

A more permanent workaround is to uninsall the Mail/Calendar/People/Messaging App suite, reboot your computer and reinstall the latest version (16.4.4391.1005) of the suite directly from the Store (beware that you will lose all your saved drafts and will have to resync all your emails for all accounts with this workaround).

I expect this issue to be resolved by the time Windows 8 is officially available to the public. I’ve asked Microsoft for comment and will let you know when I hear back.

The World’s Most Predictable Tech Pundit, MG Siegler, notes that Microsoft has issued a major update (170 MB in size) to Windows 8. That update is being delivered 69 days after the release of Windows 8 to manufacturing and 17 days before its release to the general public.

Probably not the best sign in the world that Microsoft has to release service packs to the RTM version of Windows 8 before it has even launched. I mean, why declare RTM then? Well one possibility is that you’re working to meet a deadline rather than releasing when a product is fully baked.

Yes, heaven forbid that a major computing company should release an operating system and then release major updates in response to user feedback and telemetry from hardware partners. Wait. What’s that, you say? Why, yes, the golden master of OS X Mountain Lion, version 10.8 was released on July 9, and Apple released a major update, 10.8.1, on August 23, only 45 days later, to address a long list of issues.

And yes, there was another major update, 10.8.2, on September 19. That is 72 days after the operating system was released to manufacturing. That second update is a humongous 665 MB in size. It addresses a serious, widely reported power management issue. It is large enough that one might call it a service pack. Hmmm. What can we conclude from this example?

• If Microsoft delivers a 170MB update to its customers based on more than two months of feedback from enterprise customers and hardware partners, it is a sign of incompetence.
• If Apple delivers more than 700MB of updates in the same period of time based on complaints from its customers, it is awesome.

Welcome to Silicon Valley. PS: The Windows 8 update is available now and will be installed automatically if you have Windows 8 automatic updates turned on.

Oh my, this is fun. A response!

In other words, a month after its release, Apple patched some issues. And yes, this is normal for all software makers, obviously. What Apple did not do is patch the “finished” software prior to its release, which is what Microsoft is doing here.

Sigh. Perhaps we need to go back to “I’m a PC” school.

You see, MG, in PC-land, independent hardware partners build most of the PCs that are sold with a new Windows version on them. So when Windows is “released to manufacturing,” it goes to those OEMs, who get to integrate it with their own hardware designs.

Apple can do this in about 16 days (the gap between gold master and final release in Cupertino). The PC ecosystem takes longer than that.

To put it another way. Apple has developers and retail customers, period. Microsoft has developers, retail customers, enterprise customers, IT pros, consultants, IHVs, and OEM (PC and device) manufacturers.

A more complicated ecosystem, a different set of rules.

So when Windows 8 was released to manufacturing, it went to IT pros, enterprise customers, and OEM partners, who get to test the new OS in the real world. And based on that feedback, the OS developer releases patches.

This is the way big software companies like Microsoft and Apple both work. Beta testing goes only so far. Sooner or later you need feedback from real users. Every Apple customer knows about those first two service updates that fix the bugs that they released to the public. It’s not a big deal.

To summarize: Apple sold expensive hardware to the public and let those customers suffer with bugs until it finally fixed them two months later. Microsoft released its software to a knowledgeable group of professional customers and incorporated their feedback and telemetry into the product before it was released to the general public.

I’m trying to figure out why this is a bad thing.

Alas, ZDNet no longer allows me to link to individual comments. But this one was too good not to share:

Bonus points if you can decode that world-class gibberish.

Source

Dear email marketer: You’re doing it wrong.

Sincerely,

Someone who will never be your customer.

Help me out, people.

Adobe’s Flash Player is widely used, with almost universal support on PCs. But it’s waning in popularity, and with the success of the iPad (a Flash-free environment) some sites are moving away from it.

So I’m curious: What websites do you use today that require Flash? What would you miss if it went away completely?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who are already blocking Flash (using add-ins for Firefox and Chrome or ActiveX Filtering in Internet Explorer). Which Flash-using sites have you whitelisted?

You can leave your comments below or write to me directly using this contact form.

PS: No need to tell me why you think Flash sucks or how much you hate it. I’ve got all the input I need on those topics, thanks!

Remember Peter Gutmann and his intense campaign against DRM in Windows Vista?

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”. This incurs costs in terms of system performance, technical problems and associated support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista, but the entire PC industry. Windows Vista Content Protection looks at the problems involved in trying to retrofit content protection/DRM to the historically open PC architecture.

Funny, but despite Gutmann’s widely reported scaremongering I am not aware of a single incident where content protection in Vista (or its successor, Windows 7) ever shut out a legitimate user.

On the other hand, there’s this, which occurred in July 2012:

Apple said late Thursday that it has resolved a glitch that was causing some apps downloaded from its online store to crash upon launch.

Essentially, the software that is designed to ensure purchased applications are unlocked for the users was instead rendering them unusable.

“We had a temporary issue that began yesterday with a server that generated DRM code for some apps being downloaded,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. Apple said it affected only a small number of users.

Heh. Indeed.

Well, no one can say this particular greedy blogger-bot is trying to hide its true colors:

Note to Bing: This stuff really shouldn’t show up on the first page any set of search results. Or at all, for that matter.

If you have a LinkedIn account, it’s time to change your password.

As my colleague Zack Whittaker at ZDNet reports, roughly 6.5 million user passwords have apparently been downloaded and made publicly available.

Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos says his company’s researchers have confirmed that the list contains actual passwords.

Via its Twitter account, LinkedIn says it is “looking into” the issue.

Let’s put this breach in perspective:

• Only a small percentage of LinkedIn users are affected. The 6.5 million accounts on the list represent a fraction of LinkedIn’s total user base of 150 million.
• The stolen passwords are hashed, which means they have to be decrypted before they can be used. The stronger your password, the longer it will take for that decryption to happen.

So the odds are low that you have been affected by this breach. But as a basic security precaution you should change your LinkedIn password immediately. And if you used those same credentials on other web sites, you should change the password there as well. (Hint: this time choose a unique, strong password for each one.)

To change your password, go to LinkedIn.com and sign in. Click your name in the upper right corner and then click Settings. That will take you to this page:

You can use the Password Change option just below your account picture and email address. Or, if you want to adjust more settings, click Account in the lower right corner to display the options shown above, and then click Change password.

Enter your old password, then enter your new, strong, unique password (and re-enter it to confirm).

You’re done with LinkedIn. But if you’ve used that password with any other account—especially for well-known services like Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook, or for e-commerce sites like Amazon or PayPal—you need to reset those passwords too, or you risk having those other accounts compromised by an enterprising data thief.

And be prepared to change your LinkedIn password again in the near future, after we learn more about what happened here and determine whether any additional credentials have been stolen.

Update: Security researcher Robert Graham confirms the password dump is real. He also adds this fascinating note:

[I]f your password is long enough (like greater than 15 characters) and complex enough, then it’s still probably safe. A 15 character SHA-1 password composed of upper/lower case with symbols and digits is too large for “brute-force” and “rainbow tables”. However, if you’ve composed it of dictionary words, then it could fall to a “mutated dictionary” attack.

He adds:

This is a sorted list of unique passwords. Thus, if 50 people use the password “password“, it’ll only show up once in this list. Which it does. The password of “password” is hashed using SHA-1 to “5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8“, which appears as “000001e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8” in this list.

Given what we know of people’s password habits, it’s reasonable to assume that there are millions of easy-to-guess passwords (password clichés like 123456 and letmein, as well as words found in a standard dictionary), so the actual number of passwords should be less than the number of accounts. It’s unclear whether the passwords on this list are matched up with the email address that comprises the other half of the login credentials.

Microsoft is pushing out an update to its SkyDrive app for Windows and OS X Lion. A blog post by Group Program Manager Mike Torres lists what’s in it. Mostly, the updates app contains bug fixes and performance improvements so that changes sync more quickly between devices, including SkyDrive.com. For Mac users, SkyDrive no longer plants a useless icon in the dock.

One feature will be available only if you are using the upcoming Windows 8 Release Preview, which should be available tomorrow, May 31: “Right from the Photos app in Windows 8,” Torres says, “you can fetch photos stored on your other PCs that have SkyDrive installed – no matter where you are or how many terabytes of photos you have stored on the PC you are accessing.”

And although the current SkyDrive storage limit of 150,000 files might sound like a lot, it’s definitely a showstopper for some users, especially developers. So in the new release the number has been bumped 10 million. If that’s still not enough, please fill me in on how you’re using SkyDrive.

The update will be delivered automatically sometime in the next week. If you can’t wait, you can force the update for Windows by going to the SkyDrive apps page and clicking Get the app. That will install the latest version of the app over the existing version, no uninstall required. To confirm you’ve got the latest bits, right-click the SkyDrive tray icon, click Settings, and look on the About tab, where you should see Version 2012 (Build 16.4.4111.0525).

Mac users might have to wait a few more days. When I checked this morning, the SkyDrive app for Mac was still delivering the old (April 2012) version.

And yes, it’s still a beta.

I’m going on vacation for the next week or so. I’ll be off the grid—literally out of range of most forms of communication.

While I’m away, you can catch up on what I’ve been doing lately, with a 20% discount on the new, significantly expanded edition of Windows 8 Head Start, which covers the Consumer Preview release. The book is available in DRM-free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats, which will work on any Kindle, Nook, iPad, or PC.

You can buy the new edition directly. The normal price is $9.95, but while I’m away you can use this code to get a 20% discount: BottNet20. (It’s OK—this BottNet is perfectly safe to join.)

That purchase gives you all three formats in a convenient single download, with EPUB and MOBI files optimized for different devices and a PDF format that is ideal for reading on a PC or Mac.

Microsoft will have one final beta—a Release Preview—in early June, and I’ll have a free update shortly thereafter to help you make sense of the changes. That update will be available exclusively to buyers of this book.

Questions or comments? Leave them here, but don’t expect an answer for at least a week. See you then!