Mobilizing the Enterprise

iOS 4.3.1 was released today.  At Moprise, we couldn’t be happier.  I installed it on my iPad and iPhone and the NTLM fixes worked great. Once again, authentication with Windows Servers from Safari and native applications worked like a charm and our SharePoint for iPad and SharePoint for iPhone applications worked properly again.

Security and authentication are incredibly critical and fragile areas and we’re incredibly impressed with how quickly Apple identified and fixed this problem.   Nothing is perfect but the goal needs to be intelligent triage and quick iteration with fixes.  From the enterprise perspective, Apple nailed both.

Having worked on Microsoft Windows (2.10, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, XP, & Vista) for years, I know first hand the agony of triaging the final 5 fixes from all the possible bugs that should be fixed in a .1 release. One year of testing occurs on an operating system before it is released. During that year, we’ve discovered bugs that were introduced two or more years ago and were never hit before. Once you release, every bug fixed in an update could seriously undo years of development and testing.  Picking the final 5 bugs that are worthy of fixing and risking regressions is a true art and more than anything else, telegraphs a company’s priorities.

Apple is often pegged as a consumer company but even within the limited development budget of a .1 release, they fixed a core enterprise bug around NTLM authentication.

Is Apple gunning for the enterprise? I think so. In a big way.