<p>The news that Apple has released iOS 7.1 creates an opportunity for Exchange administrators to get ahead of any potential problems in the interaction between the iOS mail app and Exchange ActiveSync (EAS). The rule is simple test the new release before your users upgrade their iPhones and iPads and check that everything works, including the usually problematic areas of calendaring.</p><p>For those who don't remember previous issues, iOS 6 capped a series of problems over several releases with "meeting hijacking." The severity of this problem had an upside in that it forced Apple and Microsoft to sit down and work out how Apple could improve the code in their mail app that calls EAS to synchronize with Exchange while Microsoft worked on server-side improvements to bulletproof EAS against the demands of errant clients. iOS 7 came along with the new iPhone 5s. There haven't been so many problems of issues with this release but it did create a new challenge in providing users with a way around EAS security.</p><p>Microsoft's work on EAS seems to be of value as fewer problems with issues such as bad client transactions causing excessive growth of transaction logs are seen, especially with the latest versions of Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013.</p><p>Apple delivers operating system updates to devices through iTunes in the same way as updates to apps are provided. Users don't think too much about upgrading their devices and Apple boasts an impressive record of the percentage of devices that run the latest operating system when compared to Android. By the end of December 2013, 78% of Apple iOS devices were reported to have upgraded to iOS 7, which is pretty good by any yardstick.</p><p><a href="http://windowsitpro.com/blog/apple-releases-ios-71-exchange-administrators-look-for-activesync-bugs">Keep reading...</a></p>