First 2011 Bugs hit giants Apple, Google & Microsoft

Dates & Times (E.g. New years eve) bugs are companies’ biggest nightmare – They could affect various features of their products and can cause a negative impact on their clients.
The most famous and “chaotic” bug was Y2K which proved to be exaggerated and caused most companies to rush and spend fortune on software patches in-order to prevent possible failures. 01/01/2000 perceived as ש global blackout – Everyone were alert for the worst possible scenario & employees who worked on that new year’s eve shift earned 100%’s of their regular salary. However, despite all the fuss – In practice only a few systems suffered from this bug and everyone could be relieved.

11 years later, at year 2011 – strange bugs strike us once again – mainly on mobile platforms Apple & Android:

• Apple’s iPhone devices fail to set-off non-recurring alarm clocks!
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• Google’s Android devices send SMS messages to the WRONG contacts!
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Additionally other products were affected:

• Microsoft’s Hotmail upgrade caused mass email messages & contacts deletion!
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Remark: The note regarding AVG bugs corresponds the 2011 version of AVG free app which was reported and resolved a few months ago (~ Oct 2010) and not caused by 2011 year bug, therefore removed.
Thanks Karel for the clarification!

On another note, year 2011 corresponds to the Year 100 on Taiwan’s Mingou calendar – thus any program which uses 2-digit year values may be affected. According to various posts it seems that the Taiwan government already handled this issue a few years back and so far no issues were reported on this Y1C problem.
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These issues make me think strongly on testing coverage & quality as a software testing expert.

Will 2011 continue to hold more ‘surprises’ – I sure hope not. Let’s make 2011 the year of Quality – we can all help in reaching that goal! 🙂

What do you think?

Wish you all a bug-less 2011!
Bernard.

Image: Filomena Scalise / FreeDigitalPhotos.net