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The McAfee DAT update 5958 was issued on April 21, 2010, and created quite a situation. Heretofore, I will remember what transpired as “the events of April 21.”

I think that someday, examining what happened would make an interesting case study in crisis management. A lot of the incident unfolded on the Internet — and on Twitter, specifically. The company even became a trending topic, as seen in this screenshot I took after lunchtime (I think around 2 PM Eastern time, although I only saved later):

The 5958 DAT was available on McAfee’s publicly-accessible HTTP and FTP download repositories until at least 1 PM Eastern, when I was checking on them.

The Windows and Mac anti-malware products from McAfee share DAT updates, which provide virus definitions. I was able to update VirusScan for Mac OS X to 5958 with no ill effects in the midst of the developing situation. (The problem only appears to have affected Windows XP systems.) Later, when McAfee had posted a newer update as version 5959, I was also able to download that.

Based on reports I saw on Twitter and the Web, McAfee was overwhelmed by this — particularly its call center and its Web-based customer forums. This allowed a lot of speculation and misinformation — along with humor — to break out.

I’ve saved this undoctored screen shot for a while. I figure I’ll end with it, even though it’s unrelated to the events of April 21.

MacNN notes Apple’s CEO in Decade of Mac OS upgrades likely (it’s easier to link to MacNN than the original NYT article), commenting that Mac OS X Leopard will form the basis for the next ten years of operating systems upgrade. I remember Mac OS X being announced — not sure if this was at a WWDC or Macworld keynote — as “the next twenty years” of Apple operating systems. We’re basically ten years out from the NeXT acquisition of Apple acquisition of NeXT.

He says “I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” wherein we see again that Apple considers the Intel version of Mac OS X to be a major release of Mac OS X. That’s fine, I’m sure it took a lot of effort and it has definitely had an impact. Otherwise, accounting for the 910 days between the debuts of Leopard and Tiger would mean that Apple isn’t sticking to a 12- to 18-month release schedule.

I think, by this logic, it’s entirely reasonable for Microsoft to consider Windows XP SP2, XP 64-bit, XP Tablet Edition, XP Media Center Edition, and all of Windows Vista to be major releases. It’s only fair. Sure, it took them a long time to release an upgrade to the original Windows XP, but it’s not like they’ve sat idle without releasing anything new at all between 2002 and 2007.

Inside CNET Labs: Windows virtual machine performance on the Mac examines how well Apple Boot Camp (i.e. “running Windows”), VMWare Fusion 1.0, Parallels Desktop 3.0, and CrossOver Office compare against running Microsoft Windows. Oh, and they also throw in a performance comparison of the same software running on Mac OS X, if it can.

Performance comparisons are important, even if this one is perhaps a little frivolous — and explained in a somewhat silly fashion. I feel like I’d be more likely to trust a different source, such as Ars Technica or XLR8YourMac.com or BareFeats.com after reading this article, despite its utility.

This is partly because I wonder what they really tested. One question I have for CNET’s “Crave: The gadget blog” people: how did they get an eight-core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro? Last I checked, Apple only sells the eight-core model in a 3.0 GHz version. The 2.0, 2.66, and lower-end 3.0 GHz systems all have a maximum of four cores (all using dual-core Xeon CPUs).

[Via Daring Fireball.]

Update: Curtis, ever-vigilant (but without a URL known to me, so he gets no link), points out via IM that CNET apparently tricked out their Mac Pro with quad core CPUs back in November 2006. We call them jerks. What do you say?

Thanks to Nadyne for point out the Wall Street Journal’s PowerPoint Turns 20, As Its Creators Ponder A Dark Side to Success. It was great to see Dennis’ name in print! (One drawback of not going to WWDC last week was that I missed catching up with him.)

If you don’t get enough Microsoft Entourage information from the usual sources, I count that as a personal failing on my part. Just kidding. But still … you’ll probably want to check out Amir's Exchange Clients Blog. There, Amir “is focussed [sic] on Entourage only in the role of being a client to Exchange Server and Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) Feature.”

[Via Richard.]