Microsoft on Monday released Exchange 2019, the newest version of its venerable email server. But with Windows Server 2019 still in software purgatory, customers were unable to deploy or even test the on-premises, perpetual-license software.

"We're pleased to announce the final build of Exchange Server 2019 is now available and can be downloaded from the Volume Licensing Service Center," Microsoft announced in a blog post.

With hundreds of digital businesses launching each year, the demand for certified IT professionals to implement IT infrastructure and security systems is steadily increasing. As such, IT is a stable field with plenty of room for career advancement. However, there are dozens of IT certifications to choose from, many of which cater to vendor-specific technologies.

Cisco is one such vendor whose technologies are used in IT solutions all around the world; you can prepare for some of Cisco'-™s most popular certification exams with this $39 bundle.

We've talked about how Google is playing its own game with its software-centric approach to the Pixel program, but one factor that's all too easy to overlook is the way that same mindset is now spreading from the flagship level to other parts of the Android phone spectrum.

Allow me to set the stage: With its Pixel phones, as we've seen now with three different generations of the device, Google is embracing the reality everyone else is ignoring and focusing primarily on the importance of software in the phone-using experience. Sure, each new set of Pixel products has the usual set of hardware updates and internal improvements, but the true selling points are less about megapixels or bezels and more about how the phone's bits and bytes push the experience forward in genuinely useful ways.

Telemarketing and scam calls are spreading to your wireless phone. Everyone thinks they are a pain in the neck, but still they are continuing to grow. I'-™m sure you have noticed these calls have spread from your home or office phone to your cell phone. In fact, by next year, First Orion says it is expected that nearly half of all calls on our wireless phones will be from telemarketers or scammers. Let'-™s take a closer look at what'-™s happening. Is there any way we can protect ourselves?

Telemarketers have been bugging us on our home and office phones for decades. Wireless was a welcome escape. Those days are coming to an end. Telemarketers are now targeting the wireless world. That means we are getting an increasing number of these waste-of-time calls or even threats on our smartphones.

Apple is in the enterprise, and there'-™s ample proof" at Jamf's annual" JNUC" event, the world'-™s largest gathering of Apple administrators where CIOs of some of the world'-™s biggest businesses are gathered to discuss Mac and iOS in the enterprise.

Apple is now big in business

Jamf CEO Dean Hager told me in an interview:

The demand for blockchain engineers or software developers has continued to skyrocket over the past year and salaries for those positions are growing in lockstep.

The median" salary for a blockchain developer is now $127,000, with experienced individuals commanding upwards of $172,000 when they move to new organizations, according to Janco Associates, a management consulting firm that conducts regular salary surveys.

"ERP and Blockchain jobs are in great demand. Individuals can look forward to salaries continuing to increase," Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis said via email.

Sysadmin is tapped to take over the lead on patching this company's Linux systems, but something seems to be missing, reports a pilot fish on the scene.

"There was existing documentation for the patching process," fish says. "But according to the other sysadmin, that documentation never worked.

"And the web server that hosts the local Linux repository doesn't seem to work either. It responds to a ping, but when my colleague used a port scanner, he found that none of the needed ports -- for http, https and NFS -- were open.

"Then he discovered there was no directory for repository data where it should be, and the software to handle HTTP and NFS wasn't even installed.

Almost lost in the noise about Microsoft yanking Windows 10's latest upgrade from distribution was the Redmond, Wash. company's decision to do the same thing with the newest Windows Server editions.

Both Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 1809 remained in limbo as of Monday.

"We have temporarily removed all media for Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server, version 1809," the company said in an Oct. 12 update to a blog post. "If you have already downloaded media, please don't install it and wait until more information is available to proceed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Whether you'-™re just getting your small business off the ground or growing an already successful venture, onboarding and maintaining your employees'-™ tech gadgets are important steps. Unfortunately, IT can be expensive '-” and out of the question for many small businesses. Even if you can afford to purchase reliable Apple devices for your growing staff, it can be hard to find the time to keep them updated without a specialist. That'-™s where" Jamf Now" comes into play: it'-™s a cloud-based solution that delivers Apple management and security with just a few minutes of setup.

Up to 1,500 beta testers may have had files deleted by a bug in Windows 10, all without triggering an examination by Microsoft, according to data from the company.

The bug, which erased user files in the Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos folders, forced Microsoft to take the unprecedented move of pulling the Windows 10 1809 feature upgrade from public distribution. Four days after announcing 1809's release, Microsoft barred access to the upgrade via Windows Update, told those who had installed it to stay off their PCs and warned users who had downloaded but not installed it to trash the disk image.

Apple'-™s iPhone has become pervasive in the enterprise, but it'-™s important to note that what really turned the company'-™s business computing fortunes around wasn'-™t the smartphone, but its bigger brother '-" the iPad.

The iPad sparked the IT revolution

Apple'-™s iPhone transformed the industry, but it is important to remember that when the company shipped the first iPad in April 2010, iPhones weren'-™t as powerful as they are today.

That year'-™s model was the iPhone 4, information about it was leaked when a prototype was left in a California bar and the release was marred by complaints about phone reception, "antennagate."

This IT pilot fish has been supporting a customer remotely through a VPN that's usually pretty solid -- but definitely not always.

"Every now and then it disconnected me randomly," says fish. "Then it continued disconnecting me repeatedly every 30 to 60 seconds.

"I went through the usual litany of rebooting, trying a different computer, trying a different network, etc. Every time I got the help desk involved, they pulled a bunch of different logs that basically just said 'disconnected' without any cause given.

"After several rounds of changes that miraculously fixed it, then suddenly stopped working again, the issue got escalated to a high-enough tier that an answer was forthcoming.

Google's Chrome OS platform sure isn't what it used to be.

The software that started out as a strictly web-centric entity '-” with everything revolving around the Chrome browser and apps that could operate inside it '-” is now one of modern computing's most versatile operating systems. Contemporary Chromebooks still run all the standard web-based stuff, of course, but they're also capable of connecting to Google's entire Play Store and running almost any Android app imaginable. And if that isn't enough, many models have recently gained the ability to run Linux apps as well.

As law enforcement continues to battle for access to mobile devices, police are being advised to not even look at a suspect's phone. The idea is that a phone that authenticates via facial recognition could fail to unlock for the officer repeatedly and then default to password/PIN.

This advice, contained in a series of vendor slides accessed by Motherboard, refers to iPhone's security lockout, which kicks in after five failed biometric authentication attempts. On the one hand, this could be an issue with FaceID. Unlike finger scans, it's hard to determine when one facial-recognition ends and a second begins. If someone looks at the phone and looks away and looks again, does that constitute two attempts? What if the person just looks at the phone for a relatively long time? Will the phone eventually conclude this should constitute more than one failed authentication attempt?

Progressive web apps just got real.

Though progressive web apps, or PWAs, have been around for about three years '-” an initiative mostly driven by Google '-” they got real this week when Google released Chrome 70.

The new version of Google'-™s web browser comes with a robust roster of new features. But the biggest news is new support for PWAs that work with desktop Windows. (Mac and Linux support should appear in Chrome 72.)