Happy Friday! This week: a deadline that could quietly break email on your Mac, the biggest Patch Tuesday in Microsoft’s history and what it says about where security is headed, a P3C Mini-Group Buy on some seriously capable ThinkPads, and what to do when someone in your office starts building apps with AI.
Thank you for reading. Stay safe out there.
- Brad Otto
Tip of the week
Check work email in Apple Mail on a Mac? Fix it before October 1.
On October 1, Microsoft begins switching off Exchange Web Services (EWS) for Microsoft 365. EWS is the roughly 20-year-old connection method that Apple’s Mail app on macOS still uses to reach Microsoft 365 mailboxes. Microsoft’s reasoning is blunt: it no longer aligns with today’s security, scale, or reliability requirements.
What that means for you: if you check work email in the Mail app on a Mac, that connection may simply stop working. You’re already in the clear if you use webmail at portal.office.com or Microsoft Outlook on your Mac. iPhones and iPads are unaffected — Mail on those devices uses a different, fully supported connection.
Not sure which one you’re using? Ask us before October 1. Moving to Outlook takes about ten minutes and we’ll walk you through it.
Cybersecurity news
Microsoft just shipped its largest security update ever — and AI is probably why
This week’s Patch Tuesday broke every record: roughly a thousand vulnerabilities fixed in a single release. Two of them were already being exploited in the wild before the patches existed. Both let an attacker who has already gained a foothold on a Windows machine escalate to complete control of it.
So why so many at once? The likeliest answer is AI. Microsoft has been running AI-assisted scanning across the Windows codebase, and it is surfacing flaws far faster than human researchers ever could. That is good news — right up until you remember that attackers have the same tools. The gap between “flaw exists” and “flaw is being exploited” keeps getting shorter.
Which is exactly why patching matters more now than it did five years ago. It is also why we nudge you about leaving your computer powered on Friday nights. P3C runs patching over the weekend, and a machine that is switched off simply does not get protected. If you have been clicking past those reminders, this is the month to stop.
Working with P3C
P3C Mini-Group Buy: ThinkPads ready to work the day they arrive
We are running a P3C Mini-Group Buy: we secured a limited stock of Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 laptops from one of our distributors — brand new, sealed in the box. They sit two generations behind Lenovo’s current line, which is what makes this possible, and they are genuinely capable machines for office productivity power users.
AMD Ryzen 5 7535U | 32GB RAM | 1TB SSD | Windows 11 Pro — $2,375 + tax
AMD Ryzen 5 7535U | 24GB RAM | 512GB SSD | Windows 11 Pro — $1,875 + tax
Both include a 3-year advanced replacement warranty. If something fails, we escalate with the distributor and handle it start to finish — you are not the one chasing anybody.
Buying through us also means the laptop arrives ready to work: BitLocker drive encryption enabled, your organization’s base applications installed, drivers and Windows updates current. That setup is included at no charge. It is the difference between a box on your desk and a machine you can sit down and use.
Once these are gone, they are gone. Reply to this email or call us to claim one.
The AI and Automation Minute
Someone in your office is about to build an app. Here is what to ask them.
This week we sat down with a client whose team member had built a working shop-floor task app in Base44 — an AI platform where you describe the software you want in plain English and it generates the whole thing: interface, database, user logins, hosting. Wix bought it for a reported $80 million and it is now past two million users. It works. That is exactly why you should pay attention.
This is the Access database of our era. Someone builds something genuinely useful, the business quietly comes to depend on it, and then that person leaves — and nobody left standing knows how it works.
Our advice, whatever tool gets used:
• Document it. How it was built, what it does, who owns it, how access gets granted.
• Own your data. Confirm you can export it in a format you keep, on a platform you may not stay on.
• Two admins, minimum. Tie logins to Microsoft 365 so access can be revoked centrally when someone departs.
• Test before you change. Feed it bad input, odd formatting, a dropped connection. Find the breaks yourself.
• Back it up on a schedule. Scheduled exports, plus a version snapshot before any live update.
• Least privilege. Give each role only what that job actually requires.
• Tell your IT guys at P3C. Share the documentation with us so we can educate our technicians about the app your business now depends on. Otherwise your staff calls our helpdesk asking how to get into an application we have never heard of, and nobody comes out of that call happy.
None of this is meant to talk you out of building. Build — then treat what you built like real software.
Because that is what is actually happening here: businesses are becoming developers. AI and automation tools have put real software creation in the hands of people who never wrote a line of code, and that is genuinely a good thing. It also means the practices developers spent decades learning the hard way now apply to you. Back up your code. Comment it, so the next person understands why it does what it does and not just what it does. Document how it fits into your business. Test changes somewhere safe before they go live. And as you build more, keep the code in a repository so every change is tracked and you can roll back when something breaks — because eventually something will.
None of that is exotic or expensive. It is simply what it takes to depend on software safely.
More at ai.p3ctech.com, including our free AI Acceptable Use Policy template. My book, Beyond the Prompt, covers this ground in depth, and dates for our upcoming AI and automation events get announced here first.
Product of the Week
Two monitors we actually recommend
Monitor questions come up constantly, so here are our two go-to picks.
• ASUS Full HD monitor — a solid everyday screen for email, spreadsheets, and browsing. No fuss.
• Philips 4K monitor — the step up. Sharper text, more room to work, and a four-year warranty behind it.
Both have HDMI and DisplayPort built in, so they will connect to just about anything.
One heads-up before you order: depending on your current computer, you may need a new cable or adapter. Ask us first and we will tell you exactly what you need.
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