Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.It was a day the information technology staff at Omaha Westside High School isn't going to forget anytime soon.
Rob Uchtman, high school and middle school technology specialist, was attending a conference at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Jordan Bellanti, an IT technician, was at the school's career center providing tech support during a round of state testing.
And Joe Morris, also a technician, was at an appointment with his wife about to find out they were going to have a baby girl.
By early afternoon, the team's focus changed in a hurry.
Westside equips each student with an Apple laptop computer, and the night before, Feb. 1, a software security update released by Apple was automatically pushed out and remotely installed on about 2,700 district computers.
The install went swimmingly. Only it didn't.
The software update had an issue. It fixed the security holes as intended, but it also crippled a software translation program called Rosetta that allows computers to run older software. At Westside schools, Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint, all used regularly in the classroom, were rendered useless.
"And nobody was here to find out that, oh, Office broke," Morris said. "It couldn't have come on a worse day."
After a little research, the trio found that the security update was affecting Apple customers around the world — anyone using third-party software like Adobe Photoshop and Quicken with Snow Leopard, an older version of Apple's Mac operating system.
The Westside team ran some diagnostic tests and contacted Apple's support group only to learn that the company wouldn't have a fix for up to 48 hours. The team didn't have that kind of time. Students had assignments to complete, and teachers had lessons to conduct.
The team sprung into action, seeking its own patch to fix the problem. They dissected the update package — more than 11 pages of updates when printed — and discovered that the issue had to do with how certain image files are handled.
While scouring an online forum, Bellanti saw that one affected user had received a certain error message. Bellanti searched his own computer's hard drive for the error and up popped a result from a popular online computer game he plays called World of Warcraft. It involved the same error the Westside computers were getting.
The result was like finding a needle in a haystack. Or, in this case, an Apple in an orchard.
The team then developed an update to fix the problem, tested it and sent it out to the school computers.
At that point, Uctman, Bellanti and Morris were about to become IT rock stars.
Morris posted the patch on an Apple forum discussing the issue and on his blog, and he contacted Apple user blogs and websites.
In less than 24 hours, the update was featured on popular tech websites and downloaded more than 20,000 times. They received thank yous from people in 12 countries — "a big deal for us," Uchtman said.
Said Morris: "For three guys who work at a high school in Nebraska to come up with a fix for people around the world, it's pretty impressive."
Friday morning the same Apple representative who the group had worked with earlier in the week shared their findings, and Apple later released a similar fix. The official update came nearly a full day after Westside installed its patch.
"We might have helped them solve it quicker," Bellanti said. "Who knows if they had anybody playing (World of Warcraft)?"
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