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A Different Perspective On Snow Leopard's Exchange Support

Posted by timothy on from the your-jeans-are-100pct-patches dept.

imamac writes "Apple Insider has an interesting perspective on the MS Exchange support built into Mac OS X 10.6 and how it essentially frees Apple from all things Microsoft: 'Windows Enthusiasts like to spin Apple's support for Exchange on the iPhone and in Snow Leopard as endorsement of Microsoft in the server space. From another angle, Apple is reducing its dependence upon Microsoft's client software, weakening Microsoft's ability to hold back and dumb down its Mac offerings at Apple's expense. More importantly, Apple is providing its users with additional options that benefit both Mac users and the open source community.'"

10 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. How does this *free* Mac users? by quanticle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not sure I understand the article's contention that Exchange support frees Apple users from Microsoft. After all, the Exchange protocol is still proprietary and under exclusive control of Microsoft. As long as this is the case, Microsoft is free to change the Exchange protocol to freeze out third party clients.

    Yes, Apple's increased support for the Exchange protocol may improve the user experience when dealing with Exchange servers. However, it does nothing to actually free users from Microsoft.

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    1. Re:How does this *free* Mac users? by TheSunborn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It frees apple from needing Microsoft software on the client.

      And they did license the access to exchange from Microsoft, so they can't just lock them out.

    2. Re:How does this *free* Mac users? by raddan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Does anyone here know if Microsoft is being required to license ActiveSync under the terms of their antitrust settlement? I suspect that Microsoft is now prohibited from changing the protocol in any kind of blatantly anticompetitive way, especially given that they've licensed it out to paying customers. Given their past behavior, though, this still might not stop them.

      For IT shops, though, being able to connect to Exchange without Outlook is a huge enabler. Entourage 2008 is much better than the previous Mac OS X offerings, but it still sucks in some big ways (e.g., free/busy in multi-domain ADs). I just got my copy of 10.6 on Friday. If it turns out to work better than Entourage, you can bet your ass we'll buy more Macs the next time around. OpenOffice is already at feature parity with MS Office as far as we're concerned.

    3. Re:How does this *free* Mac users? by quanticle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even so, it still doesn't guarantee access to any enhancements that Microsoft may make to Exchange/Outlook. If Microsoft adds a feature that only Outlook can access (e.g. a feature that cannot be accessed via MAPI or Exchange Web Services), then Apple is still frozen out from that feature. So, unless Microsoft commits to completely separating Outlook and Exchange, and making the interface between the two fully documented, now and into the future, there's still the possibility (or, rather, probability) that Apple's mail clients will fall behind Outlook in features.

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    4. Re:How does this *free* Mac users? by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't see it locking out Microsoft. But for the most part Microsoft doesn't really want to make Mac Software, but they do, as it is profitable, and prevents the Full Switch.

      Dropping Office will hurt Microsoft More then it will hurt Apple (and it will hurt both) If you dropped Office then there will be a bunch of people with Macs who will email people back and say I need this in a different format. So people will become more use to converting documents. So when people get into the habit of say saving their Docs as PDF etc... They will find that other tools will work just as well.

      Dropping Remote Desktop will hurt Microsoft Too. RDP keeps the Mac User Pacified while he is working on remote windows systems. So they will keep the windows terminal servers knowing that they won't get to much hassle from the Mac users.

      Dropping Microsoft Messager is kinda a stupid idea. So much competiton if there was to many people say hey I cant do that. They will just switch.

      If you realized Microsoft did Drop IE for Mac. Why well it wasn't updated and second IE is no longer a key to Microsoft Business as Web Developers started to make more browser compatible sites. And relied much less on Microsoft only tools. So when Safari came out there was no point in fighting it. It is just an expense with no gain.

      Exchange is only really useful for corporate use hindering such functionality to the Mac would cause people to switch to such oddities such as Gasp LDAP and other tools.

      Mac is the second largest OS for personal use out there. There is enough vocal to cause change if it spoke loud about it. Linux users you are still around 1% so your cry goes to deaf ears.

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    5. Re:How does this *free* Mac users? by rsborg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Outlook is not a hard requirement for accessing an Exchange server mailbox. There's plenty of other options such as imap, webmail, pop3/smtp, etc

      Ok, let's look at the options:

      1. POP3 - you better hope that you you never get those "gallstone" emails that clog up your pipes (ie, your boss emails you the 100MB photo gallery from the company party - as a zipfile)
      2. IMAP - I have tried it at my company's system (tried using Thunderbird), and it kept giving me a weird "message not read" error on each sync. Could never get rid of it, even after doing traces and deleting suspect emails on the server
      3. webmail - ok, on a non-IE browser, this is really weak, like worse than hotmail/yahoo kind of weak.

      I've tried all the options, and I keep having to come back to using Outlook... I really look forward to a working Mail.app exchange-compliant connection.

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  2. Re:"dumb down?" by argent · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I agree, the passive-aggressive trackpad on my Macbook Pro with its two finger tap (which I too often screw up) really ticks me off. It makes me wish I could run OS X on a Thinkpad.

    Apple's hardware style is simply something I have to put up with to get an OS that doesn't suck that has an actual commercial application base.

  3. Can Apple do their own MSTSC next? by weave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Mac version of MS terminal server client is horrible -- it lacks ability to connect to a corporate TS gateway. Yet another limited app to make it appear Macs are not pro-business. So can Apple do up one of those as well? Please?

  4. Re:Apple is not donig "Exchange". by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you consider IMAP to be a "security nightmare", I'm wondering why you allow anyone to access your exchange server at all.

    If MS can't get IMAP to work securely, what makes you think they can do any better with any other protocol?

  5. Re:Microsoft is the big winner here, RIM loses by SaDan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Considering the Xserve I manage in the office seems to handle all the functionality required to support network logins with roaming profiles for all of the users and workstations, I could care less what HP or Dell have to offer.

    All of our production servers run Linux on the "big" servers from HP. The office machines are more than well supported by the Xserve hardware we have.

    You don't buy an Xserve because it smokes everything else out there in raw hardware performance numbers. You buy one because it is rack mountable and runs OS X without a hitch. Otherwise, get a MacPro/iMac/Mini and load Mac OS X Server.