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A Different Perspective On Snow Leopard's Exchange Support
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.'"
The apps are dumbed down versions. For example, the OS X version of Powerpoint will not let me create animations where objects move along a path (which is really useful to show how data flows through an abstract model or graph). The Windows version does. The OS X version of Outlook, Entourage, won't really talk to Exchange and definitely won't let you schedule meetings with multiple attendees. This is Microsoft's fault.
The "dumbed down" stuff they are talking, at least in my direct experience, is the lack of full functionality. Almost nothing was ever implemented completely or wholly in the Mac version of MS Office. And Entourage's exchange support is abysmal. Once again, not all of Exchange's features and functions are well supported and certain parts are simply omitted from support entirely. And the connection/communication is sometimes mysteriously broken as well.
Now comparing a Windows Mobile Phone and an iPhone connecting to an Exchange server, which one do you think "wins"? If you guessed "Windows Mobile of course!" you would be horribly mistaken. As far as mobile devices are concerned, iPhone beats the all hands down. And if Apple's native/local support of Exchange server is at least as good as that found on iPhone, then I would say it is probably quite powerful and feature complete.
(There! Go back and look at all my "Apple Bashing" posts and try to call me a "hater" now! In all cases, I call'm like I see'm and nothing more or less.)
They are implementing this via a custom conduit that uses WEBDAV. It's not clear if this requires anything installed on the server side, if so then its a non-starter for most folks. For Apple PC's you're probably better off simply using the webmail interface anyway. This does provide a means for mobile sysems such as phones or laptops to actually download the messages.
Snow Leopard's Exchange support works very well for connecting to my department's servers, and they're about as anti-Apple as you can get. They absolutely refuse to even make the smallest config changes to allow non-Outlook clients to connect (ie. Entourage) and I can connect flawlessly (AFAIK...). I have mail support, calendar support (with functioning invited events), tasks/todo support, contacts and access to the global address books, all through Apple's standard applications. They may be implementing this through a WebDAV backed conduit, but as far as functionality goes, this is the real deal.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
not to mention the apparent lack of 24x7 onsite support. i know someone who works in a Dell server shop and everything they buy comes with 27x7 4 hour response time onsite support. if anything in the server breaks, someone is onsite within 4 hours to replace it
What SMB problems? My MBP connects just fine to all te shared drives around, and when I connect to a new network, it shows all the available shares very quickly.
Compare that to a XP install that repeatedly tells me that "I don't have the necessary permissions" to view the public, no password share.
This might initially appear to be an odd move for Apple, because they already operate on the other side of the fence. e.g. iTunes, or Quicktime. The Apple version of quicktime that is released for windows is typically feature deprived (unless you pay for pro), buggy, and horrendously inefficient. (It's always great watching 1080p stutter along on a freakin' quad-core with a $400 video card.) It's reached the point where the deficiencies of Apple quicktime for Windows has spawned "Quicktime Alternative", just like Realvideo spawned "Real Alternative". "Quicktime Alternative", when it's fully caught up in the arms race with Apple, is a entirely superior to Apple Quicktime, offering smooth playback on modest hardware and all the features of pro for free. Naturally, Apple frequently "tweaks" things to break functionality on the open alternatives to their software. (This happened to Palm rather recently, w.r.t. iTunes.)
Now, I would assume that Apple has some agreement with MS to keep them in the loop on the updates to Exchange. The financial entanglement of Apple and MS and their workplace symbiosis is such that MS probably will not benefit as much as one would think from dicking Apple around the way Apple dicks open sourcers around. Also, MS knows they would have no chance in the court of public opinion if they tried to do so, while Apple can make a somewhat believable case against open sourcers reverse engineering Apple software and providing, for free, some of the pro features that are supposed to be paid for.
It's been mentioned elsewhere (but not here as far as I can tell) that this development is particularly notable, given that Windows doesn't support Exchange out of the box. You need Office for that.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose