Slashdot Mirror
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 Linux community, along with Google's new Android mobile platform, offer even less in terms of minimum standards and quality control, resulting in software that is often free but usually unfinished and typically inaccessible to anyone outside of dedicated tinkerers and hobbyists. While examples of fine open source client software exists, there is no available market driving this kind of development financially."
Lost in space? Does he use the same stuff I do?
Live to be Moderated
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.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
The article says:
"Apple built its support for Exchange using WebDAV..."
Untrue. The Exchange support for Snow Leopard was built using Exchange Web Services, just like the next version of Microsoft's client, Entourage.
Assuming you have a computer that's less than about 6 years old, I think what you're looking for is Windows XP Pro. It has the look and feel of Windows XP Pro, hasn't bluescreened on me anytime in recent history (and when it has, it's been due to crappy 3rd party drivers), and has the UI you're looking for. As an added bonus, you don't even need to use WINE to run windows apps - they run natively!
I'll tell you after it's finished compiling!
OS X has easily accessible context menus. You right click, and it pops up.
I guess if you still have one of the mice that came with Macs years ago you might still have to hold down control and click, but if you haven't plugged in a two button mouse in all that time you probably don't really care.
Particularly when the MS monopoly trial was going on, there were discussions here on Slashdot about why MS has such a strangle hold on the OS market.
Everything always came down to "because only Windows really supports Exchange."
Well well.
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.
there is an exchange client on over 40 million iphones and ipods. even though people don't use it MS still get paid. Just like the old days when they would get paid from Dell for every PC no matter what the OS. Google is licensing ActiveSync as well for Android and Docs so MS gets paid again. Palm licenses AS as well.
It's pretty much a given that Apple is not going into the server business so MS is safe on that end.
The big loser is RIM. I bet MS was scared with the BB's success because it puts the importance of email on the phone, and not the server or client. people didn't care what server software ran the email as long as they could get emails anywhere. and since BES supported almost every email server it made migration a lot easier. Just try to migrate to a Linux mail server when all the users are using Pre's and iPhones to get email on the road
I haven't upgraded to Snow Leopard yet but as far as I'm concerned unless Apple has fixed the dire state of its SMB networking all talk of Exchange support is whistling in the wind.
Why is this troll? My mother can't even get a BSOD. Thats with a machine I have to clean up daily to boot. Her XP is almost as stable as any of my machines runnning Linux, well except for maybe my eeee. Thats another story though.
Hey, Microsoft wasn't the one who decided that Mac users didn't need the right mouse button. If part of the "dumbing down" is a lack of easily-accessible context menus, blame the Mac GUI.
Are you talking about the contextual menus that have been there since MacOS 8 (which came out in 1997)? Apple doesn't have a problem with contextual menus being there. Their main issue is that contextual menus shouldn't be the only place you can find certain features or options, which sadly is all too common in the Windows and Linux worlds.
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.
I guess if you still have one of the mice that came with Macs years ago you might still have to hold down control and click
Or one of those Macs that has a trackpad.
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.)
Look up XPDE. The older version looked and IIRC, felt just like XP in "classic" mode.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Which allow a right click, (enabled by default IIRC) by having two fingers on the trackpad while clicking.
Any of the new (intel and last few generations of PPC) mac portables, you can easily "right" click by a two finger tap. Easy peasy.
Sheldon
Tap with two fingers, or put two fingers on the trackpad and click.
You know what else runs natively? Botnets, SPAMbots, various Virii, worms, etc. I know that if I was writing computer viruses, I definately want the IP address of someone who is running Windows.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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.
Are there really hordes of grassroots windows partisans? I can see people who use it because they find the alternatives worse or impractical, or even people who kind of like using it. But Enthusiasts? Is it the same sort of person who joins the College Republicans, and the Comcast Fan Club?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I actually love my macbook pro's trackpad. It's easily double the size of any other notebook, and I always use tap to click (I never push the thing down to click)
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?
And once again Apple's elitist attitude comes out in their discrimination of people who's hands have been horrible mangled in heavy machinery. With a normal two button mouse you only need one finger to operate either button, but needing two fingers just to get a context menu? I guess I will need to stick with Windows until the day Apple sees that people with only one finger also deserve context menus. And until that day I would like to proudly present that single finger to Steve Jobs.
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.
My 4-year-old PowerBook supports this. Two-finger right clicking and scrolling is easily one of my favorite features about the machine.
(I'm not terribly thrilled that Snow Leopard dropped PPC support. Even though my machine's just a few years old, it's still perfectly good for day-to-day use)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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
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.
Does it beat "them all" as a mobile device or in Exchange support?
IMO the best mobile device FOR EXCHANGE SUPPORT ONLY is not Windows Mobile or iPhone, but Blackberry. And pretty much the entire business world agrees with me. RIM operates a series of "reflection servers" for Exchange which dynamically "pushes" email to the clients (phones) and maintains better email access for Blackberry users. This is enormously handy for enterprise/business customers. Apple very specifically won't do this for the iPhone (they've been asked). This is why iPhone adoption isn't coming from the business side, but the consumer side. It's worth noting that Palm IS doing something like this for the Pre, so it may see more uptake in the business world.
I'm not saying that the iPhone isn't a good device, or even the best device, for most users. It's just that in this specific area it's weaker than the competition.
Apple has "patent weapons" to fight with... should they choose to do so. It's quite likely that the alternatives are hosted in countries where software patents don't exist but even that doesn't guarantee that Apple wouldn't pay a lobbyist to talk to congress and have congress talk to the government bodies of foreign nations and have them break their own laws... you know, like they did with The Pirate Bay?
As for MS and Apple having an agreement?! I seriously doubt it. It is MORE likely that Microsoft will wait a while and then when people are comfortable with things, and then release a "service pack" or bug fix that breaks Apple's ability to connect to the Exchange server... and it will likely be bundled in with some absolutely critical security patch. Microsoft has been playing "tag" with the Samba project for years and Microsoft is always "it" and manages to find new ways to run and hide.
Windows will not let you do what you want to the extent you want if you play in the command line. Also, Apple, for all its nasty bits, is not usually busy trying to make every *nix vendor go under with lawsuits and the threat of them - they have a niche (well a few niches) and seem happy to stick to it (or at least don't do many efforts to go out of it considering the way they deal with their server and workstation offerings that seem more like curiosities/stuff we put out because some people in our niches need the juice).
They also sometimes screw with standards but at least pay them lip-service, and while it's not been without gnashing of teeth at first, when they've had to deal with the GPL they didn't wait for the FSF to make subtle threats before sharing the code.
As for letting install, the only time they seem to care is when someone tries to make money off making unlicensed clones - the iphone situation is a bit more annoying, true.
Lucky you're running OSX only. If you were running Windows under Bootcamp, you would find that Apple has deliberately disabled tap to click.
I right click on my trackpad all the time, not sure what your problem is.
Actually, this is a new addition, and until it happened, i wouldn't buy a Mac laptop. Now that the pads are multitouch, its a software controlled 'right click', technically it can be any zone of the pad you'd like.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Boot them all at the same time with vmware.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
It's probably because they (Apple) had their own calendar and email solutions, so why include support for a third-party system? Granted, it's no where near the same as Exchange for functionality, but it was there.
Personally, I could care less. I've moved more people off of Exchange and onto other platforms than I care to count (mostly to Zimbra), and personally hope to never have to deal with an Exchange system ever again. If you think Apple hardware/software is expensive, try pricing out your own Exchange server solution sometime.
127.0.0.1
Have fun and don't hold back.
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.
Fixed in the latest service pack. (Why was it suddenly fixed in a service pack, after letting several full releases go by without it? Because Apple's Keynote gained the ability.)
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.
Not true. (I do it every week. Not even difficult; you just keep adding attendees just like you did the first one. You can even view availability on the little graph like Outlook.) But in any event, Entourage is going to be scrapped in the next version of Office. Why? Because Apple's apps had caught up to Entourage's (weak) level of support.
Basically, Microsoft has enjoyed the same position with Office on the Mac that it has with Windows, despite not delivering the same level of capability. That's starting to change, because it's pretty easy to beat a product that isn't very good.
GNU Porn?
weinersmith
KDE 3.5.x with the Redmond Window Style and Coloring.
OR, see if the FVWM 95 project is still live.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Works fine in Win 7 RC. Was it disabled in XP/Vista? The scrolling is a bit jerky though compared to OS X.
both, but only if you're a quantum computer.
weinersmith
It's getting better. Backups without stopping all service are now possible in MS Exchange and bare metal recovery is no longer a full day nightmare. Some day it will be a full feature mail transfer agent. Oh, you mean the Mac client software that had to be reverse engineered to talk to the non-standard steaming pile that is MS Exchange? I'll be quiet now and let the MS Exchange advocates tell you what is just around the corner and how it's growing up to be a real boy. As for users, if you think MS Exchange has been running flawlessly go and ask your admins how many servers they are using to give you that illusion.
Touch the track pad with two fingers and push the button.
That's how you right click.
You can use two fingers to scroll, too. Vertically as well as horizontally.
I prefer a mouse to a trackpad but I as trackpads go, I really like this one. Too bad that feature isn't available in Bootcamp. (Not the version I'm running, anyway. Maybe a later version has added it.) OTOH I rarely boot into Windows so it's not much of an issue for me.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
How about not even windows has built-in exchange support. In order to get Exchange support on Microsoft's $300 OS, you need to install a $100 email software, or $250 office suite.
I got exchange support on my mac for $29.
Allowing MAPI directly into an Exchange environment from any internet host isn't a great idea, surely - for starters that would allow someone to DoS your environment by authenticating with obviously invalid credentials and locking people out - expecially when a lot of environments will align user's e-mail address with their AD username. Plus ,the moment a vulnerability becomes known you're open to who knows what (and it is just a matter of time..?)
Allowing any IP into exchange over MAPI isn't what Exchange requires anyway, and is certainly not "best practice" - you can use Outlook Anywhere (RPC over SSL), ActiveSynch (again SSL) and Outlook Web Access (SSL). For a more secure solution preferably publish all of this through ISA Server using 2-factor or RADIUS etc. to protect Active Directory. To really take off this new client will need to support RPC over HTTPS, and have a cached mode equivalent, people in the corporate space will want to take their laptops home and connect to their mail without switching to OWA, and they will want to access their mail offline. (I am not sure if this client has this, too lazy to check - if it does, well done Apple.)
There is always a trade-off between security and usability.
Apple creating Exchange client software makes sense as it helps them aim at the corporate space, I don't see Microsoft having any issues with this as they still make money off it - any client/user requires a Client Access Licenses - one CAL for Exchange standard features (basic mail etc), one CAL for the underlying Windows Server access, and an Enterprise Exchange additive CAL for enterprise features (unified messaging (voice)/office communication server/etc).
It is the same logic as VMware driving sales of Microsoft server operating systems - sometimes decent competitor offerings aren't bad - more of a "co-opetition" than competition (up to a point anyway)
Which allow a right click, (enabled by default IIRC) by having two fingers on the trackpad while clicking.
Actually, in Leopard and Snow Leopard, the two finger click for right-mouse click is not on by default.
You have to enable it in System Preferences.
Yes it's on by default in Leopard, what is not on is tap and right-click on a designated spot of the trackpad.
Creating BSOD in NT based OS either happens because of cheap, bad quality RAM or hardware with badly coded drivers. It was very different deal on Windows 98 and earlier since they are mixed operating systems.
If you keep good hardware (doesn't have to be expensive) and stick with certified drivers, I bet you will never see a BSOD.
I know it is the hardware or drivers since on OS X, my first G5 1600 kept giving me the stylish BSOD of Apple. I did hardware test, found one memory module was faulty, threw it away and never seen BSOD. If Apple and MS didn't act opportunistic and did a mandatory real memory test before installing their operating systems, users would get rid of lots of problems. Of course, nobody wants user to stand by 1 hour for a real memory test, even Linux distros won't dare to do it let alone commercial companies.
BTW you can make XP an "admin needed to install" thing, that means half of the cleanup will be needless. Just add a normal user and move her files.
You're probably just trying to be funny, but just in case: Apple computers use standard USB mice. If you don't like the Apple mouse, use a different brand.
You know what else runs natively? Botnets, SPAMbots, various Virii, worms, etc. I know that if I was writing computer viruses, I definately want the IP address of someone who is running Windows/quote
Maybe they do on your networks, they never did here by using good sense, applying protection and not running every random exe from the Internet. Oh yeah, and not using IE as web browser. Seriously, I think Linux is ahead of Windows on this one but anyone visiting slashdot should be more than capable of administrating Windows without running into problems.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Companies love RIM/Blackberry and choose the devices especially for the amazing level of Exchange support.
Nokia provides Exchange sync on Symbian for years, for free in enterpise (E) models. Who cares? They go and buy Windows Mobile or Blackberry handsets.
When you talk about exchange support, don't forget how old fashioned and stupid these companies are for using a non standard protocol while open, documented things exist for years now. Don't expect them to move to Snow Leopard or even iPhone just because some third party thing supports it.
Let me show you one interesting thing. RIM is almost in sync with Apple. Nokia too. Apple iPhone feeds the entire smart phone industry...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=2y&s=RIMM&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=AAPL&c=%5EIXIC
RIM operates a series of "reflection servers" for Exchange which dynamically "pushes" email to the clients (phones) and maintains better email access for Blackberry users. This is enormously handy for enterprise/business customers. Apple very specifically won't do this for the iPhone (they've been asked).
Could you be more specific in what you mean here? It was my understanding that the iPhone fully support push email from Exchange (and certainly does for, e.g., yahoo mail)
Are you talking about blackberry's servers? What's the advantage?
It is gay porn and it is NOT a system directory. How often does the UPS man deliver packages to your father?
"My network" is known as the Internet. I'm still trying to contact the sysadmin, to no avail. ... and anyone on Slashdot should be able to post without their comment being blockquoted. Go figure.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yeah, or you can set it so that clicking one of the corners is a right click, too. It's conveniently located in the trackpad settings menu below a heading labeled "one finger."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Hey, Microsoft wasn't the one who decided that Mac users didn't need the right mouse button. If part of the "dumbing down" is a lack of easily-accessible context menus, blame the Mac GUI.
Odd, an Apple mouse has five buttons (how old is Mighty Mouse now?), their touchpads are capable of many multi touch gestures (quite new aside from multiple button simulation), desktop keyboards have FOUR (control/option/command/shift) standard accelerator/modifier keys used liberally throughout both user applications and OS interfaces (old as dirt; your "lack of accessible context menus" comment is utterly hilarious in light of this), and laptops technically have FIVE modifiers, counting the Fn key.
I keep hoping to find a good Linux UI that has the look-and-feel of Windows XP Pro (running a Classic Windows theme), but without the BSOD et al.
*sigh* way to set the bar... You should actually TRY a modern Mac/Windows UI, before settling for simplistic "classic windows" emulation.
PS. I'm not bull shitting you, even the shift key is used as a context menu modifier, often removing the (...) from a command and replacing it with a sensible default.
EX: "Add Bookmark..." becomes "Add Bookmark to Menu" in Safari.
"Force Quit..." becomes "Force Quit [FocusedApplicationName]" in the Apple menu.
It seems to be similar to the option key, but that often alters commands that didn't have (...)'s in the name.
Note how the text visibly changes in menus when a modifier is pressed, and the full accelerator+modifier sequence can be typed to avoid the menu altogether. This is why the Mac UI doesn't really need right click context menus. It already had uber context menus with more consistency and standardization than Windows's right-click context menus. Macs CAN make use of multiple mouse buttons however (games, complex apps, etc) and they are provided..
Gnome might be technically capable of using as many accelerator keys, but they are not represented in the UI well.. at all.. and few things outside the window manager will use them.
No, you can right-click with the trackpad in Bootcamp. However, it seems more like an approximation - for example, it doesn't work in Half-Life 2. But it works in the desktop, at least, and many other programs (browsers, etc).
What bothers me is the scroll. On OSX it's really smooth, but on windows it's not so much; windows likes the wheel-click model I guess. Changing the requisite value to 1 instead of the default of 3 seems to do the trick.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
In mouse properties, try changing the 'scroll x lines' from 3 to 1. Works a lot better.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Even though the History panel was removed from Konqueror in KDE 4.3? Seriously, how do these decisions get made?
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=193966#c1
Even though Krunner turns UTF-8 into gibberish?
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=192166
Shall I go on?
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
I feel so lucky, that even though 99.9 percent of our IT is based on MS Windows, I can peacefully develop in non-MS languages (php,perl mainly) with mostly free development tools. Even though I use 2 Macs at the office and 2 others at home, I have no problems or interoperability problems whatsoever. No one forces me to use Word, Exchange (pop/imap is just lovely) or anything that would be a problem on a Mac. In months the first problem I faced was an invitation (calendar event) my Thunderbird did not quite understand - needless to say it came from an MS oriented development firm.
I hate comparisons like this. The people who use Macs in an environment they can use Macs in. If I had to use all the MS tools, protocols or develop in MS Visual Whatever I would use a Windows machine logically. They fit many things, and they do not fit many things.
When 30% of your work is in shell mode on Unix servers then OSX is a beautiful alternative and MS is horror. So what do people compare... now I should run and get a Windows laptop?
For example, the OS X version of Powerpoint will not let me create animations where objects move along a path...
OpenOffice (or NeoOffice) Impress does this free of charge. And the version of Mail included with 10.6 supports Exchange out of the box.
So then change how the mouse pad works. The easiest alternative is to switch it so that it treats having two fingers on the pad when you press the button as right-click.
XP is a good OS, but its time has passed. Time to move on.
I personally don't care for XP (or Windows in any form), but it is at least mature enough now to make a solid platform. When XP first came out, the consensus was pretty similar to what we saw when Vista came out. Microsoft made some attempt to address (most of) the issues as time went by. So if XP fulfils the user's requirements, then why change? Not everybody needs shiny things on their latest OS.
One thing I've always taken for granted with Linux is that you *never* see blingy stuff when you upgrade your operating system. Sure, you can upgrade X11/compiz/whatever if you get bored and need some new eye-candy (and lots of this is very good indeed), but you don't have to. (I use Arch Linux, which operates on a rolling-release basis rather than the more usual release/upgrade cycle.)
Likewise, there are no new shiny bits to be found in Snow Leopard. Apple has concentrated on upgrading an already-good OS to one that is even better, without breaking much.
The only speed-bumps I ran over when loading SL on to my MacBook were an issue with the Cisco VPN client and a problem with my cheapie Huawei mobile broadband dongle. Both were resolved by using native preference options instead of the 3rd-party client software, though I did have to hunt for updated hardware drivers for the dongle.
Or, if you enabled it, just tap the track pad with two fingers. I can't understand why people still use the button when they can actually tap the track pad with one or two fingers for left, respectively right clicks.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
And you find that having all your emails go through a 3rd party's servers is a good thing? Otherwise I'm pretty sure that a honest comparison between the iPhone and the Blackberry Exchange integration wouldn't show any differences feature-wise. Regarding the Push-Email thing, it's actually there in the iPhone OS 3.0 and it works.
On the other hand, trying to remove the blackberry from the hands of blackberry obsessed users is a sacrilege just as big as upgrading their Office 2003 to anything else. And that is regardless of the fact that the blackberry is actually crappy for a very important reason: having a J2ME app that runs on both any J2ME enabled phone as well as on a blackberry is a pain. Just think of the button mappings. Granted that on this one in particular, the iPhone sucks even more because it doesn't even have a J2ME implementation.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
I work for a major media management company (I won't say which one, but it's a number between 18 and 20, and we have American Idol and David Beckham in our stable). For the UK office (where I work as a support technician) we have about 200 users, 90% of which are now on Macs (and every week we're pushing more and more of the workforce towards them)
We're more than happy with the "anaemic" hardware line. MacBooks for 80% of staff, MacBook Pro for managers (and us down in IT) and Mac Pros for the video editors. The hardware is always as good or better than comparatively priced commodity hardware (we usually use Sony Vaios for the few remaining Windows users) but the software.... ...well, let's just say I do very little work. We're desperate to be able to roll out Snow Leopard across the company - Entourage is bloody awful - and the necessary switch to Exchange 07 means we can also officially support iPhones too. It will be a while before we're 100% Mac, and longer still before we can completely shed ourselves of MS software (the majority of which we've fund ot be unstable, insecure and difficult to use) but this Exchange support is a huge leap in the right direction.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
Or if you have fairly standard hardware, try XP x64 (not 64-bit edition). It's based on the Server 2003 kernel and stable as hell.
Only Microsoft and it's enthusiasts could view a company adding support for a popular system as caving in, admitting defeat, or endorsing a rival.
Back in the day, such things would be referred to as "adding useful features", or "doing what your customers want". But then, that's never exactly been MS's strong suit.
My main issue with this is when I want to do both a right and left click at the same time with the track pad (or mighty mouse for that matter).
Probably not something most people need to do often, but I've run into it more than once.
That may be true for Windows. But Linux users run GNU Emacs and then nothing is farther away than three key-combinations.
Are you using the new Macbook or Macbook Pro? I heard they fixed it there. But in the older models (I bought mine early 08) this didn't work on any Windows OS.
So, let me get this straight.
Blackberry devices do not contain Exchange support themselves. They rely instead on "reflection servers" run by RIM. This therefore adds an additional point of failure - to get email on a Blackberry not only does the Exchange server have to be working, but the reflection server does too. It also exposes your email contents to RIM. There is no option on Blackberry devices to communicate directly with Exchange servers.
Apple's iPhone instead implements direct connection to Exchange servers, including push email, push contacts, and push calendar support, and have had this in place since iPhone 2.0 over a year ago. Oh, and there's remote wipe capabilities too just in case the phone gets lost. Apple refuses to implement "reflection servers" because, well, there's absolutely no need for them - they would increase the complexity of the system, increase the points of failure, and decrease the reliability. And that refusal is a point of criticism?
I'm not seeing any way in which the iPhone is weaker than the Blackberry in this specific area.
We're talking laptops here - typically no mouse, so what is your one fingered person doing trying to right-click? So plug in a mouse - and all new Apple mice have a left and right side for clicking. Don't want to use a mouse? How about clicking the trackpad while pressing a Control key down? Wow, right-click.
Or are you saying this person has only one arm, and that arm has only one finger?
What else. Oh yes, you can even plug your Apple (or any USB) mouse into the left or right hand side of an Apple keyboard - just in case your person of interest is left or right handed. I don't recall any other keyboard with two USB ports attached. Hell, you could even plug another keyboard into the first - and really go to town with collaborative typing.
Maybe it's not the fingers that are the problem - but your sight (and mind) are a little squinted and one-eyed.
Couple of small things: the key to remove "..." from menu items (or otherwise do interesting things to menus) is Option (alt), not Shift.
Also, the "new" (as in "has been on the market for quite a while now") alu keyboard as that fn key as well, and uses it too.
As to the Mighty Mouse: as far as I know it has *4* buttons; those things on the side both map to one button.
But yeah, it's been quite a few years ago that the Mac was a One Mouse Button Only beast. =]
/var/run/twitter.sock is a twitter socket puppet.
Personally, I've taken the other road.
Sold my Mac due to its horrible hardware and went back to using a Thinkpad for a laptop and a standard homebuilt x86 system for a stationary.
Rather Windows than Apple hardware i say. =P
For me, the OS is mainly something that glues together my hardware I/O with my applications.
As long as I can use the hardware I want and run the applications I want, what OS I run is irrelevant.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
True - that gets you even further back. And the two finger right click and scrolling is the best computer interaction refinement I've used since the mouse.
Ah, they've thought of that. Craning one finger around to right click on a normal mouse is very awkward, so Apple lets you use your other hand to hold down the control key while you left click, very comfortably, with the single remaining finger on your mouse hand.
Uh, there's been an version of Office for the Mac that reads and writes Word/Excel files just fine.
Bamm, the BSODs are back. HTH, HAND.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Apple faced a similar problem with it's retail presence. I can't tell you how many times I walked into circuit city and was told not to buy a mac. Apple was smart when they did there own retail presence, and they are smart in writing exchange support for Snow Leopard.
http://p8ste.com - Web based Clipboard
The Mac OS X version was also "crippled" until QuickTime X, which abolished the Player/Pro clusterfuck altogether. Presumably, that will end up being ported to Windows... eventually.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Dell Insperon notebook, plug in FireWire video output with active MPEG2 video, play video in VLC from FW input, unplug FW cable. BSOD every time. Yes this has happened to me many times at work.
"Windoze will at least let you install it on any machine you want (legally)"
That's a remnant of days when they were minor vendors for IBM. When Compaq and others put out IBM PC "clones," Microsoft took full advantage of the opportunity to stab IBM in the back.
Notably, Microsoft is as restrictive, even more so, with Xbox and Xbox360. I can install linux on any PPC or Intel Macintosh without hardware hacks or bizarre workarounds. I should be able to do that with Xboxen as well.
I would have supported the author with a direct link to his blog.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/09/05/inside-mac-os-x-snow-leopard-exchange-support-2/
Glasses and neckbeards and mantits, oh my!
Windoze will at least let you install it on any machine you want
Spoken like someone who has never read a Windows EULA.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
you mean, a non pearl-white mouse that will totally destroy that wonderful styling ? no wayyyyyyy
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Likewise, there are no new shiny bits to be found in Snow Leopard
Dock icon expose, multitude of new Finder animations, expose blue borders, etc. There are a FEW shiny bits ;-)
Whatever I didn't bother reading TFA. Just tell me please someone, is there an open source way to push email from my ubuntu server to an iPhone should I choose to get one? I heard you must use either some Exchange thing or mac.com IIRC. That's silly. I would probably only buy an iPhone if there is a way, and that is the only thing I care about related to the two keywords Exchange and Apple.
So then change how the mouse pad works.
I'm not prepared to solder in an extra button.
I have upgraded my machines to Snow Leopard, excited to use the Exchange support.
Only to find out it only works for Exchange 2007!
So, to move my clients off Windows/Outlook|Mac/Entourage I have to upgrade my Microsoft Exchange server to 2007?
That's not really helping *me*, Apple...
OTOH; I love getting disk space back from an upgrade - Mac Air 64GB SSD users rejoice. AND I love Apple's family pack pricing for my home Mac's. Also, WTF dropping Power PC support this soon?
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
If I wanted to run Windows, I wouldn't have a Macbook.
Windows apps (that run) run in WINE (aka CrossOver) natively.
I'm using a unibody pro, so that must be it. The support is still pretty clunky though, I feel like it has more misreads than in OS X.
The problem with the two finger tap is that you have to touch the positioning device (the trackpad surface) to double tap, which means that there is a possibility of moving the mouse as you attempt to tap. Now, some people apparently don't have a problem with this... but other people do. The new trackpads with the pivoting trackpad as the button make the problem ten times worse. A separate pair of buttons is simpler to implement, more reliable, and works for more people.
John C Welch rightly reams him out over this latest burst of idiocy. Worth reading for the headline ("Douchebags fondly eviscerated") and such prize comments as "You'd have to be smoking hobo crack (as in 'ass' not 'rock') to say that without snickering".
I have to break this to you. Mac's are not pro-business. Here is why,
1. No such thing as NBD onsite service provided by the first party.
2. No such thing as NBD onsite service provided by the first party. (I know I mentioned this twice but it is that important)
3. No volume discounts.
4. Twice the cost of the competition (even more after volume discounts).
These are all Apple's responsibility and Apple will never be taken seriously until it fixes these things.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
MS delivered something which easily beats their Win32 version and also proves that IE can indeed run as a stand alone program. Mac IE has nothing to do with Win32 IE; down to engine level (Tazman). While Windows IE was being protested for not supporting basic standards, Mac IE was getting W3C recommendations and Mac users have good memories with it, even if they don't admit.
Nevertheless, IE for Mac was actually paid for Apple to be included on Mac and there was a contract. The team did a great work and some of IE Mac features still doesn't exist on IE 8. While I am sure it has something to do with the possible jealousy/MS insider politics, Apple's contract basically ended and Apple did a good job providing users a good, standards based and simple (compare to Konqueror) browser that doesn't hurt any competition at all.
And I nearly had my head taken off by commenters because I dared suggest that Apple might create Linux versions of iTunes, Safari, and Quicktime. Oh, and Boot Camp drivers for Ubuntu.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
How can Apple users complain if Microsoft would change the protocol and break Exchange Support. I wonder if Palm would be so sympathetic to Apple's plight. I mean, who changed the Itune syncing so that Palm Pre's broke. Apple and MS are two peas in the same pod. And how laughable is it that Apple is benefiting OpenSource? LMAO. I don't know how much more benefiting I can take from apple. LOL
You've never actually looked at the mousepad settings panel on your Mac, have you? It comes with two or three different (software) ways it can be set up to trigger different key combinations. There are also a number of 3rd party options to do the same thing. This is only a problem if you don't want a solution.
You've never actually looked at the mousepad settings panel on your Mac, have you?
Sure. None of them say "physically add an extra button".
I've tried them all. I've tried third party hacks. None of them give me an actual extra button that I can feel with my fingers, that I can reliably hit without having to stop and think about what I'm doing lest I brush the mousepad and move the mouse and click in the wrong place. Nothing but a separate physical button will solve that problem.
You don't have that problem? I'm happy for you. Enough people do that Apple's passive-aggressive war against the second mouse button is fundamentally self-defeating.
This is only a problem if you don't want a solution.
No matter how many times you solve the wrong problem, you're still SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM.
FYI, both Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative are simply packages of the respective DirectShow codecs as released by Apple and Real, plus any dependencies needed to use those codecs. Effectively all they did is strip out the proprietary frontend app, which hasn't been necessary anyways for quite some time. Note how the Quicktime Alternative pack even installs the official Quicktime control panel. There should be no performance difference, or at the most a minimal difference, between QT Alt and official QT.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Repeat after me...
Apple is not using ActiveSync in Snow Leopard.
Exchange support in Snow Leopard uses EWS to connect to the Exchange Server.
EWS (Exchange Web Services) is not WebDAV!
The number of misconceptions perpetrated on this thread make me wonder how many people have actually looked at either Exchange Server 2007/2010 or Mail.app in Snow Leopard.
That is all.
Several people have misunderstood the service offered by RIM in operating their own NOCs.
Right now, on the iPhone a Pre you have access to Exchange EAS, which is Exchange Remote Access, or web access that pushes out email through the web gateway. Blackberry also has this method (though rarely used because of BES).
This has a number of limitations:
1) The organization has to set up their Exchange server to allow web access, they may not want to do this for security or other reasons.
2) Web access causes a performance hit on the Exchange servers, on big installs this really matters.
3) Web access is traditionally fairly buggy in Exchange.
4) MOST IMPORTANTLY, web access tends to screw up calendaring and invites.
For this reason it would be nice to have DIRECT access to Exchange. This is possible in Windows Mobile and Blackberry. With Windows Mobile you have Outlook Mobile and as long as RPC ports are open in the firewall or the Windows Mobile device is on the LAN or VPN'ed in (there are robust VPN clients for Windows Mobile) this works fairly well. However most sites don't allow direct access to Exchange over the Internet, so this can be a big pain when trying to check mail through the phone network (because VPN won't work on the phone network).
Blackberry takes the Exchange support one step further, you install an application called Blackberry Enterprise Server which syncs your internal Exchange server against RIM's NOC(s) and Blackberry users can get their email automatically pushed down through the PHONE connections (3G and WiFi are not required) with full Exchange support and features. Unlike other products, you can browse the Global Address List and other Exchange users' calendars. You don't have full Outlook functionality, but more than other phones (Windows Mobile is in a grey area).
There is certainly a security issue in bouncing your corporate email through Blackberry's servers, but I think this is exaggerated somewhat. In reality, most email bounces through several unsecured on it's way to the destination so your email is going to be "exposed" this way no matter what you do. For the "internal" email their might be an issue here, but it strikes me as a bad way to do security. If you want secure email you have to use PKI, there's no way around it. BTW, As far as I'm aware only BES supports Exchange PKI (PGP is not supported by any mobile mail clients). So if you really want SECURE email your only options are Blackberry with BES or Windows Mobile.
The reality is that most organizations care a lot more about access and availability than security. IME, the only sites that care more are military sites with a "fail closed" mentality. Such sites would completely disallow all mobile access to classified email anyway.
E.G. does Zarafa work as an exchange clone on the server for Snow Leopard clients? Or Scalix?
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel