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Microsoft Launches Outlook For Android and iOS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the check-it-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes Microsoft today launched Outlook for Android and iOS. The former is available (in preview) for download now on Google Play and the latter will arrive on Apple's App Store later today. The pitch is simple: Outlook will let you manage your work and personal email on your phone and tablet as efficiently as you do on your computer. The app also offers calendar features, attachment integration (with OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and iCloud), along with customizable swipes and actions so you can tailor it to how you specifically use email.

4 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Big by ThorGod · · Score: 3, Informative

    Honestly I can't think of this as being anything but big. Companies live and die by outlook email still (enough of them anyway). So many of those executives don't even need a machine past email really...

    --
    PS: I don't reply to ACs.
    1. Re:Big by crbowman · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yawn, the mail, calendar and contacts apps on my iPhone already work pretty well with the change server at work. Every now and then they stop syncing but I simply turn off the syncing of those 3 items and then turn it back on (I don't even have to delete the account info just flip 3 switches). Wait a few minutes till the phone sucks down the data again and I'm off. It's not outlook that's indispensable, it's Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Why would I pay for Outlook, the only thing I really miss is the ability to set my out of office messages from the phone. Filters are another things missing, but that's something that's complicated enough that the once every year I set one up I would just do it from my laptop. Am I gonna switch apps for that? Nope.

  2. Wasn't worth the time to download. by mmell · · Score: 3, Informative
    Seriously, there are way better clients out there. I use Touchdown by Nitrodesk for Exhcange for my work email - a truly robust and mature client, that. When Microsoft bought Touchdown, I thought for sure that would be the basis for their Android Outlook client. Sadly, Microsoft Outlook for Android looks very generic (a good thing I suppose - a consistent look and feel with the stock Android email client); that plain vanilla appearance is exquisitely matched by the client's plain vanilla lack of configurability and functionality. This app looks like a programmer's first effort at an email client.

    On a positive note, the application did install and run correctly, and appeared to offer support for several popular mail servers (Yahoo and Outlook among others, as well as IMAP and Exchange support).

  3. Re:MSFT ON BSD! by Ogi_UnixNut · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you really want to be pedantic. Android is Linux, but it isn't GNU/Linux. Android uses the Linux kernel, but had its own userspace structure on top of it, which is not compatible with GNU/Linux (hence you have to specifically (re)write apps to run on Android).

    I guess it should be called Android/Linux, and the "normal" Linux we know on our PC's is GNU/Linux. The one time where there is a real-world reason for having these things spelt out in full (there used to be a large argument about naming conventions of Linux a few years ago. Whether it was important to have the "GNU" bit at the front).