Entelligence: Will Snow Leopard's Exchange support earn Apple a new entourage?
By Michael Gartenberg 
posted Aug 26th 2009 9:00PM
posted Aug 26th 2009 9:00PM
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
Apple, Microsoft and the Mac have an interesting history: Microsoft was among the first developers for Macintosh, yet not long after, Apple would sue Microsoft for copying the look and feel of Mac OS in Windows. By the late 90s, Microsoft made a huge splash at Macworld with an announced 150 million dollar investment in Apple and promises of further development of Office and Internet Explorer for Macintosh. Office in particular was a major issue as it was a key requirement for business users. Early on, Office applications for Mac were far more advanced than their Windows counterparts. Excel was actually introduced for Mac users before Windows users could get their hands on it. But by the mid 90s, all that changed, the Mac versions of Office lagged behind Windows in terms of features and performance. It took forever to get things such as a common set of file formats, so that users of Office on the two different platforms could exchange documents with ease (it seems like something we take for granted but having managed and supported PC and Mac users in mixed shops, it was a nightmare to deal with). The latest version of Office for Mac, Office 2008 showed that Microsoft could produce top quality Macintosh software. I personally, think Office 2008 for Mac is the best version of the software that Microsoft has ever done (far better than Office 2007 for Windows, as it preserved the core part of the Mac UI while co-existing nicely with the ribbon UI). Obviously, however, a situation with such broad inconsistency is untenable.
It was clear that given the uneven quality of Office through the years, Apple might want to invest in its own offerings for Mac users and not be forced to rely on Microsoft to deliver key applications and services to the platform. Early on there was ClarisWorks for Macintosh (later renamed AppleWorks, an all in one integrated application) but it was clear AppleWorks was not enough. When Apple introduced Keynote for presentations, it was obvious to most that word processing and spreadsheets could not be far behind. They weren't, and over the years Apple added those applications and created their own productivity suite called iLife. The problem for Mac users in a business environment was one key feature. The ability to work with Exchange servers for corporate mail, calendar and contacts. For years, Windows users have had Outlook as the integrated client to handle that task as part of Office. Mac users had nothing. Over the years Microsoft added a roughly equivalent program called Entourage. I say roughly equivalent because it was buggy, slow and often created odd data errors (I'd regularly find some, not all, of my appointments moved off by one day -- about as bad as it gets for a calendaring program). Unfortunately, for Mac users, there wasn't much of a choice. It was Entourage or nothing for Exchange support. That is, until Apple introduced Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard adds in integrated Exchange support as a key feature and for users who need to connect Exchange servers -- and it's a reason to upgrade all by itself.
I've been using Snow Leopard for a few weeks now with our corporate Exchange server and I'm pleased to report: it just works. Simply (far easier to configure Snow Leopard to work with our Exchange server than to set up a new copy of Outlook). Within moments of entering my email address and password, all my calendar items, contacts, email, and to-do lists were integrated into the appropriate Snow Leopard apps. I haven't had a single problem with the configuration. As many reviews have pointed out, Snow Leopard has a lot of nice features but Exchange support may prove to be a killer app for Apple in helping to drive business sales -- as well as help blunt a lot of the marketing hype around Windows 7. I can't overstate how important Exchange support is. For me -- as user who's used both platforms for years -- I've been constrained to using Windows mostly because Exchange worked so much better than Entourage did. With the introduction of the latest version of iLife and Snow Leopard, I find I'm not just doing my creative stuff on the Mac, but am able to fully migrate my business use as well (I'll talk about my lessons as a swticher sometime in the future).
It's shaping up to be an interesting fall for operating systems (and of course computer sales). Apple and Microsoft are going head to head directly with new OS releases within weeks of each other. It will be interesting to see how the market will react to adopting both at once. Right now, I'm more inclined to recommend Mac owners running either Tiger or Leopard upgrade to Snow Leopard (especially when it comes to businesses -- certainly more than I would suggest XP or Vista users to make the leap to Windows 7).
In my opinion, if you're running Leopard, the upgrade to Snow Leopard is easily worth the $29 (or $49 family license). For business users, the Exchange support is worth more than the cost of the upgrade. Even at the $169 price point for Tiger users, it's a pretty strong value with the inclusion of media software of iLife, office productivity software iWork and of course, the OS itself. In fact, this is where it gets interesting. For Mac users to want to get Microsoft Office for Mac with Exchange support, that SKU has a price tag of $399. Just the Student and Home version of Mac Office is $149, that of course wouldn't include Snow Leopard (and Exchange support or the latest version of iLife). Apple's inclusion of Exchange support directly into the OS has effectively reduced the price of that feature to zero dollars. As an aside, it's ironic that Apple offers Exchange support directly with OS X now, while Windows 7 users will still need to purchase a copy of Outlook to connect to their corporate email. Apple now has a fully credible business offering with applications and support for all major corporate protocols. Combined with an OS platform that encourages in place upgrades -- as opposed to formatting your hard drive an starting from scratch -- you have some pretty strong competition for the folks in Redmond.
Don't get me wrong, I think Windows 7 is a fine upgrade and perhaps the best version of Windows Microsoft has ever done (the Vista that should have shipped, really). It's just that the upgrade is priced far too high in my opinion relative to the value it offers, especially when combined with a challenging upgrade process -- most notably for those users looking to upgrade from XP.
In the end, there's a lot to like about Snow Leopard (as we've seen in today's reviews), but it's the integrated Exchange support that's likely to drive an entirely new set of customers to the platform. As for existing Mac users, they now have one less reason to do business with Microsoft, as Apple removes one more barrier for platform adoption.
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
It was clear that given the uneven quality of Office through the years, Apple might want to invest in its own offerings for Mac users and not be forced to rely on Microsoft to deliver key applications and services to the platform. Early on there was ClarisWorks for Macintosh (later renamed AppleWorks, an all in one integrated application) but it was clear AppleWorks was not enough. When Apple introduced Keynote for presentations, it was obvious to most that word processing and spreadsheets could not be far behind. They weren't, and over the years Apple added those applications and created their own productivity suite called iLife. The problem for Mac users in a business environment was one key feature. The ability to work with Exchange servers for corporate mail, calendar and contacts. For years, Windows users have had Outlook as the integrated client to handle that task as part of Office. Mac users had nothing. Over the years Microsoft added a roughly equivalent program called Entourage. I say roughly equivalent because it was buggy, slow and often created odd data errors (I'd regularly find some, not all, of my appointments moved off by one day -- about as bad as it gets for a calendaring program). Unfortunately, for Mac users, there wasn't much of a choice. It was Entourage or nothing for Exchange support. That is, until Apple introduced Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard adds in integrated Exchange support as a key feature and for users who need to connect Exchange servers -- and it's a reason to upgrade all by itself.
I've been using Snow Leopard for a few weeks now with our corporate Exchange server and I'm pleased to report: it just works. Simply (far easier to configure Snow Leopard to work with our Exchange server than to set up a new copy of Outlook). Within moments of entering my email address and password, all my calendar items, contacts, email, and to-do lists were integrated into the appropriate Snow Leopard apps. I haven't had a single problem with the configuration. As many reviews have pointed out, Snow Leopard has a lot of nice features but Exchange support may prove to be a killer app for Apple in helping to drive business sales -- as well as help blunt a lot of the marketing hype around Windows 7. I can't overstate how important Exchange support is. For me -- as user who's used both platforms for years -- I've been constrained to using Windows mostly because Exchange worked so much better than Entourage did. With the introduction of the latest version of iLife and Snow Leopard, I find I'm not just doing my creative stuff on the Mac, but am able to fully migrate my business use as well (I'll talk about my lessons as a swticher sometime in the future).
For business users, the Exchange support is worth more than the cost of the upgrade to Snow Leopard. |
It's shaping up to be an interesting fall for operating systems (and of course computer sales). Apple and Microsoft are going head to head directly with new OS releases within weeks of each other. It will be interesting to see how the market will react to adopting both at once. Right now, I'm more inclined to recommend Mac owners running either Tiger or Leopard upgrade to Snow Leopard (especially when it comes to businesses -- certainly more than I would suggest XP or Vista users to make the leap to Windows 7).
In my opinion, if you're running Leopard, the upgrade to Snow Leopard is easily worth the $29 (or $49 family license). For business users, the Exchange support is worth more than the cost of the upgrade. Even at the $169 price point for Tiger users, it's a pretty strong value with the inclusion of media software of iLife, office productivity software iWork and of course, the OS itself. In fact, this is where it gets interesting. For Mac users to want to get Microsoft Office for Mac with Exchange support, that SKU has a price tag of $399. Just the Student and Home version of Mac Office is $149, that of course wouldn't include Snow Leopard (and Exchange support or the latest version of iLife). Apple's inclusion of Exchange support directly into the OS has effectively reduced the price of that feature to zero dollars. As an aside, it's ironic that Apple offers Exchange support directly with OS X now, while Windows 7 users will still need to purchase a copy of Outlook to connect to their corporate email. Apple now has a fully credible business offering with applications and support for all major corporate protocols. Combined with an OS platform that encourages in place upgrades -- as opposed to formatting your hard drive an starting from scratch -- you have some pretty strong competition for the folks in Redmond.
Don't get me wrong, I think Windows 7 is a fine upgrade and perhaps the best version of Windows Microsoft has ever done (the Vista that should have shipped, really). It's just that the upgrade is priced far too high in my opinion relative to the value it offers, especially when combined with a challenging upgrade process -- most notably for those users looking to upgrade from XP.
In the end, there's a lot to like about Snow Leopard (as we've seen in today's reviews), but it's the integrated Exchange support that's likely to drive an entirely new set of customers to the platform. As for existing Mac users, they now have one less reason to do business with Microsoft, as Apple removes one more barrier for platform adoption.
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
I immediately thought of "superhero" by jane's addiction.
yah me too!
Office 2008 for Mac > Office 2007 ? OMGWTFROFLCOPTERLMAO
The whole point was to avoid the cluttered drop down menu's of 2003 and move to a quicker visual bar. People complain about this ribbon bar, but if they would learn it, it's a more efficient toolbar. I appreciate many parts of Mac OSX , but being forced to use the global bar at the top for every application just hinders my spirit, and it is what I believe holds back some applications. I used use Office 2008 at my Student Help desk in College last year when I worked there, and found it sluggish and slow. Please be kind with responses, this is just based on personal opinion and experience.
I agree entirely, Office 2008 is terrible. Not to mention the lack of VBA.
During my business class every mac user is like f' that and uses the lab computers. The point of the ribbon is to be quick and fast, something that did not transfer at all during the port. I'm sure when 2010 comes out they will try to catch up by fixing these porting issues.
I have to agree 100%. My first experience with Office 2007 was in a foreign language (talk about a pain in the ass to learn), but now that I'm used to it I LOVE it. Office 2008 isn't bad (MUCH better than Office X and Office 2004), but it certainly isn't Office 2007.
I also completely agree. Once you learn the ribbon from Office 2007, it's frickin' awesome.
The problem is, Office 2008 does not play nice with my project-mates using Office 2007. In Word, default styles are completely swapped from the 2007 one, no compatible equation editor, and I seem to have massive problems with table compatibility. Excel 2008 functionality is completely gimped compared to 2007. Annnnnnd well, to be honest I prefer Keynote over PowerPoint 2008 lol.
So I parallel XP just to run damn Office 2007. Sad.
Absolutely. Although it's a personal opinion and therefore can't be 'wrong' as such it's 'wrong' in the same way as someone who believes the Earth is flat is.
Office 2007 is much better than Office 2008. Sorry, but it is.
As for the inclusion of Exchange support, that's great but it doesn't get over the hurdle of the real issues why Macs aren't a realistic commercial platform for most businesses - cost, vendor lock in and compatibility.
I'm a Mac user, but prefer Office '08 on a PC. The ribbon menu is not really implemented very well in the Mac version. In the Windows version, I enjoy being able to set 0.5" margins, landscape orientation, with two columns in about three seconds. To me, this is the best feature of the new Office and it was the biggest thing left out of the Mac version!
I also agree. The Finder bar is great for many applications, but it just doesn't work with an application as large and complex as any of the office applications. It didn't work on Windows (which is why the Ribbon is so great), and it doesn't work on the Mac.
The best office suite on any platform is probably Office 2007 (I haven't tried Office 13, but I'm not impressed by the screenshots I have seen). If you limit yourself to Mac suites, iWork beats Office 2008 in my opinion.
The semi-ribbon that Microsoft included in O08 was a total disappointment. It doesn't include frequently used tasks, and is basically an omnipresent title page picker. In fact, I find the semi-ribbon to be worse than the menu bar system. That's why I use iWork. It's far from perfect (especially Numbers), but it's good enough for my work as a student (Nanotechnology masters), and it's better than Office:Mac.
There's one thing everyone seems to be ignoring, while Exchange support may come by default with Snow Leopard, I definitely feel that for each copy sold, Microsoft is getting a cut in licensing fees. While it may be "easier" to obtain in Mac OS X, when you consider that EVERY copy of Snow Leopard will probably be sending money over Microsoft's way, it probably doesn't cost as much.
Besides, there's no REASON to bundle that functionality into Windows, when it starts taking away form Office revenue. And a copy of the full version of Office costs MUCH more than a copy of the full version of Windows.
Well Apple is licensing Exchange from Microsoft so there is a fee involved as well. I wonder how much per license.
well it's not really fair if you put it that way - adobe cs suites cost around two grand -.-
OK people, here's the deal. I have been administering Exchange servers for 12 years and this author is writing about regarding getting "free" Exchange access is not true. EVERYONE must pay to access an Exchange server. That cost is not in Snow Leopard or Outlook or Windows or anything else on the client end. It is at the server end that you must pay. They are called Client Access Licenses (or CALs for short). Every single device that accesses an Exchange server must have a CAL purchased for that access. So Exchange access is NOT free in Snow Leopard. You have to pay at the server side, not the client side of the equation. So for example, if you have a company with 10 people who access Exchange from 10 computers then you need to buy the Exchange Server software and 10 CALs. It doesn't matter what you are using to access Exchange. It could be Outlook. It could be Thunderbird (using IMAP). It could be Mail in Snow Leopard. It could be an iPhone using wireless sync. It doesn't matter. You still need 10 CALs.
Hope that clears up some of the misconceptions that this author put forth.
I stopped reading this, as soon as I read the author claim that Office 2008 was better than 2007. I wanted to like 2008, but dropped it, when I realized it had the worst trouble with largeish Excel files, not to mention that it was just generally slow, in comparison to 2007.
This is subjective I guess. I went from Office 2007 (Win) to Office 2008 (Mac) and found it way less in-your-face/cluttered. I much prefer Office on Mac for the tasks I use it for. Less button clicks in Entourage compared with Outlook for common tasks.
The productivity suite is called iWork, not iLife.
lol..........mirrored my thoughts
Yeah, I was surprised he got that wrong in the article twice, yet he still mentioned iWork at the end of the article. Seemed odd, but I've done similar things in the past.
There is a significant flaw in the argument that Windows does not come with Exchange support and requires you to purchase Outlook. It is completely erroneous. I will give you that Outlook is not included in Windows 7 out of the box, but neither is a simple POP3 client. The real flaw in the argument is that in order to use Microsoft Exchange legally, you need to buy CALs (Client Access Licenses). CALs for Exchange automatically grant you a license to Outlook (not the complete Office suite mind you, just Outlook). In fact if you buy a boxed copy of Exchange it comes with a disc for Outlook to install on those Windows clients for free.
Personally I kind of like that Windows 7 has stripped out the stuff I don't need unless I install it myself. For a long time Outlook was the least secure thing on a PC outside of IE, and I wouldn't put it on anything that didn't need it.
Oh and Outlook for Mac is coming.....
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/176375.asp
The free Outlook copy with an Exchange CAL is only the case with Exchange 2003. Microsoft changed the licensing terms for Exchange 2007 and beyond - you are now required to purchase a copy of Outlook in ADDITION to your Exchange CAL.
It's nice that Microsoft will be including outlook in the next version of Mac Office, but it's too little, too late for me. By the time we get Office 2010, I'd imagine that many people will already be enjoying the native Exchange integration, and paying the estimated $240 for an upgrade is far more then I'm willing to spend so I can (finally) use Microsoft's solution. If the native support is as good as everyone says it is, I'll be skipping 2010 all together. By the time a 2010 successor rolls around, I'd be interested to see where Apple's productivity sweet is.
I have no faith in Entourage 2011. I'm convinced it'll be Entourage with a yellow icon. Unless they start doing true RPC (with transport encryption), Keberos/NTLM and RPC/HTTP (Outlook Anywhere)... it's not really Outlook. Bonus points for respecting a PRF.
No. Exchange 2007 CALs do not include Outlook. 2003 and prior did.
i really like iwork's pages application for some inexplicable reason
So do I. I ended up skipping word and moving straight from Word Perfect to Pages.
You're not alone. I've got Office and iWork 09 installed, and with the exception of Excel, I've simply stopped using Office all together. Pages is more then enough of a word processor for me, and as a document layout tool, it's incredibly intuitive. As for PowerPoint vs. Keynote, I've been using Keynote as my primary presentation software since it launched.
I'm in the same boat. I was quite hesitant to try iWork, but figured the trial couldn't hurt. I got hooked completely on it. The compatibility is really intuitive to me and does a really impressive job as well. I actually had to take a basic micorsoft office class for college and I did all my work in iWork and just exported it as office files, and the teacher never knew the difference. I only had to do the tests in office cause they were in class. I think Pages is a little better than word. Numbers has its advantages and disadvantages compared to excel (I think for the common user numbers is easier, but for the advanced user excel has much more functionality) but keynote blows powerpoint out of the water. Give me 5-10 minutes with keynote and I could make a presentation that looks WAY better than anything you can do in powerpoint. I LOVE the presenter notes, the timer, all that layout that you can set up, and how easy it is to use. I even use keynote remote on my iPhone, and it's worked flawlessly every time I've needed it. I'm really interested to see what Snow Leopard does with exchange, because to me that's the only thing that Office has on iWork.
On a side note, I agree with the other users that the office for windows is better than office for mac as far as the latest versions go. I think even office 2003 is better than 2008 on macs... they made it slower, and they took out features. Entourage is a joke. I don't really like the windows version, because although it's really powerful and you can do some nice stuff with it, it's just too hard to use. Everyone at the top of this article is mentioning how "once you learn office 2007, it's not hard to use at all". Why should you have to learn to use it? It should be easy to figure out. Anyway, just my thoughts on the subject. Everyone's different though, that's why there's still different things to choose from.
Apple really should port Keynote over to the PC (not that they ever will). Powerpoint 08 has simply become counter-intuitive and more bloated than a body after two weeks in the Potomac river. I've resorted to opening my old Powerpoint files in Keynote and I export to Powerpoint if I need to share with a PC colleague. The trouble with that approach is that the presentation tends to get dumbed down.
Snow Leopard will probably be a worthy upgrade to Leopard, and it will enhance the user experience...
However, I don't think it will cause that many people to switch. Exchange is almost purely a business way of emailing (except for my school, for some reason runs Exchange servers), and this feature may not be that important to normal consumers. What consumers care about these days are price, price, price. You can see that from the effectiveness of those god awful Laptop Hunter ads. I mean, most people don't even know what a web browser is. This new Exchange support is not going to draw that crowd. Besides, I thought the core base of Mac users were consumers, musicians, visual artists, movie makers...; Generally not the kind of people you would expect to be setting up appointments and meetings, and getting push email from their exchange servers to answer as many emails as possible on the way to the airport.
I am not saying that adding Exchange support is a wrong move. This definitely is a step in the right direction. Apple has to add more enterprise features in to their OS to get their market share up. But Windows has much more than just Exchange support and Office suite on their side (and contrary to what this article states, Office for Mac 2008 is rubbish...), they have 20 years of enterprise support on their hands. It will certainly take more than just Exchange support to convince businesses to start moving to Mac.
It's not just for business. I use it at home too. I didn't care much for MobileMe so cancelled it and switched to a hosted Exchange provider for a similar amount of money. Working very nicely with email/calendar/contacts synced between my home computers and iPhone, and it works with my own email address which for some bizarre reason I couldn't configure with MobileMe (on iPhone at least). Plus Exchange has server side filters too. Anyhow, with Exchange now on Mac as standard I expect these hosted Exchange providers to have a surge of new customers. And it wont just be purely business either - MobileMe has shown regular users are willing to pay for Exchange-like features already.
In all fairness, I am a graphic artist and I can definitively say that I DO, quite often set up meetings and appointments if not daily, then definitely weekly. It's hard to make money if all you're doing is sitting around making art and not meeting and networking with clients or colleagues or managers or producers. Musicians, visual artists and movie makers are all in business too.
I guess I should also add that email is my life. I use it to send clients drafts and invoices. I do need to check it often so when revisions are required I get them right away so I can make the revisions and still meet my deadlines.
The other thing I think Snow Leopard is doing to invade the business market that sometimes gets overlooked is the server version of Snow Leopard. Keep in mind that there are exchange features in that software as well. You're right about cost being a big issue right now, but that's why I think it's interesting that Snow Leopard Server is going to be only $500 for an unlimited client use. That's pretty hard to pass up. I really think you're going to see a lot of businesses starting to consider that as a real offering, especially the smaller businesses that don't want to pay much for server software. I wish someone would write an article reviewing snow leopard server.....
No - not because integrated Exchange support isn't a big deal but because Apple's implementation of Active Directory and management through Open Directory (with the "magic triangle" setup or whatever the heck it's referred to as) sucks. It's not nearly as "set it and forget it" as most Apple stuff is. Overall it works just fine, it's the little nagging issues that are absolutely obnoxious.
Looking at our entire userbase (mostly teachers, K-12 school), the five Mac users always come to mind first when thinking of the people with the most issues. Most of the time it's dumb stuff that has broken because of the integration with AD/OD - like permissions changing inexplicably, network accounts never becoming available at login, applications that work for one user and not another when there shouldn't be any difference, keychain's password not syncing, etc. It's a horribly complex cat and mouse game to try and catch all the little crap that doesn't work and needs fixing before deployment. I really don't think Macs are ready for the business world yet, not until the little things are refined. Big time.
Snow Leopard (and Snow Leopard Server), actually fix alot of the AD/OD issues. I've been pissed as hell about alot of the problems we've been having with AD and Leopard, specifically its inability to work properly with a two domain deep forest, and in testing the last couple of betas and the RTM of SL, found that they all magically went away. The random DFS and MCX related issues just aren't there anymore. If you're running Leopard in an AD environment, it behooves you to update to SL as soon as possible.
The issue is that we just upgraded the 20 lab MacBooks to Leopard this past summer (which ended yesterday). We don't have the means to upgrade the 20 labacs, along with the seven or so other Macs we have. Let alone the SL Server upgrade for $500 - there's just no way.
Any word if it will support multiple exchange servers, ala palm pre?
+1 on this one.
One of the few things that Entourage has going for it over Outlook is that it does support multiple Exchange Servers. I'm not a great fan of the implementation by any means, but it works.
If native Exchange support in Snow Leopard solves this, I will almost certainly kiss Entourage goodbye... and it might even be the medium-term solution -- at least until Outlook for Mac finally ships.
i liked using claris
Entourage already supports multiple exchange servers now but it was missing Categories, Notes, and task synchronization until the Web Services Edition. Apple did a great job putting Exchange support for Address Book, iCal, and Mail but failed to keep all the fields such as categories, and flags for e-mails. Hopefully Mac Outlook coming out soon will fix these issues and give Mac users one application to combine all three to five functions. Currently Snow Leopard supports multiple exchange account sync which is great but it does lack the fields that I mentioned. Overall, it looks like Apple's OS is turning out to be a very effective business OS.
Entourage with Exchange Web Services (just released as an addition to SP2) fixes a lot of these issues with Entourage (assuming you're running Exchange 2007 SP1 on your CAS/MB servers). Still isn't as "perfect" as OWA or Outlook, but its much better. Entourage still sucks in general, but at least it works.
Sorry, misread your post. Didn't see that you talked about Entourage EWS directly.
Ah, so Notes and Categories don't sync? I was wondering about that. Looks like Entourage Web Services is currently the best bet.
Doesn't SL require that you are running Exchange Server 2007 for it to work? If so, I'm SOL because our IT group is far behind and won't be running ES 2007 until 2012 (probably).
yes you do my school runs 2003 or something and i can set it up on my iphone but not SL
Exchange 2007 is what the minimum specifications are, Exchange 2007 SP1 is what's required for it to run properly. It works just fine with the Exchange 2010 RC as well.
Get over yourself Entelligence. No one gives a shit about your lame blog or "desire for a delicious cup of coffee."
I think Engadget is trying to bring more professionalism to their site, but it ends up half and half most of the time.
It tends to sound very impressive at first read (if you're just learning about whatever it is), but upon reading the comments and seeing a plethora of errors pointed out, it's rather disappointing.
Note that the author is not a switcher, but a "swticher".
This is a combination of "switcher" and "tic" - you've migrated from Windows to Mac, but the occasional thing that doesn't work correctly causes an involuntary eye movement born of annoyance.
Yes - I do like a spell checker... swticher doesn't really do it for me either. (note to author, do a find and replace for swticher to switcher)
I've been really impressed with the Snow Leopard support for Exchange 2007 (and Cisco VPN). It's not 100% native (shared resource, appointments, etc are still a little off), it won't replace Outlook 2007 for day to day use, but for having my email/calendar open at home, it sure beats OWA on 2007 w/ FireFox or Safari. It's the same thing as the iPhone's EAS support; it's not the best in the world, but it really does it tie the whole package together.
As an IT department, we're recommending that users buy iPhone/iPod Touches at this point over Windows Mobile devices or Blackberries. Everyone in IT is running iPhones now that it does EAS. It may seem like a small thing, but EAS is a trojan horse for Apple.
wait wait wait, so Microsoft used to own Apple?! anywhere else i can read up on this?
It didn't use to own but Microsoft has bought shared of Apple.
They made a huge investment that saved the company.
Yet Apple still rubbishes MS as it always has.
MS does not own Apple in any way. Due to a Quicktime lawsuit in which MS used QT code in Windows Media Player, MS paid off Apple to drop it by giving them a large undisclosed amount of cash and made a public show of support to Apple by purchasing $150 million of non-voting stock.
Also, it didn't save Apple, because they haven't needed saving. Apple has always kept an extremely healthy cash and short-term investment portfolio for emergencies, which was around $4billion at the time of these transactions.
Now, wouldnt it be nice if microsoft tossed out an upgrade that blocked macs from using exchange? hmm? a little taste of their own medicine?
The difference is that Apple is paying Microsoft for the privileged most likely - unlike palm trying to fool itunes.
That being said I still think Apple would say no to palm if it asked nicely.
Pah, Microsoft should throw that money back at Steve Jobs' face and tell him to sod off.
It makes me wonder about MS strategy.
Get more users using and being reliant on Exchange server and removing the barriers stopping a lot of users switching the Macs and iPhones. I can only see a situation where these services get better and better on the Apple side of things so why in a business context limit yourself to windows?
Curious - or am I looking at this from a too shallow point of view and there are more positives for MS?
Remember that like at most large companies each group at Microsoft has to pay-their-way, so the exchange/activesynch guys have to bring home the bacon to justify their existence. So they sell an activesynch license for every iPhone and now presumably every copy of snow leopard. Well, while I am sure it is heavily volume discounted (despite apple having a smallish share of computers, it is a small slice of a ginormous pie) it is probably a very nice addition to their group's bottom line, thereby making their budget look good.
Sony had similar issues with selling players and then media divisions selling version of their media on iTunes which wouldn't load on their own players and encouraged folks to buy apple hardware. While I am sure the guys in the walkman division complained, the media guys probably said "that's great, we currently sell $X via iTunes, are you going to transfer that much to our budget from your division? No? well then go away".
From a corporate standpoint, it's not like apple's adding activesynch is going to push windows out of the corporate world, and in fact could push more sites to use exchange (like mac only shops for instance).
Why do I get the feeling that all of these Exchange/email/Entourage discussions make about as much sense today as 1994 discussions about the importance of FAX messaging?
Email is dead, most of us just don't know that yet.
Email is dead? And will be replaced by what...Twitter? Facebook?
Please. Email isn't going anywhere anytime soon. There is no viable alternative on the horizon.
Yes Whitney, email is dead. IPv6 will be the final nail in the coffin. Do you remember all of the money and effort companies invested in "FAX servers" and FAX-back systems? How many of them are operating today?
The future of messaging is evolving, but the use of email servers and services will be essentially dead in five years.
The secret of Exchange's success is that it is far from just e-mail. But whatever the future of messaging is, even if you're right, it'll likely be wrapped up into Exchange at some point anyway.
"I personally, think Office 2008 for Mac is the best version of the software that Microsoft has ever done (far better than Office 2007 for Windows" - i personally, think that a guy who says so must be a total monkey or wants to be beaten.
If you want to see what Microsoft is doing to their next powerpoint to compete with Keynote you can see it at this video link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrBd_V7gXQ4
Looks pretty on par to keynote imo. I'm running the technical preview right now and it's great.
That's great news about PPT. Keep up the good work! Redmond's leading-edge best is usually "on par" with something Apple released three years ago.
Great review. I'm looking forward to trying Snow Leopard for myself, especially the Exchange support.
What exactly do you mean by "far easier to configure Snow Leopard to work with our Exchange server than to set up a new copy of Outlook"? I imagine you are not comparing "installing Outlook + setting up an Exchange account in that newly installed copy" versus "configuring Snow Leopard to connect to Exchange"? My understanding of your article is that the account creation process in Snow Leopard is easier to complete than its Outlook counterpart.
Anybody know if it will support RPC over HTTP?
Agreed, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I was posting to the thread below...
Am I the only one that thinks this Michael Gartenberg guy's articles suck?
No...he's pretentious jackass who doesn't know what he's talking about. Personally I think he's pulled one over Engadget and his self-proclaimed "technology strategist" is a complete hogwash.
His article does suck. He forgets to mention the big kicker here, Exchange 2007 required! This is a pretty big point, as most businesses/universities have no migrated to 07 yet.
I have to take issue with the assertion that it's "far easier to configure Snow Leopard to work with our Exchange server than to set up a new copy of Outlook"
Starting from ground zero (no Office installation at all), this is all you need to "setup a new copy of Outlook"
1. Install Office. Hard to imagine as it may be, this is no more difficult than clicking Next a few times and possibly entering a license key.
2. Launch Outlook from the Start menu.
3. When it first launches, you're prompted to either enter an email address/password combo (for webmail usage) or manually configure an Exchange account. Manual configuration involves entering THREE PIECES OF INFORMATION: Exchange server name, user name, password.
[And in a typical Windows/Active Directory environment, you're already logged on to a domain so you don't even need to know the user name or password. You just type a few letters of the last name, click Check Name, and it finds you in the LDAP database.]
That's it. You're done. A few seconds later, Outlook has your calendar, contacts, email, and whatever the fuck else you have on the server.
I do this every day at work. It's not hard.
um, not to split hairs here, but to set up exchange in snow leopard:
1. Launch Mail.app from the dock
2. Enter three pieces of information, exchange server, username password.
that's it, you're done. now, i'm no expert, but that seems easier to me.
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Though I admit, I am a fairly new mac user, I have been in IT support for over 14 years. I installed Office 2008 and love my Entourage. I admit, Outlook is a little better, but, Entourage so far has worked perfectly for me. I have not seen any issues with it (knock on wood). As far as the actual Office Suite, I do not use Office (Word, Excel, PPT) enough to really be able to provide a good opinion, but as far as Entourage goes, I think it is great, so far.