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Okay, I know this will not surprise anyone, but look, the Exchange 2007 blog is doing its best to make IMAP look like something only the abused kids use. "The kids whose parents really love them use Exchange Active Sync, so if all your parents let you use is IMAP..."
I'll leave off how even Outlook 2007 still can't do IMAP as well as it should, it never has, and who here thinks IMAP, (Client OR Server), is more of a priority to the Exchange team than color coding door handles?
Right. So on to the FUD:
Both IMAP and EAS give the mobile client the capability to read email with rich html formatting, and view their inbox as well as subfolders of their inbox and reply/reply-all/forward/compose email (technically, the iPhone uses SMTP to send email. SMTP for outbound email is configured along during IMAP/Exchange account setup on the device).
Okay, so first of all guys, the ability to read email has nothing whatsoever to do with the protocol used to deliver it. Really. I know this seems pedantic, but since you are, in theory, developers of a system that has a vague association with email, can we get the details correct? It is not the MTA, (Mail Transfer Agent, i.e. Exchange, Cyrus, etc.) that enables the reading of email in any form, rich, poor, or in debt up to its eyeballs. The MTA, as its name suggests, transfers email from node a to node b. These nodes may be user machines or other email servers. It is the MUA or Mail User Agent, that enables the reading of email and deals with rich text. But then again, Microsoft couldn't be bothered to let you read HTML email on a handheld until Windows Mobile 6, which is not much older than the iPhone, so I guess some confusion is normal. Especially from Microsoft.
EAS also supports capabilities for:Direct Push, which provides an up-to-date messaging experience designed for mobile networks
(Craig, this one's for you to take note of) Could someone please send, to whomever the hell teaches communication skills/techniques at Microsoft, a copy of the Chicago Manual, and perhaps a sixth - grade grammar text? I swear, there's almost no one from that company who can write a proper English sentence. For those of you not fluent in weasel, Direct Push lets you get email et al without having to manually check for it on a schedule. Those with a clue are thinking, "You mean like IDLE in IMAP?", and that would be correct. Direct Push covers more than IDLE, but (as we see later in the article), IMAP does indeed allow for a Direct Push-like function. Even if you only speak English.
Email flagging to improve the triage experience on the device
Again with the weasel. Jesus, why not say "EAS lets you flag email so that you can manage it easier from your phone." You're not Hawkeye Pierce, you're not even Noah Wiley, stop using terms that don't apply because you think they look cool. I'm also not sure that this isn't a WM 6 - only feature. However, it is correct to say that IMAP doesn't support this. It is also correct to say that IMAP doesn't not support this, because in the world of email servers, flagging messages is an MUA function. It is also completely correct to say that if you, (HORRORS) use an MUA that doesn't support Exchange/Outlook's flagging feature, the flags are exactly as useful as a third nipple on your forehead. When you're male. In other words, what they kind of forget is that flagging, at least in their implementation, is not implemented in a way that is of use to other MUAs. But this is the Exchange team here, "denial" is their summer home.
AutoDiscover to simplify the process of setting up a new device over-the-air
As long as it's a WM device talking to Exchange. While there has been a lot of work in doing this better for IMAP et al, this is one area where I really wish the IETF people would spend a lot more time. Client configuration should be simpler, and this is one area that Apple appears to be looking at for Leopard. The downside is, I'm going to guess it will be an Open Directory - only feature.
Server-side logic to preserve the formatting of rich email on reply/forward if the mobile client doesn't support rich html editing (most don't)
You mean "Most WM clients don't". The iPhone handles this just fine, but in any event, this is not a function of IMAP. Maybe if Microsoft hadn't shipped broke-dick email clients with WM until WM 6, they wouldn't be cheering about such an obvious feature like being able to properly read HTML email. As far as editing, the iPhone doesn't support creating HTML email, but then again, I can't see how doing that on any phone would be anything but teh suck. In any event, this is not a protocol/server issue, it's a client one. Maybe if the Exchange team didn't have to do client dev as well, they'd remember the difference.
Numerous bandwidth optimizations to reduce data charges and improve battery life
Okay, this is not only a post full of weasel, but now it's not even making sense. Here's an idea: Don't ship your devices with shitty batteries, (Motorola Q? Looking RIGHT AT YOU PAL), and stop suckering people into limited data plans for WM and similar devices. iPhone users don't have to care about data charges, it's all unlimited. Yay for foresight. However, IMAP is, when implemented correctly, (something the Exchange team has yet to really do), quite parsimonious with bandwidth. I can tell you from personal experience that a proper IMAP setup can let you download over 3000 mail headers in under 5 minutes on a 33.6K modem. What the Exchange team doesn't want to point out is that unlike quite a few of the implementations out there, (including, sadly, Entourage's, and it would appear, the iPhone's too), IMAP is designed to work in three stages:
- Get the headers from the IMAP server and nothing more.
- When a message is selected for reading, then and only then, download the body of the message, and nothing more.
- Attachments are left on the server with naught but a pointer on the client until the human decides to download them
Offline use is enabled via caching. Unfortunately, most MUAs don't do this correctly, but rather operate like IMAP is some form of POP, and you have no option to do it the correct way. Pity really, it makes spam handling easy on the bandwidth. So yes, contrary to what the Exchange team would have you believe, IMAP is designed to be every bit as nice to the bandwidth and power gods as EAS, and, unlike EAS, is fully documented and available for all to use sans licensing agreements.
Now, on to the areas where Exchange has an advantage, but only kind of.
A significant part of the Exchange user experience goes beyond email. The IMAP protocol only supports email. EAS is designed to enable a great over-the-air companion experience to Outlook and OWA and supports many facets of Exchange beyond email, including:
EAS enables a great OTA experience as long as you sign the licensing agreements. Who here trusts anything from a Microsoft team that has anything to do with Windows as far as you can throw them? That's what I thought. However, this is also a bit disingenuous. IMAP is not an end - all and be - all protocol. It is designed to do one thing: Deliver email from an MTA to an MUA. That's it. For that matter, EAS isn't any of that. It's designed to be a middleman between Exchange and EAS clients. It is more correct to say that EAS makes for easier delivery of Exchange data, because sister, if your server ain't Exchange, Kerio, or another server that's licensed EAS, you ain't doin' squat with that. However, the implication that sans EAS, you're cut off from all things but email is incorrect. There are current, or about to be current standards that handle this, and considering the updates Apple is making for Leopard, I'll go out on a limb and say that you'll see a Leopard-friendly update for the iPhone.
Contact synchronization - view, create and update contacts
Handled by LDAP for everyone else, not currently in iPhone, but not unique to EAS.
Calendar synchronization - view, create & update appointments, schedule meetings, and accept/decline/propose new time for meeting requests
CalDAV, almost done, not currently in iPhone, but not unique to EAS.
Global Address List (GAL) lookup - look-up users in your corporate directory
LDAP
Tasks synchronization
CalDAV
Out-of-office (OOF) email responses - turn on/off and change the OOF message directly from your mobile phone
Handled by a boot to the head...sorry. This is a server - specific implementation, and EAS's won't work with anything but Exchange. OOF's are the stupid's work, and a sign that you think you're far more important than you really are.
Access to documents stored in Sharepoint document libraries and UNC shares
WebDAV and SMB, and what the fuck does this have to do with groupware? Wait, nevermind, it's Microsoft. I'm sure they can come up with a way to tie Halo 3 into this shit. Nonetheless, this has fuck-all to do with either IMAP or anything else vaguely on-topic unless you're a Microsoft PM.
Search your entire mailbox on the server regardless of what's cached on the mobile phone
BAAAHAHAHAAHAHAHA...wait, IMAP doesn't allow you to search the server store separately from the client cache? Wow, Exchange/Outlook's piss-poor IMAP performance makes sense now: The devs behind them don't know the friggin' protocol specs. I suggest they take a look at a Microsoft product that actually gives a rat's ass about IMAP, namely Entourage, talk to the E'rage team, and learn what IMAP actually does. See, this is what happens when you really want to rag on the iPhone, but are pretending to rag on IMAP. Focus guys, I know Microsoft has no clue about what "focus" means, but go look at your own dictionary, it'd be a start.
Allowing users to manage their mobile device(s) using OWA - see device activity, help retrieve forgotten PIN, remotely wipe lost device, etc
How about some versions in there guys? Somehow, I don't think you're doing this with older versions of Exchange or WM. But again, none of this has anything to do with IMAP. See, this is what happens when your brain is replaced by a wonky hard drive running Vista Ultimate. You can't stay on bloody topic. Half of what you're on about has nothing to do with IMAP. It's like bitching a Ferrari can't out-dive the Alvin, so therefore, it's a crappy submarine.
EAS and IMAP both secure data on the network; EAS also protects data once it's on the device
Repeat after me until you get it: "IMAP is an email protocol, and only an email protocol. It has nothing to do with client device management. Email is not whatever I want it to be, and no matter how brainwashed I am by my Young Frankensteinish Overlord, bullshit doesn't change reality".
Microsoft Exchange does have IMAP support that provides for an adequate email experience. The iPhone can access email via IMAP if the IT department has enabled IMAP connectivity for users. However, IMAP has limitations from both an IT and user standpoint with respect to security and richness of experience that prevent it from being a complete solution for mobile device access to Microsoft Exchange.
"We are so brainwashed that we'd believe anything if the sender of the email's last name is Ballmer" Go back to the chant guys, you're huffing the Flavor-Aid at this point.
Christ, if this is what passes for analysis on the Exchange team, no wonder Exchange sucks.
Technorati Tags: iPhone 'tards, Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, TEH STOOPUD, Windows Mobile, WTF?
Posted by John C. Welch at 15:07 | Permalink
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Comments
I believe their point in that first excerpt was not "ability to read email" but "...with subfolders".
IMAP gives you that, as does EAS, but other protocols like POP don't do subfolders.
(And I assume the SMTP thing was just to be technically correct; EAS is two-way, as far as I know, but IMAP doesn't do sending.
I mean, this was a technical blog post of theirs, not a press release. I can't fault them for mentioning that EAS and IMAP aren't quite identical, in that IMAP doesn't send at all.)
I'm not sure it's fair, either, to say "hey, you could somehow use LDAP to synch contacts, and you could use DAV for calendars, kinda" when their point is that, even if Exchange isn't free, it is all integrated.
Sharepoint sure as heck is groupware, ain't it? Shared documents and editing, right? We took a look at Sharepoint and Sharepoint server here, as an eval for custom integration, and it looks like groupware to me.
I mean, look at the last excerpt; they are specifically talking about 'richness of experience', not 'you can hook up some DAV stuff and LDAP and get mostly the same functionality'. They say IMAP won't be a "complete solution" for mobile access to Exchange [Server], which is absolutely true - and even if you add CalDAV and LDAP, it's just not going to be as good a way to connect to Exchange Server as using a real Exchange client.
The question then becomes, who gives a damn about that? Not as many people, I imagine - most of us can probably just settle for getting and sending mail, and worry about contact synch separately and don't give a damn about Sharepoint file access.
(Those few that need Sharepoint access, well ... don't buy an iPhone!)
I essentially think Exchange (or at least Exchange Server; the client, doing POP or IMAP, is less so) is The Great Satan, from having to use it for work-related mail, but their points, taken on their face, aren't all that ridiculous; the integration of all of those things really is there in Exchange, and if you already have it or have the infrastructure to support it, it can work pretty well, with the right clients.
Posted by: Sigivald | July 10, 2007 3:39 PM
Actually, I'm more forgiving of tech stupidity in a PR than from a blog written by, in theory, someone paid to know better.
As far as the integration, Exchange is hardly the only game in town for that by a long shot, and the truth is, without Active Directory, Exchange doesn't HAVE a GAL. So LDAP is a factor there too, no matter what marketing name they give it. However, that post wasn't about "can you get this all in one place". It was, ostensibly, about IMAP v EAS, and then wandered into the "We hate the iPhone desert".
You can get to Sharepoint via WebDAV, from anything with a decent WebDAV client. However, Sharepoint isn't a part of Exchange. You don't have to have it at all to use Exchange. It's an extra feature that Microsoft provides, but it's hardly a core Exchange feature. If we want to play that game, where the fuck is my EAS YouTube client? It allows me to access Rich Media Resources from anywhere in the world. Without YouTube, EAS sucks ass. Come on, if you want to go with that, shit, fine, but SharePoint !part of Exchange, and in any case, Sharepoint is of limited use unless you're running Windows.
The article isn't talking about ANYTHING really. It's wandering down a list of bullet points, contradicting itself here and there, and thinking "If we hit them with enough weasel, their minds will pop, and we'll look right". This has *nothing* to do with how integrated Exchange is, (and let's be specific, it's Exchange 2007 and WM 6. I've a WM 5 device on Ex2000, and a huge chunk of that shit doesn't exist for me at all, and a lot of it still isn't even in Ex2003) or the fact that the article can't separate protocol from client. Exchange is not, by a long shot, the only integrated groupware solution.
Posted by: John C. Welch | July 10, 2007 3:49 PM
IMAP is an email protocol, and only an email protocol. It has nothing to do with client device management. Email is not whatever I want it to be, and no matter how brainwashed I am by my Young Frankensteinish Overlord, bullshit doesn't change reality.
Oh sorry, I thought you meant me...
Posted by: Arden | July 11, 2007 6:09 AM
Yay for foresite.
That would be "foresight".
Good article.
Posted by: Jeff | July 12, 2007 12:16 PM
Regarding bandwidth usage, here is what Mark Crispin (the guy who's name is on the IMAP RFC) said:
This is not a valid argument with a properly-written IMAP client such as Pine. Pine is quite usable even on CDPD links.
Early IMAP work was done over a 2400 baud model line. I doubt that anyone would want to use a POP client over such a line. A good IMAP client is quite usable.
And regarding server-side searching, read RFC 3501, 6.4.4:
The SEARCH command searches the mailbox for messages that match the given searching criteria. Searching criteria consist of one or more search keys. The untagged SEARCH response from the server contains a listing of message sequence numbers corresponding to those messages that match the searching criteria.
Posted by: David Magda | July 12, 2007 12:40 PM
When I moused over the link to click it, I initially misread the URL as the:
M Sex Change Team
Having read the link and your impressive putdown, I'm inclined to wonder if I didn't read that right first time. That piece might as well have been by a sex-change organization as by anyone else, because it sure didn't read like anything by anyone who knew that much about email protocols.
Posted by: Nick | July 12, 2007 12:47 PM
Thanks for the links Dave, and yeah, IMAP not being kind to bandwidth is hilarious. But when you're assuming that no one who knows about anything but Exchange reads your blog, then who cares about accuracy.
Posted by: John C. Welch | July 12, 2007 1:08 PM
You're forgetting the user here. There are plenty of corporate users that want the features listed, or more specifically ask questions like "will it work like my blackberry?" or "will it work like my current pda?" that has more than just email features. So yeah, IMAP is just email but things like deleting that email when they lose their device is part of the user experience (cue up apple mantra ITS THE USER EXPERIENCE, STUPID!), even if it doesn't have to do with IMAP. I thought the blog post was pretty good at spelling out just features would be covered via imap and what features common on WM devices wouldn't. I've gotten a lot of questions about this from friends considering an iphone, and I'm sure IT departments are getting them too. Now they have a decent feature by feature list of things to think about, like "can we find another way to secure the device if it is lost?" You call it FUD, I call it being specific. Sure there's a lot of badly written english there (and wow, blogs are so often well written), but I'm pretty sure none of their information is incorrect, despite all of your hair splitting.
Posted by: rob | July 12, 2007 1:13 PM
"why not say "EAS lets you flag email so that you can manage it easier from your phone."
Well, since we've mentioned Chicago Manual and grammatical sentences, you ought to say "EAS lets you flag email so that you can manage it more easily from your phone." That would be better, wouldn't it?
Posted by: brendan | July 12, 2007 1:49 PM
Heh. FUD can be turned around, of course:
This is a very good illustration of security: imap is designed to do email and only email. For calendar syncing, for example, caldav is used instead, in its own separate compartment. Of course, in a well-designed client, this is all seamless to the user.
But behind the scenes, it makes for a very robust and secure design over a kitchen-sink approach. First, it allows each to be the best. Those working on imap can focus on making it solid, secure, and stable as an email protocol only. Those working on caldav can focus on making the calendar syncing be the best it can be, without issues of email support.
Second, it isolates exploits. Suppose, for example, that both calendar-syncing programs had a buffer overflow that would allow for user-level random code execution.
In the case of EAS, this would mean not only calendars would be exposed, but all the email, contacts, tasks, documents, would be also accessible, in the same compromised program. This would be a total disaster.
With webdav+imap, not only would the other services be protected by the access control, but webdav wouldn't even have a clue on where they could be located. So email would be safe. Contacts would be safe. Tasks would be safe. Documents would be safe. Not having all your eggs in one basket is a secure design pattern.
Finally, having limited services reduces the exposed area on average. Recall that Code Red's spread was fueled mostly by computers whose owners were unaware that IIS was running on their machines. Similarly, a calendar exploit allowing administrator-level code execution would likely affect all EAS servers, including those where the users don't use the calendar aspect. Compare this to imap servers, who would mostly be unaffected, because only those needing calendar would turn on caldav.
This is a very good illustration of the dangers of relying on a single source, giving a maginot-line illusion of security.
Posted by: Blain | July 12, 2007 2:38 PM
@Rob: Again, if the original posting from Microsoft was some PR posting on a PR outlet discussing the differences in User Experience between (iPhone + .Mac) versus (WM6 device + Exchange) then this might have been a valid piece.
But it ain't. It's the Exchange Team blog, targetted at Exchange implementors, from the Exchange Product Manager (6 years out of UW with his Math & CS studies).
And it purports to compare IMAP connectivity to Exchange against EAS access to Exchange. But it can't maintain focus, or make up its mind, or even remember what features are part of ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PRODUCTS (Sharepoint).
It's FUD with a tiny bit of information. Moreover, it's a Microsoft attempt to diss the iPhone without officially doing it through a sanctioned outlet. (At least Helio and Opera had the stones).
Posted by: Jim Gaynor | July 12, 2007 2:58 PM
@Blain: When they say “security,” Microsoft means “the IT control freaks can remotely control what you can and can’t do with the device.” Then add certificates, non-standard CAs, devices that have to be joined and registered by the company, etc. It has little to do with what non-Microsoft techies think of as security.
Posted by: Nate | July 12, 2007 4:42 PM
John Welch is still my hero. Good on ya, for taking that weasel tech and bringing into the light.
-your ol' pal Andy
Posted by: Andrew Shalat | July 12, 2007 6:04 PM
> Out-of-office (OOF) email responses - turn on/off and change the OOF message directly from your mobile phone
Wait a minute. Out of Office. Mobile mail client.
I say again:
Out of Office. Mobile mail client.
Why the FUCK do you need an OUT OF OFFICE message when you
HAVE
A
MOBILE
MAIL
CLIENT?
Posted by: Simon Pride | July 12, 2007 8:16 PM
Simon: A gold star sticker for you!
Posted by: Justin Bell | July 12, 2007 10:41 PM
@nate: True, sad, but true. There needs to be a word that describes "false security through unthinking paranoia" with the same foul taste as security through obscurity.
That way we could have an easy way to talk about both Msft's "allow or deny" and TSA's "confiscate the fingernail clippers"
What's worse is this bad security design isn't just implementation. It's not even just design. It's institutional, a belief of, "why should you use anything but us? We'll throw in more things until you agree!"
Msft has improved their code, and it's commendable that they've cut down on buffer overflows and the like. But as long as they've got this ingrained NIH attitude, their security won't fail gracefully.
@Simon: You are full of awesome for pointing that out.
Posted by: Blain | July 13, 2007 10:01 AM
John,
Overall, I agree with most of your rebuttal on most of your points. However, I have to wonder if you've ever really worked in a corporate environment using an Exchange server for e-mail. CalDAV looks promising and it would be nice if Microsoft embraces it. Still, from your comments, you seem to treat calenders and e-mails as distinct entities. At a technical level, that may be the case, but at a functional level, they are very much integrated in Outlook/Exchange. Do you ever schedule meetings this way? What about reserving meeting rooms, etc.? If not, then I'd guess you're not entirely familiar with how this works.
Further, your comments about "Out of office" usage clearly demonstrates your ignorance of the corporate world. While I might agree with your comments for this usage on personal e-mail accounts, for business e-mail accounts, this is not only a courtesy, it's essential. If something needs urgent attention, an out of office message saves time in the escalation process.
The lack of understanding of the corporate world seems far to common amongst the Mac user base. It's unfortunate to see a few minor issues like this detract from an otherwise well written rebuttal.
Posted by: Steve | July 13, 2007 10:51 AM
Great stuff! It seems to me that Apple could make quite a dent in EAS sales by implementing just a few additional "enterprise" features in the iPhone, in particular, remote erasure of the device. As you say this kind of thing has nothing to do with email but it plays well with the corporate paranoia crowd.
The opportunity here is that the iPhone user experience is *so* much better than a Windows Mobile device that "important people" (i.e. C*Os) will be demanding their IT departments support it. Removing the relatively few real showstoppers for this scenario is a lot easier than trying to produce an "Exchange alternative" that has to match the incumbent checkbox for irrelevant checkbox.
Posted by: Bozo Z Clown | July 13, 2007 10:58 AM
Overall, I agree with most of your rebuttal on most of your points. However, I have to wonder if you've ever really worked in a corporate environment using an Exchange server for e-mail. CalDAV looks promising and it would be nice if Microsoft embraces it. Still, from your comments, you seem to treat calenders and e-mails as distinct entities. At a technical level, that may be the case, but at a functional level, they are very much integrated in Outlook/Exchange. Do you ever schedule meetings this way? What about reserving meeting rooms, etc.? If not, then I'd guess you're not entirely familiar with how this works.Steve, I work in a smallish, (600+ user) Exchange shop, and have worked in others before. I partially agree with your comments re: email and calendaring. They are very closely related in the way we think about them, but the implementation details of both are rather different. To tell you the truth, Exchange's resource management still sucks compared to things like Oracle Calendar, which I used when it was still owned by CS&T and licensed as part of Netscape's Suitespot. It, unlike Exchange, not only let you differentiate between rooms and things, but had finer - grained control over them. However, resource management implementation is less a protocol issue, and more of an implementation detail, which is why you see such wide differences in dealing with them.
Further, your comments about "Out of office" usage clearly demonstrates your ignorance of the corporate world. While I might agree with your comments for this usage on personal e-mail accounts, for business e-mail accounts, this is not only a courtesy, it's essential. If something needs urgent attention, an out of office message saves time in the escalation process.Actually, it should demonstrate to you the dangers of assuming that because someone doesn't think Exchange is the alpha and omega of communications, that they are "ignorant" of the corporate world. You've also not been on a mailing list where a poorly - set up OOF starts mail-bombing itself every ten seconds if you're that enamored of them. You also aren't thinking clearly about what the original Exchange team post was talking about: Mobile devices *always connected to Exchange*. At that point, an OOF is not only stupid, it's redundant. The ONLY purpose of an OOF is to tell someone that you might not respond for a while. That's it. And they're really useless at that too. Think about it.
If you are in the building, but not in your office, do you set an OOF because you're in a meeting? Do you set your OOF every time you're going to be out of your specific office for more than say, five minutes?
I'll hazard that no, you do not in fact (un)set your oof seven or more times a day. So you've already admitted that it's perfectly acceptable to not respond to emails. Now it's just arguing about for how long. If you have a mobile device that's always connected to Exchange, you've decided that it's never acceptable to not be tethered to your exchange server. In that case, you have the greatness of an OOF followed by a reply from the person who is "out of office". So now, you've trained people to ignore your OOF message anyway.
It's not a courtesy, it's an ego stroke, and it's actually *poor* customer service. If your response is *that* critical, then an OOF is far more rude than to have your business email forwarded to an appropriate party when you're going to be gone for an extended amount of time. If, as you might reply, "there's no one who I can do that with/it's not allowed", then your "OOFs speed up escalation" argument is weakened, because the only way someone can escalate/handle problems for you is that they can interact with the person having the problem. If you can't do that via email/voicemail forwarding, then you can't do that via OOF.
Funny how the arguments for OOF never seem to hold up worth a tinker's damn when you really look at them. Well, all the ones beyond "I'm too important to not have an OOF" and "It's how we do things here".
The lack of understanding of the corporate world seems far to common amongst the Mac user base.It's not nearly as common as the condscending "Oh silly Mac user, you don't understand how we grownups work in the big scary business world". Yet that attitude is magically okay. Might want to check that.
It's unfortunate to see a few minor issues like this detract from an otherwise well written rebuttal.I've been an Exchange/SuiteSpot/CS&T CorporateTime administrator in my career. I know corporate reality far better than you think I do, as do more Mac administrators than you'd think. You might want to stop thinking of Macs as toys only suitable for artists and sixth-grade classrooms, and Mac sysadmins as being clueless about "grownup" networking.
Posted by: John C. Welch | July 14, 2007 10:43 AM
Hurray to your well-reasoned rebuttal!!!
One of the issues not addressed by the Microsoft Crowd is the inordinate amount of time Exchange takes during its startup and shutdown when one has multiple e-mail folders with quite a bit of e-mail on the laptop to support the business use when can not connect to the corporate network.
This problem goes away with iPhone, since one can always access the corporate network via cellphone-network or through WiFi without going through the hassle of booting up the laptop, starting Exchange Client, waiting for the Client to Sync with the Server etc.
Posted by: Viswakarma | July 15, 2007 2:14 AM
Also, how about "Outlook Web Access"? How does it differ from what iPhone provides?
Posted by: Viswakarma | July 15, 2007 2:22 AM
Viswakarma, OWA is just a web page. You go there and read it, and do stuff. Conceptually, it's like every other web page. It just happens to talk to Exchange. What EAS does is push that info to the device, which is quite different.
Posted by: John C. Welch | July 16, 2007 7:37 AM
This post like so many technical posts go beyond criticism and technical points to personal attack and contempt for the user. If you want to ignore the end user and what they need to get their work done then stay in your basement with all your precious open source toys. Out of office is a handy feature. And end users are why I have a job. And your grammar is less than perfect, as previously noted.
Posted by: Kevin McCance | November 16, 2007 8:35 AM
Way to miss the point Kevin. The Exchange article was misleading and full of shit, because they accuse IMAP of being nothing more than an email protocol, which is...*shock*, WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE.
It's no different than saying logs suck because they aren't airplanes.
Your attempts to characterize me as an open source fanboy are amusing, albeit ignorant, and why is it not contempt for the user to mislead them about what something is and is not, yet somehow IS contempt to point out that attempt at misleading?
Double standard much?
Oh, and when did I *ever* claim this was purely a technical site...you're new here.
Posted by: John C. Welch | November 16, 2007 3:33 PM
"For those of you not fluent in weasel, Direct Push lets you get email et al without having to manually check for it on a schedule."
You know, old chap, if one is going to write a sentence such as the above in a paragraph criticising others' grammar, one should take good care not to split one's infinitive whilst doing so.
I thank you.
Posted by: Frogmella | November 19, 2007 6:23 PM
SPLIT INFINITIVES???
What, there was a time shift, and we're back in the 1600s?
You may wish to update your grammatical rules a bit. Split infinitives haven't been a sin in a few centuries. In any event, I'm in good company with my use of the split infinitive: Defoe, Franklin, Lincoln, and many others made or make good use of it.
There was a bit of a revival of anti-splitting in the 1800s, but that's been properly put down as tedious and stupid. In other words, if I must choose between George Bernard Shaw and Douglas Adams or you, well, you lose.
Posted by: John C. Welch | November 20, 2007 7:43 AM
