One of the most-awaited features in Snow Leopard was obviously the Exchange support built into Mac apps of Mail, iCal and Address Book. Apparently a lot of people failed to read the detail (even though, to Apple's credit, they did mention it quite prominently in their marketing material). Everyone caught the "Out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange" but did not focus on the "latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server".
There's quite a battle raging on Apple Discussions on Snow Leopard and Exchange, with more than 15,000 views and 145 replies in the last one week. The main problem was that most people that this would be as simple as iPhone connecting to Exchange... this was possible on the fly for most people; however, Snow Leopard is not as easy that.
The main things to consider:
1. SL works only with Exchange 2007. If your company/service provider is still using Exchange 2003, tough luck!
2. Even in 2007, certain upgrades (Service Pack 1, Update Rollup 4) need to be installed before SL can connect. Also, your Exchange admin should have enabled EWS (Exchange Web Services) protocol.
My IT folks were actually in the midst of an upgrade from 2003 to 2007, and so I lucked out. However, I now face greater security restrictions on Mail access than ever before. What has changed:
1. Our 2007 installation has locked ActiveSync: so I cannot use Exchange mail on the iPhone that used ActiveSync for connectivity
2. VPN connectivity is a must before I can access Mail from outside our LAN. Even my Entourage that could earlier connect using https to the Outlook WebAccess now requires VPN connectivity
3. My IT admin has blocked Port 993 which is used by Mail to access IMAP services (Gmail, MobileMe)... so when I am connected to the VPN, I cannot access my personal mail services on Mail; if I disconnect from the VPN, I cannot access office mail... so using Mail as a single client for all my mail services means that I am not online with all my mail accounts at the same time.
Note that all the above issues are driven by the manner in which my IT Department has chosen to implement Exchange 2007 and the additional network/security policies in place. These would vary from one organization to the other, and therefore, everyone is unlikely to have the same user experience.
Bottomline: Mail is a much better and easy-to-use app for all mail services, include office mail. One disadvantage is that I need to keep iCal open for accessing my calendar... however, even with Entourage, I always had two windows open for Mail and Calendar. Mail and iCal are much faster apps than Entourage ever was. Over the next few days I hope to migrate my archived mail from Entourage to Mail, and say good-bye to Entourage. Hopefully.
Update: Apparently my network admins don't like Blogger too... so I have to disconnect from the VPN to post to this blog... hmm... a confrontation appears imminent :-)
There's quite a battle raging on Apple Discussions on Snow Leopard and Exchange, with more than 15,000 views and 145 replies in the last one week. The main problem was that most people that this would be as simple as iPhone connecting to Exchange... this was possible on the fly for most people; however, Snow Leopard is not as easy that.
The main things to consider:
1. SL works only with Exchange 2007. If your company/service provider is still using Exchange 2003, tough luck!
2. Even in 2007, certain upgrades (Service Pack 1, Update Rollup 4) need to be installed before SL can connect. Also, your Exchange admin should have enabled EWS (Exchange Web Services) protocol.
My IT folks were actually in the midst of an upgrade from 2003 to 2007, and so I lucked out. However, I now face greater security restrictions on Mail access than ever before. What has changed:
1. Our 2007 installation has locked ActiveSync: so I cannot use Exchange mail on the iPhone that used ActiveSync for connectivity
2. VPN connectivity is a must before I can access Mail from outside our LAN. Even my Entourage that could earlier connect using https to the Outlook WebAccess now requires VPN connectivity
3. My IT admin has blocked Port 993 which is used by Mail to access IMAP services (Gmail, MobileMe)... so when I am connected to the VPN, I cannot access my personal mail services on Mail; if I disconnect from the VPN, I cannot access office mail... so using Mail as a single client for all my mail services means that I am not online with all my mail accounts at the same time.
Note that all the above issues are driven by the manner in which my IT Department has chosen to implement Exchange 2007 and the additional network/security policies in place. These would vary from one organization to the other, and therefore, everyone is unlikely to have the same user experience.
Bottomline: Mail is a much better and easy-to-use app for all mail services, include office mail. One disadvantage is that I need to keep iCal open for accessing my calendar... however, even with Entourage, I always had two windows open for Mail and Calendar. Mail and iCal are much faster apps than Entourage ever was. Over the next few days I hope to migrate my archived mail from Entourage to Mail, and say good-bye to Entourage. Hopefully.
Update: Apparently my network admins don't like Blogger too... so I have to disconnect from the VPN to post to this blog... hmm... a confrontation appears imminent :-)
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