Outlook's integration is simply better. I've had iCal do weird things with meeting invites, and Mail.app just doesn't 'feel' right with Exchange.
Quite a lot of people, having gotten used to Entourage prefer the All-In-One integrated single app approach of Outourage - which has its advantages.
The issues with iCal invites (I'm quite familiar with them) has to do with Exchange's handling (or, bad handling) of attachments (Exchange invites are basically attachments). In a properly configured Exchange environment, attachments are properly handled and iCal works beautifully. If the corporate IT group responsible for Exchange maintenance either doesn't know what they are doing, or is restricted by the company's "policies", then they end up either running hopelessly outdated Exchange installations (ie 2003 or 2007), or are having to deal with each new Microsoft patch that introduces *new* attachment issues.
I've just recently had to deal with a corporate environment where I was told that "Apple stuff doesn't work well with Exchange" in a status meeting, only to reveal that I set up demo accounts on a commercial Exchange hosting service, using the EXACT SAME versions of Exchange the client was using - and everything worked perfectly, and had NONE of the issues encountered by the corporate client. Long silence.
Micro$oft repeated bugs in Office are such an insult to the consumer I'm not forking a pound in any M$oft Office since
years.
We've kept a list of dozen of functional problems, and just plain bugs in Entourage over the past years.
After being told "Outlook has been rewritten from the ground up" and "the database is a thing of the past", Microsoft releases Outlook:
- still has a database, still has the same limitations ("but it's more stable now!", we're told as we see it crash and corrupt itself when importing large Entourage databases).
- when running Outlook past our list of bugs, NEARLY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM'S STILL THERE. "rewritten from scratch", eh?
Outlook continues to demonstrate the same lack of competence that E'rage has introduced to Mac users.
The MacBU used to have competent programmer and product managers, back when Microsoft absorbed Claris Emailer. Tellingly, none of them are with Microsoft anymore.
I firmly believe that if a developer released a Mac product that combined Mail, Calendar and Contacts into one integrated interface, the product would be a hit on several levels.
Several developers attempted this at one point, but were sidetracked into failure by their own agendas of what they wanted the product to be.
There are two issues that really annoy me on office for Mac.
1. Office for mac does not read the captions inside text boxes for tables/images etc. This means that if you want to make a List of Tables or List of Figures at the beginning of your document, you should open it on a Windows PC and make the list on a Windows Word. Then save the document and copy it to Mac again! This is just outrageous!
2. It takes a bit too long for Outlook to load on both Mac and PC! Mail runs instantly!
Whilst at it, why do we have Facebook login only on Appleinsider? Perhaps a Twitter login would be a good idea as well.
Better question yet - why use Facebook or Twitter for login at all? Keep these intrusive data miners out of our lives and quit requiring them for login... Ever noticed that these login services that direct you to login with your yahoo, Facebook, twitter, etc. accounts require you to click on their terms of service which grant them access to your contacts associated with those services? Privacy is dead on the internet.
Better question yet - why use Facebook or Twitter for login at all? Keep these intrusive data miners out of our lives and quit requiring them for login... Ever noticed that these login services that direct you to login with your yahoo, Facebook, twitter, etc. accounts require you to click on their terms of service which grant them access to your contacts associated with those services? Privacy is dead on the internet.
Nice to see a thoughtful response not grounded in anti-MS instincts (however misinformed) or anti-anything-not-Apple (ir)rationale. What did you use when Outlook was not available for the Mac?
Thanks Generally speaking I'm quite outspoken regarding my distain for Microsoft products, but occasionally they do some things I like. Prior to Outlook I used Entourage, and for a time even used it on my personal machine where I had to Exchange account configured. Honestly I loved the Project Center and thought it was a brilliant tool that should have made it to the Windows version of Outlook rather than being dumped from the Mac version. The idea that all emails, calendar entries, attachments, and notes that were associated with a project were available within the Project Center and organised by projects was fantastic. It did take some work to set it up, and it was a bit annoying that everything that came from a contact associated with a project was included in that project was a somewhat unavoidable mess.
My biggest complaint with Entourage (which has barely been addressed with Outlook) is it's fairly neutered support for formatting. At least I can finally respond to an email with a table without that formatting being lost. I can now even paste a table into an email. It sure would be nice if Outlook for Mac properly supported RTF message creation, rather than its severely limited support for HTML mail. My other complaint has been addressed by others, and that's the reliance on a single, easily corruptible database file. At least Outlook for Windows allows the use of multiple PST files.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZinkDifferent
Quite a lot of people, having gotten used to Entourage prefer the All-In-One integrated single app approach of Outourage - which has its advantages.
The issues with iCal invites (I'm quite familiar with them) has to do with Exchange's handling (or, bad handling) of attachments (Exchange invites are basically attachments). In a properly configured Exchange environment, attachments are properly handled and iCal works beautifully. If the corporate IT group responsible for Exchange maintenance either doesn't know what they are doing, or is restricted by the company's "policies", then they end up either running hopelessly outdated Exchange installations (ie 2003 or 2007), or are having to deal with each new Microsoft patch that introduces *new* attachment issues.
I've just recently had to deal with a corporate environment where I was told that "Apple stuff doesn't work well with Exchange" in a status meeting, only to reveal that I set up demo accounts on a commercial Exchange hosting service, using the EXACT SAME versions of Exchange the client was using - and everything worked perfectly, and had NONE of the issues encountered by the corporate client. Long silence.
We're using Exchange 2010 here at my office. The issue I found was a meeting invite I received sent to my .mac email account from someone running Exchange. I have no idea how this happened, but when I accepted the meeting invite from inside iCal the time zone was not processed correctly and moved the meeting to eight-hours earlier (PST=GMT-8) and sent an update out to the distribution screwing up everyone else's calendar moving a 5:30pm meeting to 9:30am. Since then I have been afraid to use iCal to accept any meetings out of fear of screwing up everyone else on the list.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by djames4242
Outlook's integration is simply better. I've had iCal do weird things with meeting invites, and Mail.app just doesn't 'feel' right with Exchange.
Quite a lot of people, having gotten used to Entourage prefer the All-In-One integrated single app approach of Outourage - which has its advantages.
The issues with iCal invites (I'm quite familiar with them) has to do with Exchange's handling (or, bad handling) of attachments (Exchange invites are basically attachments). In a properly configured Exchange environment, attachments are properly handled and iCal works beautifully. If the corporate IT group responsible for Exchange maintenance either doesn't know what they are doing, or is restricted by the company's "policies", then they end up either running hopelessly outdated Exchange installations (ie 2003 or 2007), or are having to deal with each new Microsoft patch that introduces *new* attachment issues.
I've just recently had to deal with a corporate environment where I was told that "Apple stuff doesn't work well with Exchange" in a status meeting, only to reveal that I set up demo accounts on a commercial Exchange hosting service, using the EXACT SAME versions of Exchange the client was using - and everything worked perfectly, and had NONE of the issues encountered by the corporate client. Long silence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quantz
Micro$oft repeated bugs in Office are such an insult to the consumer I'm not forking a pound in any M$oft Office since
years.
We've kept a list of dozen of functional problems, and just plain bugs in Entourage over the past years.
After being told "Outlook has been rewritten from the ground up" and "the database is a thing of the past", Microsoft releases Outlook:
- still has a database, still has the same limitations ("but it's more stable now!", we're told as we see it crash and corrupt itself when importing large Entourage databases).
- when running Outlook past our list of bugs, NEARLY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM'S STILL THERE. "rewritten from scratch", eh?
Outlook continues to demonstrate the same lack of competence that E'rage has introduced to Mac users.
The MacBU used to have competent programmer and product managers, back when Microsoft absorbed Claris Emailer. Tellingly, none of them are with Microsoft anymore.
I firmly believe that if a developer released a Mac product that combined Mail, Calendar and Contacts into one integrated interface, the product would be a hit on several levels.
Several developers attempted this at one point, but were sidetracked into failure by their own agendas of what they wanted the product to be.
Attaboy MSFT! That's why we love you so so much!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrFreeman
There are two issues that really annoy me on office for Mac.
1. Office for mac does not read the captions inside text boxes for tables/images etc. This means that if you want to make a List of Tables or List of Figures at the beginning of your document, you should open it on a Windows PC and make the list on a Windows Word. Then save the document and copy it to Mac again! This is just outrageous!
2. It takes a bit too long for Outlook to load on both Mac and PC! Mail runs instantly!
Whilst at it, why do we have Facebook login only on Appleinsider? Perhaps a Twitter login would be a good idea as well.
Better question yet - why use Facebook or Twitter for login at all? Keep these intrusive data miners out of our lives and quit requiring them for login... Ever noticed that these login services that direct you to login with your yahoo, Facebook, twitter, etc. accounts require you to click on their terms of service which grant them access to your contacts associated with those services? Privacy is dead on the internet.
Better question yet - why use Facebook or Twitter for login at all? Keep these intrusive data miners out of our lives and quit requiring them for login... Ever noticed that these login services that direct you to login with your yahoo, Facebook, twitter, etc. accounts require you to click on their terms of service which grant them access to your contacts associated with those services? Privacy is dead on the internet.
+1
good to know they're working on this one
Quote:
Originally Posted by sandy009
good to know they're working on this one
I assume you use the term "working" liberally, here... ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by stelligent
Nice to see a thoughtful response not grounded in anti-MS instincts (however misinformed) or anti-anything-not-Apple (ir)rationale. What did you use when Outlook was not available for the Mac?
Thanks
My biggest complaint with Entourage (which has barely been addressed with Outlook) is it's fairly neutered support for formatting. At least I can finally respond to an email with a table without that formatting being lost. I can now even paste a table into an email. It sure would be nice if Outlook for Mac properly supported RTF message creation, rather than its severely limited support for HTML mail. My other complaint has been addressed by others, and that's the reliance on a single, easily corruptible database file. At least Outlook for Windows allows the use of multiple PST files.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZinkDifferent
Quite a lot of people, having gotten used to Entourage prefer the All-In-One integrated single app approach of Outourage - which has its advantages.
The issues with iCal invites (I'm quite familiar with them) has to do with Exchange's handling (or, bad handling) of attachments (Exchange invites are basically attachments). In a properly configured Exchange environment, attachments are properly handled and iCal works beautifully. If the corporate IT group responsible for Exchange maintenance either doesn't know what they are doing, or is restricted by the company's "policies", then they end up either running hopelessly outdated Exchange installations (ie 2003 or 2007), or are having to deal with each new Microsoft patch that introduces *new* attachment issues.
I've just recently had to deal with a corporate environment where I was told that "Apple stuff doesn't work well with Exchange" in a status meeting, only to reveal that I set up demo accounts on a commercial Exchange hosting service, using the EXACT SAME versions of Exchange the client was using - and everything worked perfectly, and had NONE of the issues encountered by the corporate client. Long silence.
We're using Exchange 2010 here at my office. The issue I found was a meeting invite I received sent to my .mac email account from someone running Exchange. I have no idea how this happened, but when I accepted the meeting invite from inside iCal the time zone was not processed correctly and moved the meeting to eight-hours earlier (PST=GMT-8) and sent an update out to the distribution screwing up everyone else's calendar moving a 5:30pm meeting to 9:30am. Since then I have been afraid to use iCal to accept any meetings out of fear of screwing up everyone else on the list.