-
Mac alternative to MS Outlook
-
Before Small Tree was doing shared storage and ethernet, we were doing infiniband for the PowerPC Xserve. We had released the product and were selling it for about 3 months when Apple announced they were ditching PPC. There was no Xserve replacement at the time and would not be for about 1.5 years. Since PPC was dead, people stopped buying. We had to scramble into another business or go under. I learned my lesson!
Of course, doing Inifiniband drivers for Mac helped us learn a lot of about how it all worked.
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
Recommend to your IT that they switch to google for their email rather than upgrading to a newer exchange. Our company did, and it was the best move ever. Saved us tens of thousands of dollars and SO many headaches. If they do though, it’s best if EVERYONE ditches outlook completely, and just uses a browser/mobile device to manage their email/calendar/contacts.
The only major thing missing is tasks, imo, and the benefits are huge! Any device, anywhere, no difficulty configuring clients, no exchange pain/stress.
-
This isn’t so simple for an enterprise with a lot of security requirements not to mention legal and other similar challenges. For many companies there is a lot of proprietary information contained in emails (think intellectual property, merger/acquisition discussions, info that could contribute to insider trading, etc). Handing this all off to some outside company just won’t work.
My point is that a solution that works for one shop and is a great thing may be impossible or a “resume updating event” in other settings.
-
Why only use browsers? It’s been working flawlessly with our Apple mail, and if you set up the gmail host as an exchange server on iphone mail – you get push :).
-
I agree. If I have to use Outlook I’ll run it inside of Virtual Box. Sometimes it’s a bit buggy, but overall it works pretty well. It would be nice if everyone’s e-mail services was just compatible with iCal and Mail.app
-
The reasons not to use mail or other client (besides mobile):
Consistency and cutting down IT needs.
There are bugs with mail/google apps integration, and if your company does a lot of shared calendars etc that doesn’t work super well with iCal. It’s so much simpler just to support the web platform and not worry about all the glitchiness of clients.
When we were researching google apps as an option, most people said the transition away from exchange was much much smoother if they boycotted client setups. People soon didn’t miss their Outlook integration etc when they jumped all in on google apps.
-
I’ll second that. I loath web mail — never found a web mail solution that comes close to a native client. Webmail is OK for quick checks from home or elsewhere, but I couldn’t use it as my main client. I’m also against the idea of “everything in a web browser”.
I’m very much a fan of providing open protocols and standards and letting people use the tool that they prefer or works best for them.
-
With regard to the OP’s question, I’ve found BusyCal to be a great expansion of iCal’s basic functionalities. It is especially well suited to small business environments where many people need to be able to see and modify shared calendars. The application does utilize Google Calendars to make the sharing possible, but it has a great User Interface that feels very much like a native Mac OS X App.
I would agree with most people that Apple’s Mail works fine for email, but as far as Address Book goes, I think it’s the worst piece of software that ships with the operating system.
It has been a frustrating journey to try to integrate that as we phase out our old Now Up To Date and Now Contact applications. I’m still waiting for a great alternative, an “Address Book Pro” if you will, but have been surprised to find so few options.
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
It’s not really Apple’s fault, in my opinion.
Microsoft Office 2011 does not support Exchange Server 2003 anymore.
Small businesses are left between a rock and a hard place; its not cheap to upgrade and why upgrade really if everything’s working? It more a money making racket than anything else, especially from Microsoft’s point of view to not support their own product anymore but MS Office 2010 for PC’s still do… -
I don’t see how it’s not Apple’s fault for dropping the ball on this one. The iPhone and the iTouch can connect to Exchange servers just fine but Mac Mail cannot. Well, that does make it Apple’s issue.
_______________________________
Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up