We need a TRUE Exchange client for the Mac Platform

[Mark Harter]

As a Systems Coordinator for both PCs and Macs in equal numbers I am
more than a little surprised about the features that are lacking from
Entourage X and Entourage 2004 in relation to the functionality that
is enjoyed by the PC users & the features that are lacking from thee
Mac clients.

First off I will state that the MBU at Microsoft makes OUTSTANDING
SOFTWARE.

However, in regards to Entourage 2004: I will say that Entourage 2004
is a good program and that Project Center is a nice new feature, but
these are not the features that need to be added. Project Center was
not what users have been asking for. Here is my short list.

1) Delegates. This is an amazing oversight that I can't understand why
it is completely missing. This basic lack of functionality causes no
ends of headaches. What I mean is that a Mac user cannot set someone
as a delegate and have them reliably or in some cases at all, do all
of the functions as a delegate.
2) True Browse-ability of the GAL.
3) True receipt ability and message delivery functionality.
4) True Out of Office Support.
5) Scheduling

Heck at this point I'd take a port of Outlook:2001 to an OSX client;
Entourage X or Entourage 2004 has not equaled the OS9 Outlook in terms
of functionality in my eyes, I would suspect in others as well.

Some of the Microsoft apologists and MVP's will jump all over me for
saying: you can do this, by doing, this, this by doing that, you can
achieve this functionality by doing this, etc… No, these are not
solutions; these are merely workarounds that do not address the
problem. The problem being that Entourage X is still not a full
Exchange client, it's a redheaded stepchild, when it comes to support.
Workarounds are not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the
ability to do the same things on either platform.

I do not begrudge the Entourage MVP website as it is most valuable,
the MVPs here devote a lot of their time, but trying to figure out how
to get Entourage to work with the Exchange server on ones own is
laughable, and this is coming from someone in a company which is PC
dominated but does not begrudge the Advertising department its Macs.
We fumbled around for months trying to get it to work right. In my own
case I had to spend nearly 6 months trying to figure exactly what
exchange needed in the LDAP line just to get it o work in our
environment, not fun I assure you, nor has it been fun for others from
what I read here on this site. This was even with the help of the
Exchange Administrators.

Microsoft has managed to reach feature parity in Office with the PC
and maybe even surpass it on the PC side. Why can't they do the same
on Entourage?

Many people have been clamoring for full support from exchange on the
Mac client for years. Yet each time Microsoft has not delivered.
Think about it, only last year could you hook up Exchange X to a
server with some functionality.

I can only surmise that Microsoft is intentionally "hobbling" the Mac
client for some reason, which I can only guess at. Or perhaps the MBU
is getting the corporate directive from on high that turning out new
versions of Office are of more importance than delivering true
Exchange capabilities for the Mac platform. I'm not looking for a new
Office Suite, it does what we need right now and does so quite
capably, (I did upgrade to 2004), what I, and many others out there
need is a exchange client that FULLY interacts with Exchange, and not
in the limited manner that it does so at the current time.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi Mark,

[...]

2) True Browse-ability of the GAL.

I really don't miss this one. On Windows I always type a few letters too
to perform a search. Do you really miss browsing the GAL that much ?? (
I guess it also depends on the number f entries in the GAL... We have
tens of thousands).

[...]

Heck at this point I'd take a port of Outlook:2001 to an OSX client;
Entourage X or Entourage 2004 has not equaled the OS9 Outlook in terms
of functionality in my eyes, I would suspect in others as well.

From what I've heard, it wouldn't be a trivial task at all (otherwise
they would have done it) :-\

Some of the Microsoft apologists and MVP's will jump all over me for
saying: you can do this, by doing, this, this by doing that, you can
achieve this functionality by doing this, etc

:-> That's because MVPs can't do anything about that... All we can offer
is trying to find a workaround that would allow you to still access the
functionalities. We're only regular users like yourself...

Some of us might not see the importance of some of the functions you
mention, but I can tell you that I would agree on your feature request
list (maybe except for point number 2 as I mentioned).
The problem is that considering the size of the development team for
ENtourage, any time spent on adding one of the Exchange features you
mentioned would be time taken away from implementing another function (I
would love to see a real threading by discussion with graphical
representation of the threads for instance... way more than browsing the
GAL ;-) ).
My 2 eurocents,

Corentin

 

[Mark Harter]

Hi Mark,

[...]

2) True Browse-ability of the GAL.

I really don't miss this one. On Windows I always type a few letters too
to perform a search. Do you really miss browsing the GAL that much ?? (
I guess it also depends on the number f entries in the GAL... We have
tens of thousands).

[...]

Heck at this point I'd take a port of Outlook:2001 to an OSX client;
Entourage X or Entourage 2004 has not equaled the OS9 Outlook in terms
of functionality in my eyes, I would suspect in others as well.

From what I've heard, it wouldn't be a trivial task at all (otherwise
they would have done it) :-\

Some of the Microsoft apologists and MVP's will jump all over me for
saying: you can do this, by doing, this, this by doing that, you can
achieve this functionality by doing this, etc

:-> That's because MVPs can't do anything about that... All we can offer
is trying to find a workaround that would allow you to still access the
functionalities. We're only regular users like yourself...

Some of us might not see the importance of some of the functions you
mention, but I can tell you that I would agree on your feature request
list (maybe except for point number 2 as I mentioned).
The problem is that considering the size of the development team for
ENtourage, any time spent on adding one of the Exchange features you
mentioned would be time taken away from implementing another function (I
would love to see a real threading by discussion with graphical
representation of the threads for instance... way more than browsing the
GAL ;-) ).
My 2 eurocents,

Corentin

Corentin-

Don't get me wrong i've been on this forum for about two years now, I
rarely post and mostly read.

I understand the positions of the MVP's quite well and I think all of
you guys do an excellent job. So no ill will diretced there. Believe
I'm not one of those inate users who think you guys represent
Microsoft, in fact you guys have a unenvyable job in my eyes!

What I have problem with is the fact that the there is really no
compeling reason for me to upgrade my 30+ users, tin my mind there is
nothing in Office 2004 that Office X does not have that is an absolute
for upgrading.

I like Entourage a lot its just a shame that people are asking
Microsoft to fix these shortcomings and they are no doing it.

quote: "From what I've heard, it wouldn't be a trivial task at all
(otherwise

they would have done it) :-\"

I'll have to repsectively disagree with this one. The port from an OS9
to rewrite in OSX is difficult true, but the manner that Microsoft is
choosing to hook up to exchange is rather weak.

Oh yeah one more thing to add to the list. Support for PST files
through outlook is a huge issue.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Corentin-

Hi Mark,

Don't get me wrong i've been on this forum for about two years now, I
rarely post and mostly read.

I sure didn't mean that I thought you were anyhow new to the newsgroups.

I understand the positions of the MVP's quite well and I think all of
you guys do an excellent job. So no ill will diretced there. Believe

Well some of us could have been a bit biased I guess. At least from
time to time. Not really biased to supprot MS in its choice, but biased
because it could be a bit more difficult to properly asses how important
some specific features might be when you're not using them yourself.
(I've never used delegating features on Exchange for instance - but I
understand that some people really need that).

I'm not one of those inate users who think you guys represent
Microsoft, in fact you guys have a unenvyable job in my eyes!

Well thanks Mark. Even though it hardly ever is the case for me in the
regular Office cases, I've often had to take the heat in the WMP
newsgroup. It's a bit upsetting, to say the least, to receive hate mail
when you only participate in a newsgroups on your free time to try an
help other users to workaround nasty bugs in an application you don;t
even use that often (I hated to see hundred of unanswered posts in this
group when I knew the workaround). That's when I added the third line in
my signature...

What I have problem with is the fact that the there is really no
compeling reason for me to upgrade my 30+ users, tin my mind there is
nothing in Office 2004 that Office X does not have that is an absolute
for upgrading.

I see your point.

I like Entourage a lot its just a shame that people are asking
Microsoft to fix these shortcomings and they are no doing it.

quote: "From what I've heard, it wouldn't be a trivial task at all
(otherwise

I'll have to repsectively disagree with this one. The port from an OS9
to rewrite in OSX is difficult true, but the manner that Microsoft is
choosing to hook up to exchange is rather weak.

Entourage is not a port of Outlook to MacOS X, not even the Exchange
supprot part. Outlook accessed Exchange through MAPI and Entourage only
uses IMAP (in X) or WebDAV (in 2004). They haven't ported MAPI support
to MacOS X. From what I've heard, porting MAPI in Outlook 2001 in MacOS
9 was a really enormous work.

Oh yeah one more thing to add to the list. Support for PST files
through outlook is a huge issue.

I know :-\ It'd be really nice to have that in Entourage. I read
somewhere that the problem was somehow related to the MAPI issue, but
I'm not sure I fully remember/understand why... I think that some of the
MAPI structure is reflected in the PST file (or something like that).


Corentin

 

[Joe Stevano]

I would accept all of the above rationale as to why there is not a
true client on the Mac except the MS is the company behind BOTH
Exchange AND Outlook.

It is just plain wrong that the largest software company in the world
would use the excuse that MAPI is difficult to emplement under OS X
(apparently, the fine folks at Ximian were able to do it under linux).

And the excuse that it would take to much to port the OS9 application
to OS X seems just plain wrong as well - other companies with much
fewer resources have made the transition without appearing to have
mush of a issue with it.

The fact is that they don't WANT to do it. I can't wait for the day
that I can install Evolution and get rid of Entourage and Outlook on
the Macs we have here.

-Joe
Sony Pictures Imageworks

 

[Sverre Johan Tøvik]

And the excuse that it would take to much to port the OS9 application
to OS X seems just plain wrong as well - other companies with much
fewer resources have made the transition without appearing to have
mush of a issue with it.

It might not be as bad an excuse as it seems. It's not unlikely that
Outlook 2001 uses low-level Open Transport calls, which AFAIK are simply
not there in OS X (where they switch their networking system to BSD
sockets).


Sverre