“Apple’s iPhone is going to be compatible with Microsoft Exchange Server, after all,” Mary Jo Foley, yes, that Mary Jo Foley blogs for ZDNet.
Related article:
Mary Jo Foley: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard looks like Microsoft’s Windows Vista – June 12, 2007
“My sources are saying Apple can and will make the iPhone compatible with Exchange Server,” Foley reports.
“Here’s what I’m hearing: Apple will announce this week — possibly as soon as June 27 — that it has licensed the Exchange ActiveSync licensing protocol. Via the licensing arrangement, Apple iPhone users will be able to connect to Exchange Server and make use of its wireless messaging and synchronization capabilities,” Foley reports.
“Microsoft currently makes the ActiveSync protocol available to interested parties via a pre-established licensing agreement,” Foley reports. “A number of phone vendors, including Nokia, Palm, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, already offer devices that sync with Exchange using ActiveSync.”
More in the full article here.
[UPDATED: 8:28pm EDT: This article was originally posted at 3:45pm EDT, but, er… duh, not made “live” to any section on the site.]
Her credibility is completely nullified by the Leopard vs. Vista article
Yet MDN keeps posting about articles from Dvorak, Enderle, Thurott, etc. etc., etc.
Foley’s articles will still be mentioned, if only for comic value.
I just dukeed a little bit in my shorts.
To synch a Windows Mobile phone with Exchange, you use ActiveSync to synch it with Outlook, which is an Exchange client. Unless the corporation is not using Exchange, synching with Outlook and synching with Exchange are the same thing.
Microsoft licenses ActiveSync to all comers; there is no criterion by which they could legitimately refuse to sell a license to Apple.
If the iPhone uses ActiveSync, there is no way the IT department can know that anyone is synching with an iPhone unless someone tells them, and they can’t prevent it, except by issuing a memo; however, since ActiveSync is involved, there is nothing for the administrator to learn or do. If they found out that someone was synching with an iPhone, they’d probably just shrug their shoulders. What difference does it make? To Exchange, it’s just another PDA.
If Apple licenses ActiveSync, iPhone can invade the enterprise under the radar. Microsoft can’t do a thing about it without someone shrieking “monopoly”!
Steve could say to Bill, “Game, set, and match.”
Hussein
Where is the best place to learn about 3G? I admit my knowledge of 3G is limited. I just don’t want to spend $600 on in iPhone and get frustratingly slow internet.
Who knows if that’s wasn’t what it was all about? Wouldn’t Microsoft benefit more from licensing Exchange to the best mobile hardware. Especially compared to it’s money-pit music player.
MS didn’t hurt iPod sales when it came out. But it hurt a lot of everybody else. Wouldn’t they make more on Exchange than they’d ever make on some also-ran hardware? (Like they do?)
I still contend that the Zune is a device intended to kill off everyone BUT the iPod.
billy, billy, billy, o h h h h billy…
I hope she is sleeping with a better source this week…..
Walt Mossberg said “compatible with exchange by enabling a setting on the server.” What’s the bet that that setting is simply enabling Exchanges IMAP support?
Jay
http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/aws/index.php?p=i
Mary Jo is a real Moo. I’ve seen more honest writing on public toilet walls.
Ummm…Walt Mossberg already established this fact in his review. Case closed, the end.
Who cares, exchange sucks anyway, and the last thing I want is a work leash.
My experience in setting up various pdas for exchange activesync is that if your exchange provides outlook web access, you are set and don’t need anything from frick and frack down in IT. So if you can check your outlook via a web browser, you can use your iphone (apparently) with exchange activesync and set it up yourself. And in my experience, that’s 50% of exchange users. The other 50 are going to need a certificate from the exchange admin/dork.
It’s not true. She’s inventing it because she wants to create disappointment when it gets “axed” by the evil Apple.
This move only bolsters Redmond’s Exchange server and position. Rather, Apple will let all those consumers who work in corporate offices, put pressure on their IT departments to make the phone just work. That will of course be with IMAP becoming an open, approved standard in many IT departments.
iPhone is only going to erode Redmond’s game, not bolster it.
I know nothing about this exchange or 3G shit.
Should that hamper me from making inane pronouncements about both?
Blackberry is half-assed?
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Dude…
Mary Jo says it? Oh, it must be true, then.
Maybe this is her way of implying it “should” have (on the instructions of Redmond). Then, if it doesn’t, she’s engineered a let-down.
It’s got POP and IMAP; it doesn’t need Microsoft’s proprietary crap. Better people stop using stuff that only works with one vendor’s products, and start using open standards.
About Mary Jo,
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. She may have slipped up this time and gotten something right. It will be possible to synch the iPhone with Exchange, it’s just a matter of whether or not it’s by way of ActiveSync.
It’s already possible to sync Macs with Exchange without the system administrator configuring anything. I have a third-party application that I have used to synch my MacBook Pro with Exchange at work without the system administrator knowing, helping, or caring about it.
I think it would be a relatively trivial development effort for Apple to license and implement ActiveSync on the iPhone. Whether or not they do it depends on their marketing strategy. They don’t need it to get sales. On the one hand, it lets them invade a new market segment. On the other, it plays into a proprietary protocol.
She could be right.
This makes sense. Imagine what it must be like at Microsoft. “Hey Billy Gates and Steve Balless, look we can sell a licence and make some money. It will keep all that extra Vista staff happy.”
okay… so i hope it’s true…
but i refuse to believe a word of what that bitch publishes.
sorry for my harsh words – but her last article about OS X being a copy of Vista kinda sorta really ticked me off.
Is Exchange ActiveSync a web standard? I don’t think so. I can’t see Apple licensing anything from Microsoft.
Apple says that the iPhone will adhere to web standards and that enterprises that use web standards need to do nothing th accomodate iPhone.
The reality here is that Exchange is widely used “corporate standard”. Activesync works very well, Apple would benefit from supporting a widely used platform/vendor protocol.
For me and millions of others not fully supporting Exchange is a deal breaker.
This is now confirmed! Here’s a blog from Microsoft that talks about it
http://blogs.msdn.com/mithund/archive/2007/07/04/apple-licensing-microsoft-s-exchange-activesync-protocol-for-the-iphone.aspx