Exchange Support for the iPhone: Q3 2007

[MacRumors]

Amidst the pre-iPhone launch hype, Visto announced that they would be providing Exchange support for the iPhone.

Through Visto, iPhone users will be able to experience secure mobile access to current and legacy versions of both Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino corporate messaging platforms. Visto will enable access that is easy to implement and administer and will alleviate IT concerns regarding security and reliability.

At present, the iPhone can only support Exchange servers if IMAP support is enabled on the servers.

Visto Mobile for the iPhone will be available in "late Q3 2007". A free 60-day trial will be offered when its released. There is no other word on pricing.

This does, however, represent at least one 3rd party application making its way to the iPhone.

[IEatApples]

Great… now bring on some more!

[BuzzLightyear]

Are you sure this is really a third-party app for the iPhone and NOT some product that will run on a PC/Mac and as a conduit between the Exchange server and the iPhone's regular Mail.app?

Their other product is "Visto Mobile", available in several versions including a "Personal Edition":

Visto Mobile Personal Edition is easy-to-use and designed for individuals and small groups, offices and departments with less than five people. With a single installation of our PC software, you can have the mobile email you want without having to purchase a server-based solution. Visto Mobile features a small piece of software you download onto your PC at work and the Visto Mobile application that you download onto your mobile phone." (emphasis mine)

Given that Mail.app is a much more capable mail program than what is found on most mobile phones (there probably aren't many that have IMAP support out-of-the-box), I'm thinking it's possible that there is no need for any third-party program, just their software that runs on your work computer.

Just a thought...

[dernhelm]

Originally Posted by BuzzLightyear

Are you sure this is really a third-party app for the iPhone and NOT some product that will run on a PC/Mac and as a conduit between the Exchange server and the iPhone's regular Mail.app?

Their other product is "Visto Mobile", available in several versions including a "Personal Edition":

Visto Mobile Personal Edition is easy-to-use and designed for individuals and small groups, offices and departments with less than five people. With a single installation of our PC software, you can have the mobile email you want without having to purchase a server-based solution. Visto Mobile features a small piece of software you download onto your PC at work and the Visto Mobile application that you download onto your mobile phone." (emphasis mine)

Given that Mail.app is a much more capable mail program than what is found on most mobile phones, it's entirely possible their is no need for any third-party program, just the software that runs on your work computer.

Just a thought.

Anything is possible, there are very few details, but if this is what they meant, then their press release is VERY misleading. Only receiving exchange mail when syncing with your Mac would be a non-solution solution, and certainly isn't what the press release seems to imply.

Now it is unlikely that they'll have "push mail" a la Yahoo mail (or crackberry), but you should be able to minimally retrieve on the road (without accessing your Mac).

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by BuzzLightyear

Are you sure this is really a third-party app for the iPhone and NOT some product that will run on a PC/Mac and as a conduit between the Exchange server and the iPhone's regular Mail.app?

Their other product is "Visto Mobile", available in several versions including a "Personal Edition":

Visto Mobile Personal Edition is easy-to-use and designed for individuals and small groups, offices and departments with less than five people. With a single installation of our PC software, you can have the mobile email you want without having to purchase a server-based solution. Visto Mobile features a small piece of software you download onto your PC at work and the Visto Mobile application that you download onto your mobile phone." (emphasis mine)

Given that Mail.app is a much more capable mail program than what is found on most mobile phones (there probably aren't many that have IMAP support out-of-the-box), I'm thinking it's possible that there is no need for any third-party program, just their software that runs on your work computer.

Just a thought...

I would definitely say that the fact that there current software requires a download onto your phone, that they actually do have a third party app. It isn't just about integrating with a mail client.

Look at:

http://www.visto.com/products/devices_vmpe.asp

Visto supports all of the leading platforms including:

* Symbian OS (UIQ, Series 60, Series 80)
* Windows Mobile Edition (PocketPC and Smartphone)
* Palm OS
* J2ME
* WAP 1.3, WAP 2.0, HTML, Imode

So even with smartphones, they're talking about their app running on Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, J2ME.

This really sounds like a third party app, and not something that works with regular mail clients (if it wasn't, there'd be no need to create apps for Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, etc. since you could just use the mail clients for each of those OS's).

The iPhone's Mail app is pretty capable, but so is the mail app on some of these other platforms; a lot of the supported devices are either smartphones/PDA phones or at least regular phones with Java clients. It seems clear that their solution is built around a third party client install on the phone itself.

This strikes me as a very good sign as far as future announcements of "real" third party apps.

-Zadillo

[MOFS]

I can see this being the first of a lon line of 3rd party apps trickling onto the iPhone. I guess Apple will just do "checks" on the software just to make sure it doesn't crash the phone - something they're rightly wary of.

[IEatApples]

…wonder when games are gonna come?

Any news from Nintendo?

[newamiga]

I am sure this makes sense to some, but why have Exchange and Domino support if you don't sell to businesses or let business customers activate iPhones? They have a bunch of pissed of corporate customers..

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by newamiga

I am sure this makes sense to some, but why have Exchange and Domino support if you don't sell to businesses or let business customers activate iPhones? They have a bunch of pissed of corporate customers..

I'm sure that these things are being worked on.

-Zadillo

[Xenious]

The 3rd party application piece might be nice, but as far as the idea itself this is poor. I've seen different "exchange sync" type clients and most require something running on your desktop that your phone then communicates back to and the desktop piece talks to exchange/etc. Besides being an annoying solution the danger here is that Apple decides this is "good enough" and doesn't go further with adding native over the air activesync support.

Trust me that the difference between your phone talking directly to an exchange server and using a desktop as an intermediate step (even over the internet) is night and day.

[mi5moav]

So, this and the BMW announcement where the two missing announcements?? I hope there is more.

What happens if you drag an ipod game to the iphone?

[Much Ado]

Originally Posted by IEatApples

…wonder when games are gonna come?

Any news from Nintendo?

I'm sure iPhone is powerful enough to run the majority of Wii games out there

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by mi5moav

So, this and the BMW announcement where the two missing announcements?? I hope there is more.

What happens if you drag an ipod game to the iphone?

iPod games wouldn't work on the iPhone.

Besides, iPod games are mostly designed around the presence and use of the scrollwheel.

I would not be surprised to see games made available for the iPhone, but I think they would be games specifically made for it.

[Random Ping]

Given that the iPhone supports VPN, I wonder if sys-admins will just set up IMAP through a VPN to access Exchange?

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by Zadillo

iPod games wouldn't work on the iPhone.

Besides, iPod games are mostly designed around the presence and use of the scrollwheel.

I would not be surprised to see games made available for the iPhone, but I think they would be games specifically made for it.

I think the scroll wheel can be emulated, but you would be stuck in portrait mode, using about a third of the screen for the display and the rest for a simulated scroll wheel and simulated buttons to the sides. I think it would be a nice idea, just not as nice as a game made for the new type of touch screen. I just don't think it bodes well for a game platform to basically be made moot in less than a year with no backward compatibility.

[Yankees 4 Life]

so this should bring a few hundred thousand new customers to apple...

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I think the scroll wheel can be emulated, but you would be stuck in portrait mode, using about a third of the screen for the display and the rest for a simulated scroll wheel and simulated buttons to the sides. I think it would be a nice idea, just not as nice as a game made for the new type of touch screen.

True. They could sort of emulate the experience; but I think it's more likely they'll just release iPhone specific games.

Actually, when the first "multitouch" and "all touchscreen device" patents surfaced, in my mind I imagined an iPod that would basically be like what the iPhone is, but the iPod mode would be like a "virtual iPod"..... that is, it would have the same screen space used for displaying music itself, and replicate a virtual scrollwheel so it was still like the same iconic iPod experience.

It didn't even occur to me that Apple would come up with a completely new interface concept for music and movies. Of course, this is why Apple is Apple...

[Grimace]

GREAT!! This is huge for businesses!

[twoodcc]

good. looking forward to more applications

[AppleMan101]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

This does, however, represent at least one 3rd party application making its way to the iPhone.

Yahoo! and Google are third parties too...

This does, however, represent at least one another 3rd party application making its way to the iPhone.

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by AppleMan101

Yahoo! and Google are third parties too...

Good point; since they're already built in, I don't think of them as third party apps.

I think the big question on everyone's mind really is going to be what kind of third party applications will be available, whether we'll be able to simply install them, etc.

The coolest thing of course would be if it was just a miniature Mac, and anyone could just install anything they like; but I can see why they want to avoid this (frankly I've had so many third party apps crash or make my Palm Treo 650 unstable that I almost avoid using them now, other than Salling Clicker and TomTom).

Hopefully there will be a good way to make it easy for even small developers to make it easy for iPhone users to get their apps, even if it means going through a verification process (sort of like the signed Symbian app stuff).

[nydoofus]

Their website is pretty confusing. I can't tell if its a Desktop Redirector or an application for the phone itself.

[Zadillo]

Originally Posted by nydoofus

Their website is pretty confusing. I can't tell if its a Desktop Redirector or an application for the phone itself.

It's both. It involves a client you install as an app on your phone, and a desktop redirector.

-Zadillo

[ourson66]

Originally Posted by Zadillo

The coolest thing of course would be if it was just a miniature Mac, and anyone could just install anything they like; but I can see why they want to avoid this (frankly I've had so many third party apps crash or make my Palm Treo 650 unstable that I almost avoid using them now, other than Salling Clicker and TomTom).

Hopefully there will be a good way to make it easy for even small developers to make it easy for iPhone users to get their apps, even if it means going through a verification process (sort of like the signed Symbian app stuff).

I was of the impression that the iPhone was running a "lite" version of Mac OS X, which gets its stability because of Unix's protected memory and kernel. It's exceedingly rare to have a misbehaving app kill the entire OS on Mac, so I'm not sure how or why the Apple people are so concerned about stability on the iPhone (if indeed they are - i'm just going based on several replies to this thread that apparently "Apple" is concerned). Mac OS X is inherently FAR more stable than PalmOS ever was, so I don't think this is a fair comparison at all.

[Avatar74]

Originally Posted by newamiga

They have a bunch of pissed of corporate customers..

I would disagree with that statement because iphone is an expensive device to begin with. There's no way in hell my company would pay for even our directors or VP's to use these. When it comes to luxury gadgets, they flourish more in the consumer market where there are no hard limits to spending or any real requirement to rationalize or cost justify what are generally emotion-driven purchases. By contrast, most corporations have management wanting to do things as cheaply as possible to maximize profits.

Granted, there may be some businesses that will go for the iPhone but the consumer market will always be the bigger target. Consequently supporting Exchange is not their biggest priority.

I don't think, also, that it's wise for them to support business accounts at this point until the kinks of exchange support have been worked out because they're likely to have much higher expectations and possible legal action from corporate spenders if they deploy to businesses prematurely.