Microsoft Launches Outlook for iOS with iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo Mail Support

[Rigby]

Exchange ActiveSync can be token-based IIRC, so the EAS client does not store the credentials but instead a token.

According to their own privacy policy, Microsoft/Acompli do store the credentials.

But still the only way to push directly to your devices without APNS is the native Exchange ActiveSync client. In other words, unless Apple looses its control and let third party apps to register always-active push listeners in the background, any forms of push emails on iOS must be routed from a third-party middleman or the service itself, to the Apple middleman, and finally to your device.

With existing push mail clients (such as the Gmail app), the mails themselves are not pushed through APNS. Only a new mail notification is pushed, which then causes the client to fetch the mail directly from the mail server using IMAP. The mails do not go through Apple.

Moreover, even Outlook the rebranded Acompli no longer caches your e-mail, but simply route push messages via their servers

I doubt that. That would mean they'd have to re-index all mails every time they are accessed through a different device.

BTW, even the European Parliament has now banned the app (text in German):

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...ue-App-wegen-Sicherheitsbedenken-2543491.html

 

[viorelgn]

Will you be able to send email with attachments thru this ?

 

[petvas]

Will you be able to send email with attachments thru this ?

Yes, because of the Dropbox, Onedrive integration..

 

[BrianBaughn]

Will you be able to send email with attachments thru this ?

You can attach files that are already attached to emails in your sent or received folders.

You can also add links to files that are in your Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box online storage.

 

[tongefactor40]

Has anyone come up with a clever way to solve the limited contacts issue? How can you get it to show all exchange contacts?

 

[OCDMacGeek]

Microsoft Launches Outlook for iOS with iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo Mail Support

Has anyone come up with a clever way to solve the limited contacts issue? How can you get it to show all exchange contacts?

Thank you for confirming that. I guess I will have to wait for an update I cannot use an Email Client that cannot access my email addresses from my contacts.

Implementation of contacts is the only concern I'm having. It does not access your iPhone contacts so if you don't know that you know I'm dressed, and it was not a recent contact, you would not be able to easily email that person.

I switched about a week ago and so far this has not been a problem since you can easily email your most recent contacts, but I can see this being an issue in the future.

Also, there is no easy way to create a new contact, to save to your iPhone contacts. Often, someone will email you and you want to save that email address, or a phone number. It's not easy to do that in Outlook.

Other than those issues, I have switched and have not had any concerns.

 

[Cape Dave]

I like it. But I need bigger/different fonts.

 

[Daysight]

make sure you dont include the dash in between the codes.

Thanks for replying. The codes don't have any dashes.

 

[johngordon]

I quite like the fonts, and the smaller text. So if they do increase the font size, I hope they make that optional.

I see they have released an update already addressing one common request - namely to make emails viewed by threading optional.

Top of my list is probably IMAP. At the moment I'm using email forwarding to send stuff onto my Gmail account, but would be good to get the accounts set up in Outlook directly.

And yes - better integration with the contacts so that you can view and edit all contacts within Outlook.

 

[OCDMacGeek]

Implementation of contacts is the only concern I'm having. It does not access your iPhone contacts so if you don't know that you know I'm dressed, and it was not a recent contact, you would not be able to easily email that person.

I switched about a week ago and so far this has not been a problem since you can easily email your most recent contacts, but I can see this being an issue in the future.

Also, there is no easy way to create a new contact, to save to your iPhone contacts. Often, someone will email you and you want to save that email address, or a phone number. It's not easy to do that in Outlook.

Other than those issues, I have switched and have not had any concerns.

In retrospect, perhaps this contacts issue is not that big an issue. I did not want to leave my stock mail app active, because then I would have two mail applications draining my battery. However, for those applications (including the contacts app and lots of miscellaneous third-party apps) that require use of a default mail app, I realized I could leave an account in the stock Mail app active but on manual mode. With push and fetch modes off, there should be very little battery usage.

 

[Trahearne]

According to their own privacy policy, Microsoft/Acompli do store the credentials.
With existing push mail clients (such as the Gmail app), the mails themselves are not pushed through APNS. Only a new mail notification is pushed, which then causes the client to fetch the mail directly from the mail server using IMAP. The mails do not go through Apple.
I doubt that. That would mean they'd have to re-index all mails every time they are accessed through a different device.

BTW, even the European Parliament has now banned the app (text in German):

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...ue-App-wegen-Sicherheitsbedenken-2543491.html

I guess you meant fetching the email, but I was solely talking about push notifications. You are right that the email itself is hardly pushed via APNS, but a snippet of the message for push notification is unless EAS is being used IIRC, or the push only contains the up-to-date status and the notification content is fetched directly & separately via silent background push introduced since iOS 7.

 

[freemannnn]

i want touchid or passcode support and also default apple mail app sound and not the sms sound

 

[Rigby]

I guess you meant fetching the email, but I was solely talking about push notifications. You are right that the email itself is hardly pushed via APNS, but a snippet of the message for push notification is unless EAS is being used IIRC, or the push only contains the up-to-date status and the notification content is fetched directly & separately via silent background push introduced since iOS 7.

No. The way it works is that the push notification wakes up the app (e.g. GMail) for a short time, which then fetches the actual mail using IMAP.

 

[C DM]

No. The way it works is that the push notification wakes up the app (e.g. GMail) for a short time, which then fetches the actual mail using IMAP.

Is that in general or only if background refresh is enabled for the app?

 

[Rigby]

Is that in general or only if background refresh is enabled for the app?

Background refresh is not required for this. If an app enables remote notifications in its info.plist, it will be allowed to run for a short time (about 30 seconds if I remember correctly) when a push notification is received.

 

[Trahearne]

No. The way it works is that the push notification wakes up the app (e.g. GMail) for a short time, which then fetches the actual mail using IMAP.

Not every app works in this way (I wonder if Gmail does too), particularly if you want high delivery rate. Fetching every time on notification arrival is expensive, and frankly is not a good way at all on iOS. The background handler method is *not* guaranteed always to be called but determined by iOS based on several factors. In other words, the data, the power and the compute cost will accumulatively lower the background handler's score for a second turn.

That's why many of the e-mail clients, especially those with a middleman server, push the message preview with the notification payload, and frankly this is what pushes ideally do. Save a lot of traffic and energy cost. By the way, if Gmail can push a "signal" to APNS, I don't see why it couldn't push also the message snippet in the payload.

 

[philstubbington]

Seems okay....

A nice little app, and has the advantage (for me) of keeping my work calendar separate to my personal ones, on my personal iPhone.

One minor niggle so far, I don't seem to be able to change the calendar colour. I want it in blue, to match every other device, but it's green and I can't see where (or if) to change it.

 

[Rigby]

Not every app works in this way (I wonder if Gmail does too), particularly if you want high delivery rate. Fetching every time on notification arrival is expensive, and frankly is not a good way at all on iOS. The background handler method is *not* guaranteed always to be called but determined by iOS based on several factors. In other words, the data, the power and the compute cost will accumulatively lower the background handler's score for a second turn.

It's very well possible that an app uses a rate limiter or similar to restrict the amount of IMAP transactions per time interval. But that doesn't change the basic behavior.

That's why many of the e-mail clients, especially those with a middleman server, push the message preview with the notification payload, and frankly this is what pushes ideally do. Save a lot of traffic and energy cost. By the way, if Gmail can push a "signal" to APNS, I don't see why it couldn't push also the message snippet in the payload.

Sure it's possible. But before iOS 8, the size limit for APNS payloads was 256 bytes, which doesn't leave room for a lot of message previews (it is 2K in iOS 8, so I guess it's more feasible now). But again, it doesn't change the fact that the full mails themselves do not go through Apple as a middleman.

 

[campyguy]

Just need them to add IMAP support and I'll be completely sold.

And, we have a new buyer - sold! IMAP was added today in an update - I tested it and works perfectly.

 

[S.B.G]

And, we have a new buyer - sold! IMAP was added today in an update - I tested it and works perfectly.

Did you set your IMAP account up with SSL on or off? I tried my work account and it would time out on the connection with SSL on. When I used the settings with SSL off, it connected right away.

I sent in a support request through the Outlook app and Microsoft responded to me nearly right away. We had a conversation about my account yesterday and they were very helpful and responsive. I give big kudos to MS for that.

However, he said they currently don't support SMTP right now and that it will be coming in the future - which is why, I suppose, I couldn't connect with SSL on.

 

[campyguy]

Did you set your IMAP account up with SSL on or off? I tried my work account and it would time out on the connection with SSL on. When I used the settings with SSL off, it connected right away.

I sent in a support request through the Outlook app and Microsoft responded to me nearly right away. We had a conversation about my account yesterday and they were very helpful and responsive. I give big kudos to MS for that.

However, he said they currently don't support SMTP right now and that it will be coming in the future - which is why, I suppose, I couldn't connect with SSL on.

Off, for all 3 accounts. One of them was attached to my own company's email (a test account with no important data in it), so I was able to "watch", or rather, monitor what was going on in the background. So for now, I won't attach anything important to the Outlook app via IMAP.

I did try with SSL on and MS couldn't workout a handshake with my server - thanks for passing your chat info as it saved me a call tomorrow to MS. Frickin' amazing that MS support is that good, they've been on the spot with my Exchange Server and Office 365 accounts - despite the huge price difference between those two products!

 

[johngordon]

Annoyingly I can't get it to connect to my IMAP address myname@mydomain.com.

But it will connect to myname2@mydomain.com.

MS have been very responsive through the in app support, but it hasn't been resolved yet.

In my case the username is the email address, and I can only force the advanced settings where you enter the server info by entering an incorrect email address. And there's no option there to edit the email address

So then, even if I can see all the server stuff is correct it may not be connecting because the email address is wrong.

But it looks like the first address isn't connecting at all - if I try that one with the wrong password, the error says its unable to log in. If I try the second one with the wrong password, the error says to check my email address and password.

I've also been in touch with the hosting company, who say everything looks OK.

So it's just really odd that it won't connect with my actual address, but will connect with any other address using the same domain.

 

[Kal El]

I'm having a problem where I can login to my iCloud email account fine on my iPhone but when I add the same account to my iPad it then logs out of the iPhone. If I then log back in to the iPhone it logs me out of my iPad.

Anyone else?

 

[OCDMacGeek]

I wish there was a way to just add a CalDav account (not associated with an IMAP email). I have a CalDav account alone -- From Daylite 5.

 

[OUTAOUAIS]

Hopefully the print option in a near future