Proving that Mary Jo Foley knows absolutely nothing about what she’s writing, she claims to have “inside information” that Apple will announce it has licensed Exchange ActiveSync so they can hook up to Exchange servers.
Article is here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=534
Why do I say she’s an idiot?
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the iPhone already does POP or IMAP and Exchange supports this out of the box. Granted, it doesn’t support it well (that’s a story for another day kids), but it supports it. So, sorry Mr. IT Manager… come Friday, you will have those big boss cheeseheads scrambling to get their email from your Exchange server; security be damned.
Now, if you’re looking to also support server-side calendars/tasks and whatever other crap your company is slinging around in Exchange, that’s fine. ActiveSync is probably going to have to happen for you.
I would also say that there’s a bit more work that needs to go into supporting Exchange ActiveSync on OS X/iPhone – it’s not going to be a cut and dry implementation like another phone provider who licenses say… oh I dunno… WINDOWS MOBILE.
So with all of that in mind, this is a little sensationalist and at the moment, I’m not really buying it. We know Mary Jo Foley is just oozing with truth, so I’ll sit and wait for it to happen.
I almost hope I’m wrong.