Microsoft has just responded to Google’s move regarding Exchange ActiveSync. Sadly, instead of addressing the very real problems consumers are about to face, Microsoft starts talking about switching to Outlook.com.
Let’s just start with the cold and harsh facts Microsoft refuses to acknowledge. One, the two major mobile platforms – Android and iOS – support IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV. Windows Phone and Windows 8 do not. That’s Microsoft’s own fault. Second, EAS is a closed, royalty-bearing standard, patented up the wazzoo. Phasing out its use saves Google money. This, too, is Microsoft’s own doing.
The solutions are staring Microsoft in the face, and they are pretty obvious. First, Microsoft should have been smart and included support for CalDAV and CardDAV from the beginning. Gmail is huge, and Microsoft should have done the math. They should at the very least implement it now. Second, I can’t imagine EAS is that much of a money maker – open it up, Redmond. Money, mouth.
The blog post doesn’t mention any of this, which doesn’t bode well. In fact, the post is highly misleading in that it doesn’t mention CalDAV and CardDAV at all, only stating that IMAP doesn’t support calendars and contacts. While technically true, it’s very misleading.
Now, is Google doing any of this for our greater good? Of course not. However, if their corporate interests happen to align with consumer interests – open standards for something as elementary as syncing seems self-evident to me – then yay for them, and by extension, yay for us.
It seems like Microsoft still thinks it’s the number one technology company, with the ability to dictate the industry. Those days are gone, and Microsoft will have to learn to adopt other people’s technologies – without being forced.
The disease of using closed standards for lock-in is too deep in their blood. It’s simply hard for them to suddenly get cured. Look what pains it took them to cure IE somewhat, and only under real pressure. When pressure will increase may be they’ll cure this one as well. When they’ll also cure the lack of OpenGL support on their platforms – they’ll hit another major milestone, after which MS will probably become history, since they themselves admitted that they can’t survive without using lock-in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Vendor_lock-in
Edited 2012-12-18 00:26 UTC
They’re also very slow to respond to changes in the market, compared to their competitors. Even if they start today on adding support for those standards, I’d not expect them to be shipping that support for at least a year, probably more – it’ll come whenever their next major release occurs.
And they are losing there vendor lock-in battle. Good news for customers, ISV, competition. Bad news for Microsoft who indeed has to compete now. How well that works out without there vendor-lockin we see with WinPhone.
Absolute Rubbish major parts of the ASP.NET stack is Open Source now.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/03/27/asp-net-mvc-web-a…
There is nothing from me developing MVC apps for the Mono Framework.
OOXML is an ISO standard, C# is a ISO standard … I could go on.
None of the web browsers had any decent support for standards til 2009.
Competition from Firefox didn’t make them adhere to standards, Firefox 1 and 2 were hardly standards compliant.
Your argument is deeply flawed. The competition came in that Firefox offered a better browsing experience than IE6 (mainly tabs and the plugins community). This is why I use Firefox today, because I prefer the interface.
While version of OpenGL I think you mean, OpenGL ES is the only OpenGL standard that is widely support its completeness.
I can’t speak about ASP.NET specifically, but the .NET is only just open enough to make some .NET applications barely run. However closed so much that applications are buggy or even unusable because of major features being unavailable.
One great example of this is the DRM extensions; and thus the reason why Netflix, Lovefilm and so on cannot run on Linux (albeit not without running native Windows libraries on WINE).
What’s more, .NET was invented because MS couldn’t play ball with Java (see below).
OOXML was written because MS wanted to lock people into MS Office but were forced to use an open standard by the EU.
If Microsoft really cared about open standards, they’d have used ODF like nearly every one of their competitors do. Instead, they create their own incompatible standard that nobody else uses but them.
C# is another example of MS creating a new standard to trash an existing standard. In this case .NET was invented to trash Java (though C# / .NET has evolved since). What’s more, .NET was only developed after MS got sued by Sun for releasing their own incompatible Java run times.
If MS cared about standards, they’d have released a Sun Java compatible IDE like Borland had.
Please do, because every one of your examples demonstrates how MS had shunned established standards
Firefox 1 & 2 were significantly more standard compliant than IE (hence why I used Phoenix & Firebird) and Firefox 3 was released in 2006. Plus there was Opera and kHTML-based browsers. Hell, even webkit was released in 2005, nearly half a decade before you claimed the competition began.
So I really don’t know where you pulled the ‘2009’ figure from, but it’s grossly inaccurate.
Edited 2012-12-18 12:43 UTC
I agree with you. I still don’t understand why .net is not open sourced yet. I understand about Windows or Office. But why .net is not open source yet?
Open sourcing it is not going to affect their business anyway. Even in case of Asp.net MVC is open source but Asp.net is not. Confusing.
Because Enterprise customers and other businesses build apps against .NET version X. It is the same reason why they produce IE, their customers want a browser with a stable set of features.
IE has been anything but consistent: the rendering engine performs massively different from version to version.
It’s the worst performing browser for breaking sites between versions.
Edited 2012-12-18 13:10 UTC
It is consistent within its own version, which is what an Enterprise customer wants out of a web browser.
Microsoft says “IE will support these features”
IE supports those features and newer features aren’t added until a new version of the browser.
That’s how all software works. That’s how version numbering works. It’s not unique to IE, it’s what everyone expects and not something specific to enterprise customers.
Plus it’s not even what enterprise customers request. They usually require support for a number of years and often across a range of versions. Which, to be fair, is something Microsoft are generally good at.
Edited 2012-12-18 14:46 UTC
Except in the web browser world it doesn’t work like that. Chrome for example worked fine with Sitecore CMS system backend until a month ago, now it doesn’t work … because Chrome has ramped the version. It still works in IE10.
Whether the backend should work in Chrome is another argument entirely.
Yes so you code for a feature set in version X and that is supported until version Z. Which is exactly what I said.
Edited 2012-12-18 14:51 UTC
Exactly. Chrome incremented a version.
What you’re actually complaining about is how often some browsers see updates. That’s a different debate entirely.
It’s what you said, but not what you’re arguing. All (read: ALL) software works this way. That’s the whole f–king point of version numbers. What you’re bitching about is the frequency that some browsers update. And that argument is an often debated topic.
Edited 2012-12-18 15:02 UTC
No it isn’t if you are producing an intranet application.
I was saying that is the same reason why .NET isn’t open sourced, is because companies test their app running against the .NET 2.0 runtime for example in the same way that some companies test against IE8 because that is what is deployed on workstations.
Micrsoft guarantee that Version X in .NET and IE will have a certain feature set and they won’t change until it is outside of the support cycle.
It is like swimming through porridge on this site sometimes.
That doesn’t change anything.
It doesn’t matter whether content is being served locally or externally; just so long as the browser continues to support the content.
However version numbers aren’t the issue. It’s the updating frequency that you’re complaining about.
Again, that’s how all software works. Even on Linux, with it’s dependency hell, something compiled to run against libdep.so.3.2.1 will always support libdep.so.3.2.1, be that tomorrow, next week or 300 hundred years from now. Where Windows excels is that those version are available for years – decades even. So an application compiled against .NET v2 will work on all versions of Windows in the future because .NET v2 will always be included in foreseeable versions of Windows. (it’s also why Windows has such a high disk footprint).
What you’re talking about is the frequency of updates and how well older versions are supported. Yet what you keep typing about is how some non-MS software magically changes without the version number changing; which is completely idiotic.
To be honest, from where I’m sat it sounds like you’ve got the very basics of IT muddled. I’m sure you’re smarter than that so I’m just puzzled where we’ve got our wires crossed.
Edited 2012-12-18 15:40 UTC
Yes it is, and that is why Microsoft have such long support cycles for IE. I personally don’t like it when Chrome changes it behavior.
But I suspect there isn’t an Open source version of .NET for that very reason, what you are running against is set in stone forever. Yes I realise that version 3.2.1 is always going to be that version, however typically open source software has a “minimum” version number or things are dynamically linked against the library.
I am not saying about non-MS software, I am simply saying that is why Microsoft don’t for example add support in IE10 for CSS feature X, which a lot of people don’t seem to grasp.
Also with version numbers these days especially with Chrome it is almost “version” infinite, I couldn’t tell you what version of Chrome I am using at work, or what is the latest.
You do realise that version number are just arbitrary?
eg Apache increases in it’s version number every few months, but anything on the 2.2 branch is compatible.
Linux (the kernel) used to use a major.minor.update version numbering system, and now it uses major.update.
Some software uses odd numbers to express experimental releases.
Some software haven’t even made it to version 1.0
Hell, even MS fiddle with their NTs versioning (eg Win8 being stored as 6.2)
Version numbers are completely arbitrary, and if you even had the slightest idea about what you were talking about, you’d know this.
The open source or closed source model is completely irrelevant here. What you’re talking about is software architecture and backwards compatibility.
Linux is a completely different architecture to Windows, not because it’s open source, but because it’s not Windows. case in point, ReactOS is open source yet is built around the same kind of architecture as Windows (for obvious reasons).
I’ve come to the conclusion that you really haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about.
MS use the excuse of “it’s not part of the published standard” as their current excuse, but I don’t buy that:
1. they’ve never been shy of implementing their own “standards in the past”
2. because they do keep Trident (IE’s rendering engine) static for longer periods compared to over browsers, it makes more sense to future proof rather than release a browser that’s going to be out of date from it’s launch.
I agree that Chrome (and Firefox too these days) has a dumb versioning system. But it’s just an arbitrary counter. You could just as easily say any version of Chrome that’s a palindrome will break backwards compatibility. Or even do away with version numbers entirely (some software vendors don’t publish numbers as part of their version ID). So long as sys admins and developers are all working to the same goal posts, it doesn’t make a bloody difference what system you use.
So once again, I’m forced to repeat myself in saying that your issue is with the rapid updates of Chrome, not the version numbers.
OH FFS, miss the point entirely.
Indeed you have done. Anyone who claims anything is better than anything else based on the version numbers used, clearly misses the point entirely.
I was simply explaining why Microsoft release as they do.
Oh well.
Indeed. That I agree with because now you’re FINALLY stating that you’re talking about release cycles.
I kept saying that your argument is about release cycles and not version numbers, yet you kept dismissing that point and trying to argue that it’s the version numbers which made the difference. Which is why this argument went on for so long.
Edited 2012-12-20 11:12 UTC
And the version number gets incremented with the fucking RELEASE.
They aren’t totally independent. Saying that release version X will stay relevant for Y amount of time and support SET Z of features is part of the release.
Indeed. But to then credit the longer release cycles in IE to it’s versioning (which is what you did), is a step too far. I can see the logic behind your statement, but it’s deeply flawed logic.
Version numbing is essentially just a naming convention. What you’re talking about is releases. Each release needs a name / version number; true. But just because some numbers increment differently to others doesn’t make one product more or less enterprise ready (unlike the claim you made).
If you had even the slightest idea what you were talking about, you’d realise the idiocity of making such a leap.
I never said that, another example of something you have made up in your imagination.
I said that the IE release cycle was longer because they support a particular version for longer, and I said I expect the same is true for .NET.
OSNews is like swimming through porridge for Microsoft shills?? That’s a nice compliment..!
I hate you guys and you smarmy fucking comments, usually because you don’t have a real argument.
I’m sorry Lucas, that comment was made in anger, and not very kind. What I meant was, if you find you have to expend a lot of mental energy debating others, it might point to deficiencies in your mental model of ‘reality’.
The thing is I tend play devils advocate on here while I am waiting for the 90 project solution to compile before I can change 1 line of JavaScript.
The level of irrational MicroSoft hatred is absolutely unreal by some members.
Features are added, and even sometimes removed…
IE6 had a feature to automatically populate and submit file upload forms (a huge security hole obviously), so this feature got removed – some third party applications, especially internal corporate apps depend on this and broke.
IE6 got a popup blocker as a service pack.. I’m sure there have been other changes too.
They are paranoid about their enterprise profits which is where .NET is heavily used.
It’s mostly a trick play to attract LAMP developers. Open sourcing MVC is a low risk to their business model. It is related to MVC being a poor fit for existing client .NET applications. They didn’t suddenly find the open source gospel for a single technology.
Disclaimer: I am skeptical of Microsoft, open source gospel, and women.
Well they aren’t the same thing then are they?
What are you on about?
Again, I dunno what this has to do with parts of ASP.NET being Open sourced.
So?
Well the de-facto standard is MS Office, so any competitor that wants to be able to read the same files need to support that or get out of the market.
Sun trying to make people use ODF was a silly move.
C# version 1.0 was a superior language to Java, Properties alone in the language make it vastly superior as well as the better designed DateTime libraries (two things I can think of off the top of my head).
C# is Java Improved.
One thing so far is true at least.
Borland Java IDEs were crap, thank goodness they didn’t
What established standards? A Document standard on an Office suite with a quite a small user base and a programming language developed by the same people that wanted the said document standards.
KHTML and Opera have always had low market share and aren’t significant enough to be relevant to the
conversation.
Firefox 1 was more standards compliant than IE6 because it was newer. What the OP always misses is that the reason people moved to it was nothing to do with standards compliance and the fact that at the time it was a better browser with more features.
2009 was when IE8 got released and was the first browser to support CSS 2.1 and XHTML 1.1 properly (I am sure you bring up Opera, but I don’t see them as a serious competitor to the other browsers in Market share).
Edited 2012-12-18 13:04 UTC
I see you’ve resorted to the “if you can’t counter argument, then change the argument” method of trolling the interwebs.
You’re now moving the goal posts as ‘de facto standard’ isn’t the same as ‘open standard’. You were arguing about open standards.
…and Google, IBM, KDE and plenty others I can’t be bothered to list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Application_support
ODF support was one second to MS’s own proprietary formats. So if Microsoft cared about open standards, then they’d have switched to an established and widely supported format instead of creating their own one from scratch.
Weird, I seem to recall that .NET v1 stank (and back then I was 100% a Windows user and developer). Though I’ll grant you that things have improved massively over the years. I quite enjoy using .NET these days.
However technical merits of C# aside, we’re talking about open standards. C# was invented to break established standards.
You’re obviously too young to remember what life was like before MS’s monopoly. Borland’s IDEs used to be second to none. It’s ‘only’ in 10 / 15 years that MS had overtaken Borland.
However that’s besides the point as you’re now arguing about the quality of the IDE, which absolutely nothing to do with the open standards of languages.
I guess if you’ve only ever used MS technology then you’re bound to be ignorant to the rest of the IT industry and their established standards
You’re hardly one to comment on the relevance of example given the number of times you’ve changed the argument to suit your bias.
Even IE7 lacked backed standards features that FF1 supported.
when talking about standard compliance, you can’t just exclude figures that disprove your point, simply because of market share. That’s just a whole new level of narrow-mindedness.
What’s more, you’re just picking two arbitrary specifications chosen specifically because IE happened get there first. However when you look at the overall performance (eg using ACID as a benchmark), you’ll see that IE was consistently one of the last browsers to meet standards (and that’s even excluding Opera!)
TBH I don’t really care one way or another. I do care about people complaining about Microsoft supporting something that nobody uses and doesn’t benefit their customers.
And? So you have the most popular document format in the world and they make their own competeting standard and it didn’t work out well.
Why would Microsoft support such as move, I don’t know.
If I made my own popular file format and someone told me I should support it and it isn’t nearly as widely used, I wouldn’t bother to support it either.
Why would they do that? there is no motivation to do so.
YES .NET 1.0 and 1.1 weren’t great. C# != .NET.
How can something be invented to break standards? It doesn’t make sense.
It like saying I am inventing PHP to break Python.
Their Java IDE was still rubbish.
I was just stating my preference.
There was nothing that was a dejure standard that everyone used.
To be honest I went down this road because of ASP.NET being open sourced recently.
TBH I don’t really care about the rest.
Yes IE7 was rubbish and had no excuse to be.
Well this is what a lot of developers are currently doing on Mobile. Webkit is king and anything that isn’t Webkit is a second class citizen. Like it or Lump it that the way it is.
IE8 for CSS and XHTML was fine, If you whine about SVG and other things … these simply aren’t used by web developers.
Two arbitary specifications!! Only the most important 2.
Because I rate my browsing experience on whether something can pass the ACID test.
We’re talking about open standards, not MS supporting something that nobody uses
that doesn’t even make sense.
You said MS support open standards. If that were true, then there would be motivation to do so. Ergo, you’ve just disproved your earlier statement.
Languages are neither open nor closed nor even copyrighted (as proved with the Oracle vs Google case). It’s their framework the decides the open nature of a language. Thus I’m discussing the crux of the matter when arguing about open standards.
Now you’re just arguing semantics. Clearly the context is talking about MS breaking from established standards rather than literally breaking the standards themselves.
so you’ve basically used one IDE and feel you’re qualified to make sweeping statements about an entire company? Well done.
Clearly there was, but such standards never made it into MS products. However there’s a whole industry outside of Microsoft.
So, like with Borland, you’re making a sweeping generalisation about a whole company based on one product.
Yeah. sad but true
Web developers weren’t using advanced techniques because they’d lose a high percentage of Windows users (pretty much half the web). It wasn’t a matter of choice, it was because MS forced their hand.
However IE was an improvement and IE9 is actually a fairly decent browser. So web developers are now adding advanced techniques they couldn’t risk before.
You talk as if the other browsers didn’t support everyday features. That wasn’t true. Instead they used browser specific extensions because, up until then, W3C dragged their heals in formalising said specifications. (and to be honest, I blame the w3c as much as I blame MS for the fiasco we had in the 90s / early 00s).
We’re talking about support for open standards, not how well web developers got at writing IE-specific hacks to make your browsing experience tolerable.
That is what people say about Microsoft. I simply said I didn’t like one of their IDEs nothing more.
That far fewer people use.
No I pointed out that it just simply isn’t true for the whole company and Shmerl was making sweeping statements by saying so.
Simply no, I haven’t seen a need to use a lot of the “advanced features” other than CSS 3.0, and the browser should be allowed to fall back. If a web developer isn’t using CSS 3.0 now and having appropriate fallbacks and polyfills … they should be.
However IE was an improvement and IE9 is actually a fairly decent browser. So web developers are now adding advanced techniques they couldn’t risk before.
Out of the two competing browsers in the 90s it was IE which innovated.
It is a testament to how good IE6 was ahead of everything else that is can still render pages decently today if the page is built correctly. Every single BBC webpage I have tried renders from IE6 to Latest Chrome perfectly.
IE4 had a massive number of downloads considering the bandwidth commonly available at the time (which nobody ever mentions).
IE7 and IE8 require almost no hacks to render a page the same as any of the modern browsers. Those that exist are well documented and easily avoided.
Except you didn’t simply state “one of their IDEs”, you make a generalisation about their entire product range.
More people used ODF than OOXML, before the release of Office 2007. So your point is moot. MS had to switch to an open standard so they invented one that nobody used instead of switching to an established standard and the 2nd most popular format after the one they were forced into switching from.
Except that IE8 didn’t support CSS 3. So your whole defence about developers not having to work around IE8 is moot.
Indeed, but you’re talking two decades ago, and the moment MS killed Navigator, they gave up trying.
Plus MS only innovated because they were trying to drive Netscape out by making the web incompatible (though grated Netscape were doing the same – I have no sympathy for them either). That’s not how open standards work.
IE6 was garbage and once again, your attributing credit to a crappy browser when the real praise belongs to the web developers for writing IE6 hacks.
You talk almost as if you’ve never had to build a website in your life.
Nobody mentions because it’s an irrelevant point. Ubuntu has had massive number of downloads and you likely consider that garbage.
Maybe not if you’re using popular web frameworks, but those frameworks will have IE7 hacks built into them.
No it is because you don’t understand web development. There is a lot of articles that can talk about it better than I. The basic message is progressive enhancement, the idea is the web page scales to the user-agent.
Even if we go past that, if you are doing it properly you are doing feature detection and then using a polyfill. Whether IE has the feature or not becomes irrelevant because we have provided a work around.
People that are complaining the opposite as far as I am concerned need to grown a pair.
e.g. No rounded corners, we will present a decent UI with Square ones … no CSS gradient we will use a CSS3PIE or whatever is appropriate.
The same argument has been used by others as to why IE had to innovate recently. Competition drives innovation … up until IE6 there was decent competition in THAT ERA and recently it has happened again.
Not being funny, but this comes back to De-facto vs De-jure standards. -Webkit extensions have become de-facto on mobile.
Actually I have built quite a few websites and I have no problems with cross browser problems until it is something the browser can’t do WITHOUT hacks. That is when I use IE specific stylesheets and I use them sparingly.
IE6 was never garbage when it came out. In fact it was built against a draft standard that was changed shortly after it’s release.
I actually try understanding what the browser is doing before writing hacks and see if what I am doing is even a sensible markup before continuing.
A lot of IE6 problems are “hasLayout” based or double margin bug. If people actually bothered reading the documentation (RTFM), maybe we wouldn’t have these discussions.
Maybe now, but it proves that AT THE TIME people wanted IE better than Netscape when we were working on Dial-up.
No other browser had that number of downloads at the time (or any other piece of software).
Oh well.
Bollox, I know how to program for a browser thanks and I don’t need hacks.
I am sorry, but I am a competent web-dev. My English ain’t the best but I know how to do develop a web page properly.
Edited 2012-12-18 21:59 UTC
I’ve been building websites since 1994 and have used ASP (horrid), ASP.NET, PHP, CGI (in a variety of languages), mod_perl and JSP. I’ve built push sites since before it was AJAX, developed my own CMS, two different message boards, a HTML D&D game, and a HTML chat site (the latter two before HTML portals were common place).
I’ve written Java applets, ActiveX plugins (ewww), Flash plugins (yuk) and even developed an entire site in 3D back before it 3D accelerated graphics cards were affordable (if you were wondering, that was done in VRML 2.0).
I’ve also managed a plethora of web servers including (but not limited to) IIS, Apache and lighttpd on Windows, Linux (various distros), FreeBSD and Solaris.
Also, I’ve built a couple of different web scrapers, my own bespoke web browser and a chat bot for a 3rd party HTML chat site.
So don’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I know what you’re crudely trying to describe, designing site so that non-compatible layers fall away elegantly (typically unsupported CSS tages). Yes it’s the ideal way to build a side, but it’s not always ideal to build a site like that. HTML5 is at a point where it can replace Flash, but to do so, you either have to write horrible hacks to support non-HTML5 browsers, fall back to Flash (yuk) or exclude those users entirely.
Plus even on my latest project where I’ve got a layout that supports such a concept, I’m having to write a few IE hacks to work around a lack of PNG transparency on older versions of IE.
IE hasn’t innovated recently.
Well, aside the process separation for tabs. But 1 new idea after 15 years of slumber is hardly an achievement.
Well I was never disagreeing with that. Only the BS you posted about IE.
I’d wager you use hack far more than you’re letting on. Whether it’s the framework handling the hacks for you (eg jQuery) or a subtle bit of conditional style, it’s pretty much a requirement if you want to develop anything worth visiting. (even my current project, a site designed to elegantly fail for early browsers and has been tested against the likes of Lynx (command line browser), needs a conditional for IE 7 and below. Not even Lynx needed that.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.
I should hope so. That’s why it’s called “programming” rather than “blindly whacking the keyboard until something outputs”.
Comparing one turd to another turd doesn’t make the original turn any less shit.
However I love how you keep reverting back to tails from 2 decades ago to prove how relevant IE is today. :p
And “properly” often means having to server browser specific code. You do realise that the likes of jQuery has browser specific code in? Ever use jQuery? How about any of the other popular frameworks?
Well that was a waste of time then.
I don’t use hacks unless I have to. I don’t support browsers that nobody uses.
I love these pretend problems you have with IE and calling things a turd when quite frankly they aren’t.
Edited 2012-12-19 11:14 UTC
Well clearly you don’t build shops (or other portals with a traditional customer base) professionally. Perhaps your experience is limited to developing intranets for government networks and thus only ever had to specifically target IE6.
Either way, you’re massively understating the fragmentation issues between browsers, and more specifically, IE.
Nearly every popular website has IE specific code in it. Regardless of whether that’s server side code, client side conditionals or even just code within a framework, it’s common place. Even OSNews does (just a quick glance through their jQuery libraries highlighted that).
I will concede that my sites have a lot of webkit, opera and mozilla specific code as well (in the form of browser specific CSS attributes), but IE is the only browser where I’ve had to write workarounds in Javascript, server side code and HTML.
Well I guess if you only every use IE then you’d be ignorant to the problems of it.
A bit like how you’ve only used one IDE from Borland and assumed their entire product range -past and present- was garbage.
No actually I provided IE6 – Latest Chrome support since I have started.
I have a VM setup for Each version of IE, because the IE emulator that they have is insufficient (IE9 has attachEvent and addEventListener).
Sorry I don’t have problems doing it. I have even solved problems in Chrome (a very similar issue to hasLayout on styling Legend tag)
I only write hack WHEN I HAVE TO and they are always well documented as to why.
If you are writing you workaround in Server Side code you are doing it wrong.
I said I didn’t like their one IDE, I didn’t comment on the rest of them, that is something that lives inside your imagination.
Another massively generated statement. I really do question your sanity if everything in your world is so ‘black and white’.
If you need to write targeted code and care about having the lowest foot print possible (essential for popular sites or mobile sites), then it can make sense to have said targeted code on the server side.
One example could be detecting whether to serve a mobile site or a desktop site. But like everything in IT, it’s about using the best tool for the job.
Yeah, you’re right. My apologies
I don’t see everything in black and white, however I think that a site should be built around content first and while there is a need in some cases (smaller images for mobile is an example), I think as much as possible should be handled by the user agent.
Writing targeted code is why we are in the current predicament of non-webkit browsers being forced to honour -webkit.
I think that is acceptable when it comes to images and very little else.
Yes you should use the best tools for the job, but work around for limitations in the browser IMHO should only be used if you HAVE TO and it should be well documented why you did it.
Well clearly you do because every point you’ve made has been definitive: “you absolutely should do this / should never do that!” blah blah blah.
All because you want to try and convince me that you know what you’re talking about. Yet the ironic thing is, using such absolutes only makes you seem inflexible and inexperienced (which I’m sure you’re not, but you’re not helping your case).
“however”? I was never implying that content shouldn’t come first.
Actually no. The reason why is because some developers are inflexible and only target webkit.
The whole bloody point of targeted code is that you’re writing code to support other browsers outside of webkit.
If you’re writing targeted code and still only supporting webkit then you’re a complete fail of web developer.
Depends on the layout of the site. Some layouts don’t scale well for smaller screens so it makes much more sense to have a mobile style sheet. (yeah I know about how sites should dynamically scale well, and in an ideal world all designs would do so. But in the real world it isn’t always practical).
Also some sites are too content rich for mobile connections (eg 3G), so it makes sense to cut down on some of the content (and I don’t mean remove important content, I mean remove the unimportant content such as have comments on a separate page to the article. I know OSNews does this on their desktop site, but most blogs do not).
Also some sites might have custom fonts or Javascript to handle mouseover events, both of which just adds yet more bloat for users browsing via 3G.
Maybe you don’t share this view. Maybe you’re one of the numpties who things dozens of separate javascript and CSS includes makes sense. But I prefer to write optimised yet highly manageable code that works well on all platforms. Which means occasionally resorting to targeted code.
I’d rather people worked around the limitations of browsers than limit their site because of one or two crappy browsers.
Well yeah. Everything should be documented (or at least a few well placed comments), hacks and “normal” code. But that’s completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Edited 2012-12-20 14:14 UTC
No, it is simply that I like to do things properly, if I have to be pragmatic about it I will be.
You are not that precious to me.
Sorry I don’t target a browser, I target features of a browser. Writing standards compliant code wins you half the battle.
I have seen so many people complain about IE7 not rendering a page correctly. After putting it through a validator and making them fix it rendered correctly.
I got the look of “Oh it renders correctly now”.
Maybe you don’t share this view. Maybe you’re one of the numpties who things dozens of separate javascript and CSS includes makes sense. But I prefer to write optimised yet highly manageable code that works well on all platforms. Which means occasionally [/q]
It totally depends what tools you are using and what you are trying to achieve. We have a separate mobile site because our slot games are flash which doesn’t work on some smart phones. That is a show stopper.
If you load scripts in an intelligent way it doesn’t bloat there are numerous techniques. Some are server side (WURFL etc) and others are Client side (Modernizer, YepNodeJS and Media Queries etc).
I still think that server side browser detection should be kept to a minimum.
Serving different markup to different browsers should be avoided.
I believe in progressive enhancement.
Well that’s a pity because the only other excuse you have for making dumb statements is rather less pleasant
Well now you’re basically saying what I just said but reworded into your own garbled logic.
Cool story bro. Not everyone is as dumb as your work colleagues.
That’s what I f–king said from the start.
Thank you for proving my point.
Yes, I know how to build web sites. We’ve already established that.
I agree. What I didn’t agree with was your sweeping generalisation that it should never happen. Thanks for finally agreeing with me.
Ideologies are great, but try to explain that to a client who is paying your company a few hundred thousand to be their bitch.
I’m somewhat getting the impressing that you’re business is rather small scale from the elitism and generalisations you love to make. If that’s not the case, then you really do come off incredibly badly here.
Edited 2012-12-21 00:03 UTC
This is like every argument on OSNEWS it gets into name calling and I am out.
The fact of the matter is I try to do it right in the first place, so I don’t have a maintenance nightmare on my hands in the future.
Calling me names and saying I have garbled logic because you are some old guard web developer (and I have met guys like you) is a load of bollox.
I more than enough explained my stance on the subject.
Have you never thought that perhaps you’re the one in the wrong?
Given I’ve written web browsers and worked for large international sites with traffic that peaks in the Gbs. I have some idea what I’m talking about
Plus, unlike you, I’ve developed sites nearly since the conception of the web and have managed to keep up to date with the latest technologies as well. But if keeping up with technology and wanting to push the best of browsers makes me “the old guard” then perhaps you’re the one with your logic screwed.
Anyway, I don’t need to convince you that you’re wrong, the upvotes in this thread speak volumes enough.
Yes because up-votes mean everything.
I don’t give a f–k how long you been doing it, famously said at the thedailywtf.com “Some people have 20 years of experience, some people have 1 years of experience 20 times.”
So far you basically said “you are a fool for wanting to do things the right way and I know everything!”
I don’t work at some 8 bob web-shop (I used to).
Edited 2012-12-22 11:18 UTC
lol whatever mate. What I actually said was you’re narrow minded and only see things in black and white. Then proceeded to list of a number of exceptions that proved your narrow views wrong.
I will concede that you have relaxed your stance a little since. But sadly your ego got in the way of any real intellectual discussion.
Neither do I. As I said before, my clients are huge international names.
I’m pretty sure I know exactly the type of outfit you currently work at though. I’ve met people like yourself before; full of ambition and ego but utterly incapable of translating that into a meaningful carer so instead bitch on forums about how their elitism is justified. While the rest of the working populous actually develops more flexible code for real world scenarios that we encounter in our proper development jobs instead of the Micky Mouse government intranets that muppets like you are lumbered with.
Enjoy your Christmas break, because it’s only another depressing year of failure ahead of you
Couldn’t be further from the truth. I work in the gaming sector.
Edited 2012-12-22 12:18 UTC
I’ll just jump in for the C# part. This is because I like the guy who did it (Anders Hejlsberg, who also gave us Turbo Pascal and Delphi before).
I remember reading “C# for Java Developers” when I was in college. I don’t remember being impressed by many books on the technical level as much as I did with that one. Every decision they made was for fixing the problems I had with java (no signed integers, no easy way to talk native, no easy xml processing, and of course properties, and metadata).
C# was only built, because MS could not adopt Java for Windows development (as you said they were sued for J++). But they only reason they wanted to extend Java was they knew (Anders knew) Visual Basic did not have any future (i.e.: pretty much sucked), and Java was the best thing out there. But there were the issues with Java on the desktop front – which they fixed with C#, so they had to extend it. Even today, except for Eclipse framework, the standard Java GUI APIs are real bad compared to C#/XAML.
Were Java an open standard at that time, Sun could not have sued for J++, and we would have a Windows dialect of Java, which would probably be backported to the main standard by open source hobbyists. But since Java was never an open standard (until maybe C# got pretty big), they closed it down from MS’s use.
As I said, Java was not an open standard (still not an ISO/ECMA standard AFAIK).
Again the Anders factor here. Borland was good, while he was at the helm. They went down when he left, and they did not know what to do. I remember trying to use their express editions to come back, but they would not let two different versions (e.g.: C++, and C#) at the same. Then they stopped distributing free starter versions all together. Now look at the size of Delphi developers, and I feel real sad (I started actual programming with Turbo Pascal back in the day).
Interesting post. Thanks
I to used to spend a great deal of time developing in Turbo Pascal. Awesome IDE, awesome language
You meant Java has no unsigned integers, or any unsigned numeric type.
It wasn’t due to Java not being an open standard. The issue was Microsoft’s breach of contract with Sun.
And it wasn’t J++, it was Microsoft’s Java. J++ was a result of that legal dispute.
Anders Hejlsberg is a bad ass.
They should rename Denmark after him.
Java was never an established standard. It would be easier to argue that Java was invented to break established C++ standards.
But the real problem is that C++ was created to break ASM standards. And don’t even get me started on what happened to the abacus.
Edited 2012-12-21 09:04 UTC
It may have been a silly move, but it was to break single vendor lock in. Which OOXML was countering, and successfully countered. Result? Single vendor lock in!
Says you. The Mono team disagrees and has heavily praised Microsoft opening up the various ASP.NET stacks. They were integrated into the Mono codebase in days.
That is a textbook example of open source.
Yeah, because Netflix was going to take that sitting down, right? No.
For all the whining people do about DRM, they sure do clamor for it. Of course, the real reason is they need something to beat MS over the head with, and this is low hanging fruit.
Why don’t you talk about instances where having Moonlight on Linux furthered the experience? The Olympics in Beijing being a major one, without Moonlight it wouldn’t have been watchable on Linux, period.
Microsoft made documentation and test suites available to the Mono team ahead of time. Everything else is an ECMA standard.
This is true, but I think the blame is overblown. At the time, and you need to be old enough to remember this, but Java was terrible when C# came out. It was still interpreted, for crying out loud.
C# came and provided clear and concise improvements, and more importantly, the tooling around C# was second to none. I mean, Anders was at the helm. He was the genius from Borland, Microsoft’s major strategic win.
What does this matter? They’re two competing standards (Nothing wrong with that) which have arguable strengths and weaknesses. Both which I think are slightly above either of us to get into too much detail for.
OOXML and ODF are massive, sprawling, complex formats. Its hard to standardize something like that correctly. ODF reflects design decisions made to better support OO and OOXML reflects design decisions made to better support Office.
WebGL is like the OOXML of the web. A “standard” (eh) made around the technological needs of a specific technology. Just like Microsoft rejects the OpenGLisms in WebGL, Open Office people reject the MS Office-isms in OOXML.
C# was a quantum leap over Java when it was released. Sincerely someone who used both at launch. PDC01 was a game changer. Absolutely. No doubt about it.
MS is damned if they do, damned if they don’t. I guarantee you’d be the first one complaining if it wasn’t an open standard.
I hope you’re joking. By the time .NET launched, Borland IDEs were floundering. I sincerely am questioning your recollection of events.
IE6s problem was not intentional deviation from standards. IE6 when released was the single most standards compliant browser. The problem arose from a lack of developer attention and a stagnation.
IE6 is what happens when IE implements a bunch of Working Draft standards. Microsoft is only guilty of virtually abandoning IE until Vista was released. That’s five years.
Browsers still weren’t completely CSS2.1 compliant when IE8 came out, for fucks sake. People were still excited about browsers passing ACID2 and ACID3 tests.
News flash, all browsers have ridiculous quirks. IEs are just the most well known.
How about the 12 implementations of the Flexible Box module out there across all browsers. Is that adherence to standards?
I don’t follow that statement. The WINE work around was officially published by Netflix and the reason they use Silverlight is because MPAA demanded it.
Those are two unrelated points.
Yeah Borland were struggling at that point, but that doesn’t mean that the languages themselves were bad; just that Borland’s IDEs were sub-par. Given my point was about the language and run time environments used by MS, it’s somewhat moot how good or bad Borlands IDE was. Though let’s be honest, even as late as then, Borland were only sub-par to Visual Studio.
I was talking about earlier versions of IE when I mentioned that.
I’d already covered that.
MS killed the competition by implementing their own ‘standards’ in the mid 90s. Then left the market to stagnate for so long that the standards IE6 conformed to were out of date.
I’d also raised those points as well. I’m not by any means saying that other browsers are not guilty. But IE has been the worst offender – by far.
The applications are not buggy and only unusable because Netflix is not designed to work in Linux. The problem isn’t .NET, it does exactly what it is supposed to.
If Java didn’t run and look like crap in Windows then .NET never would have gained traction. Java is OK now but back then it looked awful. That’s partly due to Sun insisting that it didn’t use native controls or cleartype. Even today it still doesn’t look great which is why it is rarely used for shinkwrap applications.
My experience leads me to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. I agree that Microsoft does not care about open standards but the ODF was not built to handle everything in Excel. There would have been a conflict of interest regardless since MS would want the format designed around Office.
OOXML is an open standard, the issue is more that LibreOffice/OpenOffice developers do not care about providing 100% compatibility. I could even dig up a link where one of them states this explicitly.
That goes back to Java running like crap in Windows, which was the fault of Sun. Windows developers were ready to embrace Java but Sun was stubborn about non-native controls and the JRE.
Others already explained that IE was the slowest to adopt standards, OOXML was used to subvert ODF and regarding OpenGL – let’s see any kind of support for it on their Xbox and Windows RT. Whether it’s OpenGL ES or full blown OpenGL is purely theoretical, since neither is supported there.
Firefox was always far more standards compliant than IE…
Their support for standards in earlier versions was limited not by a desire to lock people in but by shear practicality, with IE having as much marketshare as it did firefox needed compatibility, not implementing more standards that wouldn’t have gotten used at the time anyway.
You failed to address the “vendor lock-in” part.
Open source is not open standard.
Mono is far from being an alternative.
OOXML has so many “extensions”(read – blobs from the earlier Office formats) and even Microsoft does not implement OOXML fully.
Now look at actual viable alternatives and how Microsoft reacts to those…
But what am I saying… Microsoft fanboy will always come to defense.
Noting an article from yesterday,…
Wait. Weight. W8.
Slow and obese.
But who needs Google if you have a Lumia? I mean one that wasn’t Eloped or Osborned by running 7.x.
If you are already in their prison-farm (walled gardens don’t have razor wire and guard towers and you and your stuff are free to enter or leave), maybe you should enjoy your incarceration.
Not sure about the patenting, but the EU forced Microsoft to make a lot of protocols available to competitors.
And Samba team payed Microsoft 10.000 Euros to get access to that documentation:
http://fsfe.org/news/2007/news-20071220-01.en.html
On 11 dec. (so only couple of days ago) Samba 4 was released which implements a large number of Microsoft protocols and processes. Most of it was already reference engineered of course.
Which includes pretty much all the features Microsoft supports: different domain controller roles, Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, DNS, dynamic DNS updates, the SMB 2.0 and SMB 2.1 protocols included since Windows Vista and even experimental support the SMB 3.0 which is included in Windows Server 2012.
The SMB 3.0 protocol which was needed for Windows Server 2012 “Scale Out File Server” brings support for Active/Active and failover Fileserver support.
Which is something the Samba team already did since 2007 with the older SMB 1.x protocols. That is why when the Samba team went to Microsoft this year to do interability testing the Samba team could test code for SMB 3.0 they only created a day before they arrived and it worked.
Also the Linux 3.7 kernel released a couple of days ago also experimental client support for SMB 2.x, most of that code comes from the Samba developers of course.
Let’s get back to E-mail and Exchange, the OpenChange project is a full Exchange replacement based on Samba 4 libraries/code.
Only a couple of days ago the OpenChange project completed most of the features by adding support for Active Sync/Outlook Anywhere by implementing the RFC over HTTP(S)*
Maybe Google had a contract with some company to provide them an implementation for ActiveSync and Google did not renew the contract because they knew they could use the above mentioned code if they needed to enable it again ?
Because of the Samba team you too can now see the protocol specification:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc243950%28v=prot.20~*~…
So yes, it isn’t an open standard and there might be patent problems, but I doubt the problems are all that great now.
So thanks to the EU and the Samba and OpenChange teams the open source code exists (GPLv3 which has a special patents clause to help protect the innocent as well).
The Samba team even sends them notifications if documentation is wrong and Microsoft fixes the documentation.
I always love to hate Microsoft and Microsoft did not do this out of love, they were forced to. So I think we can still have them 😉
But hey if people don’t use Microsoft protocols it isn’t a great loss, they usually suck. For example because of compatibility reasons Microsoft still uses crappy hashing for their password store:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-cracks-every…
* http://tracker.openchange.org/issues/42
Edited 2012-12-18 01:01 UTC
My uninformed guess would be that running Exchange Active Sync over open protocol is costly in term of processor time, bandwidth and maintenance , and as much money Google is getting from advertising to “free” user, Google probably did the math of using dev/server ops time and maintaining a protocol that is used by a small portion of their users ( which can still continue to access via the web client, and I guess that writing a notification client for gmail on windows phone is not that painful ).
And I agree that not supporting open protocol (as old as they are), is pretty much a pity for a mail client.
Example: if your company didn’t invest in windows servers would you like your corporate to go through a 3rd party server.
So as good as microsoft softwares/servers/services are, there is something infuriating with shoving yet another service down your throat.
Plus let’s not forget that Microsoft claims Android violences IP of them. They even get $ per sold unit from lots of the device-makers. Its known that there claim applies to at least there FAT32 long filename extension and protocols. Google tries to free Android from that Microsoft tax and legal risk associated with it.
USB mass-storage is being replaced by MTP and Microsoft propitary protocols are replaced with open standard protocols. Claiming Google tries to harm Microsoft AFTER they already supported Microsoft protocols, etc is not fair taken into account that supporting them results in that Microsoft tax what makes using Android more expensive and increases the legal risk and so goes against Google’s interest to spread Android.
Let’s face it. If being compatible with Microsoft means you need to pay them big money and make your strategy a risk then not being compatible with Microsoft but following and pushing open standards just makes lot of sense. No only from a business view but also from a morality view. The future belongs to us. Let’s keep the future open.
Edited 2012-12-18 07:32 UTC
Google is still paying Microsoft licensing fees for EAS.
And will continue to do so, in order for Android to implement the Exchange Active Sync client.
Some handset vendors were handed injunctions over EAS, but they were for devices prior to 2009, when Google officially licensed the technology.
HTC, Motorola, etc. are OEMs that faced the repercussions of using unlicensed technology.
Oh, please. Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation. They’re not some small start up being crushed. Save the pity song for something believable. Google licenses plenty of other patents, as does Microsoft, as does basically every other player in the industry.
You can’t just wish away patents, or licensing fees, nor are you implicitly protected because you use “open” standards. That’s ridiculous.
Why is it so wrong with Microsoft profiting off of the development of their own closed (but almost universally accepted) standard? Is this so much worse then Google making proprietary modifications to open standards (i.e. IMAP) and profiting from the work of others?
BTW, I’m thinking about the Outlook.com move. I already use my SkyDrive for most of my online storage, might as well move my email there too.
Hi,
Step 1: Use your monopoly in one area (OSs) to trick suckers into using your products (and your own closed standards)
Step 2: Use your closed standards to make it hard for users to switch to any competitors product (or, use vendor lock in to prevent fair competition)
Step 3: When anything happens that might convince users to leave anyway, try to get the suckers locked into a different product of yours that also prevents fair competition.
I can’t see anything wrong here..
Edited 2012-12-18 01:37 UTC
Nonsense. Nobody was forced to use EAS. EAS was widely adopted because it filled a much needed void in mobile email (i.e. limited bandwidth, email push, calendar/contact integration, etc.). I cannot see how licensing a protocol creates vendor lock-in. As we now know Google is turning it off so obviously they didn’t feel locked-in as you say. In the end, Google turning off EAS may result in people leaving Google. Microsoft didn’t have much to lose other than whatever small licensing fee (if any) they were getting.
What proprietary extensions? They’re all documented
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/imap_extensions
They may be documented, but that still makes them non-standard proprietary extensions that Google can change on a whim.
That said, IMAP IDLE is a supported open standard that allows push, so no excuse for Microsoft shunning it.
Non-standard, Yes. Proprietary, no.
Google don’t “own” these extensions and there are no licenses, restrictions or fees associated with implementing them.
Besides, many things now considered “standard” started out as non-standard.
It’s also worth noting that IMAP was designed to be extensible.
Edited 2012-12-18 06:40 UTC
If you equate “public” with “open”, then you may be correct.
I however like to think that “open” means that anybody can participate in the process of developing the protocol. This is not the case here, the protocol is decreed by Google.
Secrecy, fees (e.g. due to patent encumbrance) and such are sufficient conditions for being proprietary, but not necessary.
No it isn’t. It’s IMAP. Google’s extensions are defined by Google, but you’re welcome to implement your own version of those extensions, or totally different extensions. You’re also welcome to write an RFC based on those extension and submit it to the IETF, at which point they’d become “standard”.
I understand and don’t dispute that. But in contrast to IMAP which is standardized by the IETF, nobody prevents Google to change their non-standard extensions in an incompatible way tomorrow, rendering your implementation useless. No process is in place that enables participation.
I’ve been on outlook.com for months now. It is very good. Sweeping is a nice feature for setting up rules categorizing and filing mail simply by selecting a group of messages and saying “move all to <folder> and do it in the future”
EAS is NOT a standard. It’ just a proprietary technology that happens to be in use. Please point me to the specs of this standard so I can roll out my own stuff using it.
Less shilling please. Microsoft should really stop paying stupid propagandists to the detriment of real R&D. They employ smart people, maybe they should use them ?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307725(EXCHG.80).aspx
You were saying?
He actually cannot use it, since it’s patented. And it’s very much proprietary though documented.
A standard can be patented. You know, like 3G.
Take a license.
It’s neither a standard nor is Microsoft giving out those licenses left and right. Hence it’s proprietary.
Edited 2012-12-22 00:51 UTC
Windows Phone supports IMAP.
Ok, but does it currently support CalDav and CardDav? These are the pieces needed to be open, versus the EAS crap.
I await your Kool-Aid flavored answer.
No. I never claimed it did, or disputed someone saying it didn’t.
I think it’s a miss that WP8 doesn’t natively support Contact and Calendar syncing from say iCloud, something like that should be a scenario they aim for if they wish to convert people over to Windows Phone.
However, I only prefer it because its a migration path, I still find EAS to be superior because I actually value my device’s battery life and enjoy true push.
That enough Kool-Aid for you ?
Huh, that is funny. I get notified through my Android Phone (Samsung Galaxy Nexus)… about e-mail or Calendar events added with about 3-5 seconds after they get to my “inbox”
People dislike it when I ask them if they’ve seen the calendar event or e-mail sent by others. It annoys them I get my e-mail faster and more reliably than they do.
I also have my phone last up to 90 hours per charge, at least 72 hours normally. I use it for SMS and e-mail and Skype and phone calls. Though phone calls and Skype tend to eat more battery.
You know what else is funny? Android uses proprietary push technology, not IMAP push.
So..about that Kool-Aid ? What flavor is yours?
IMAP IDLE does not drain battery life, like you imply. I’ve been using it with my private email server and K9 for a while now. No battery issues.
That’s nice.
It is actually.
Microsoft is like a 800 lb Bull a little slow but they will win in the long run..
Wrong, Microsoft is like an 800 lb piece of shit. Lots of people eat it every day and are happy.
The best part about this… people have *NEVER* known any difference. This then begs the question: Do they know any better?
Obviously they do not. Since to someone eating crap all their life, would have problem tasting anything different and it would be rejected much like many Russian Kids reject Peanut Butter as its “wholly gross and tastes like effluent**”
**Not an exact translation, but you get the drift.
I hate all the vendor-lock in created by companies especially Google, Microsoft, Oracle,Apple & IBM. These 5 companies crippled IT innovation for years and they are bringing back the old way of computing where every vendor have their own operating system, hardware, their own standards etc.
Playing the devil’s advocate, though, we probably wouldn’t want to see a world where every standard is under the control of one single entity either. After all, the DVD and HDCP standards each emerged as the One True Standard of their realm at some point, and then everyone could see the result of this unification: unskippable ads, video disks that will only play reliably in one small part of the world, audio and video connectivity that requires an expensive and restrictive license to be implemented…
Edited 2012-12-18 08:14 UTC
I agree with you on that perspective. My concern is more about applications that you buy for one platform locks you in that platform forever. Then they make you buy more of their software or hardware. It applies to both consumer and enterprise apps these 5 companies create.
DVD and HDCP is actually a result of pressure from a lot of media companies.
Indeed, but this kind of pressure can be applied much more easily if there is one single point of failure, such as a unique standard or standardization organism, than if there isn’t.
Where is the vendor lock in at Google? You can export all your data in open formats and take it to a vendor of your choice.
Try that with Apple or Microsoft.
What specifically is something I can’t export from Outlook? I’m wondering. Stop with the hyperbole.
Exchange Events for the Calendar. (or whatever its called)
Let’s compare apples with apples. Google data exists in the cloud and I can download almost all of it by visiting http://www.google.com/takeout
Please point me to the URL where I can download my data stored on the various Microsoft cloud services.
Before the Live toolbar, the preferred way to export your Hotmail contacts was to scrape them from the contact list.
From Microsoft desktop software you often get exports only in their proprietary formats or with loss of fidelity. For their drm-infested stuff (XBox, Zune, …) often nothing at all can be exported.
I bought some apps for my android phone. Not able to install that on my Ipod. Does it qualify vendor lock-in?
To understand fully the extent of what Google is doing here, it is important to understand the journey that’s led them to this point.
Google has licensed EAS. That means they at one point determined the EAS, not the DAV suite, fit the needs of users over what was available at the time.
Things change, and now Google feels that IMAP+*DAV is a better solution so they’re transitioning. Granted, it’s a rocky transition (Really, a few months notice? Stupid.), but it is one they’re going through nonetheless.
This isn’t Google moving to an open protocol, this is Google directly attacking Microsoft once the deck was stacked enough. If Google did not have Android, it wouldn’t have the cojones to just shut out EAS.
So there’s a lot of ways to read this: Google wanting to end free business services, save on licensing, injure Microsoft, etc.
I think its a little of each, but it isn’t because Google had some sort of open standard loving epiphany. That’s sort of pie in the sky.
Anyhow, I think Microsoft saw this coming. On Windows Phone 7, Gmail is automatically set up to use EAS to sync Contacts/Tasks/Calendar/Email
On WP8, Gmail uses IMAP..which caused a pretty nasty bug earlier this year (presumably due to Google’s weird IMAP implementation, that some in these comments refuse to acknowledge exists). People have been dogging Google’s IMAP implementation for years, but apparently its all head in the sand around here..
If that were so, they’d have implemented the stupid protocols and this whole thing would be a non-issue. So if they saw it coming, that means they chose not to implement, which is a somewhat different move. I’d say, based on the number of their phone sales, a bad one.
I don’t think its a given, it may have been late enough in the dev cycle to be a no-go. I just can’t imagine Google, a huge Microsoft EAS licensee doing something like this without giving prior notice. Corporations don’t operate in a vacuum like that.
Windows Phone sales have been modest and picking up Quarter over Quarter for like a year. Windows Phone app vendors have seen explosions in app sales since Windows Phone 8 launched. There is clear momentum behind the platform. A fact many here conveniently refuse to acknowledge.
By all means, continue the meme though.
Sure, but it’s easy to double your sales QonQ when you’re bumping along the bottom at 1-2% of the market.
When you start at 0 the only way is up, after all.
There’s no evidence that there is any more real, consumer driven momentum behind WP8 than any of their previous mobile platforms, or that there is behind BlackBerry OS, or Meego, or WebOS. That is because currently the platform is an also-ran and it’s userbase is counted under “Other”, below RIM.
So? Does that mean that sales are not increasing? The fact that Microsoft is keeping up with the market, and then some, by making small inroads on a region by region basis, is impressive.
No one serious thinks Windows Phone will overnight take the world by storm, but judging from Microsoft in the past, it is a silly bet to bet against them eventually having some sort of presence.
Like I said, people told them to dump Xbox when it was bleeding cash at Entertainment & Devices. Xbox is now one of the shining examples of Microsoft establishing a relevant brand “post-Windows”.
Do you have evidence to support that every single app developer who’s seen a dramatic increase in sales started at zero? No. Because you’d rather use hyperbole to get a zinger in instead of having a sensible discussion.
I personally know people who’ve made, and continue to make great money on the platform. Between Windows Phone and Windows 8, the revenue has given me more financial freedom than I’ve had in years.
It is a bald faced lie that Windows Phone and Windows Store both have low download counts, and bring in a small amount of revenue.
There’s no evidence..if you conveniently ignore the evidence like you have.
Oh certainly, sales are increasing. I just object to people trotting out the same tired and twisted stats like it matters. WebOS had two amazing quarters of growth, but that particular statistic is meaningless. It’s total devices that matters, and Windows Phone 8 doesn’t matter.
But they’re not. WP8 market share is lower than WP7 market share was. It remains to be seen if they’ll ever regain the heady heights of the 3-4% market share the had back then.
They all did. No one was selling Windows Phone 8 apps until Windows Phone 8 launched. Again, a “dramatic increase” is a meaningless statistic. Actual, hard figures.
Where is it then? Windows Phone 8 hasn’t even been out long enough to show up on any market research; what’s there is dumped under “Other” along with Meego and WebOS. You have no evidence of anything related to WP8 because the data simply doesn’t exist yet.
Sequential growth is also important. QoQ growth for Windows Phone has been steady.
I was replying to the statement that Microsoft has sold no phones. If you’re in agreement with me that they have sold phones, then your comment is meaningless besides to toss a few zingers out.
That’s ridiculous. WP7 and WP8 marketshare is to be viewed as just Windows Phone. Or do you count iOS5 marketshare as just iOS5?
Windows Phone 7 devices are still being announced, sold, and marketed all over the world.
The increase I’m talking about is for Windows Phone 7 applications in general, since Windows Phone 8 has been released (and if you didn’t know, can run WP7 apps)
My statement isn’t exclusive to the WP8 launch, I merely included the app statistics as an indicator of WP8’s impact, since like you said, it’s too early to do it otherwise.
However, you can look at Windows Phone 7 sales and see a clear acceleration.
There’s also a ramp up in Marketplace submissions (up 40%) and the pace at which the Market has grown has increased (and it was already the fastest growing Ecosystem before Windows 8 launched).
Marketshare is somewhat of a lagging indicator in my opinion, but the handset is undoubtedly in many, many more hands than it was even a year ago. That’s my entire point, so I’m a little puzzled at the reasoning behind your comment.
I was replying to your poor grasp of statistics.
There’s no upgrade path from WP7 to WP8; users have to literally throw away their WP7 device and get a new WP8 device, hence I consider them different things and count them separately. You’re free to disagree.
Maybe I should be clearer: please stop using relative statistics as any meaningful indicator of the absolute success of Windows Phone in the market place. A 40% increase in app submissions isn’t very interesting. A 200% or 300% increase might be interesting, as that would indicate rapid growth: 40% is just “growth” and even the WebOS app market managed to grow.
Again, my complaint is that you’re using relative growth as an indicator. Of course Windows Phone handsets are in “many more hands” than a year ago: WP7 hadn’t even been out all that long at the beginning of last year! That’s called “growth”, and while it’s nice, it’s not spectacular or interesting growth.
In the same time frame that Windows Phone has reached “many more hands”, iOS and Android have shipped hundreds of millions of new devices. There is no evidence at all that Windows Phone has had even the slightest impact on the Android or iOS markets, and without that impact it’s always going to be an also-ran, lumped under “Other” at the bottom of the chart.
Uh huh. ROTFL. At least we know who you are now and we’ve established your credibility rating – zero.
Regardless of what you believe in your fantasy world, the Windows Phone market is miniscule next to that of Android and iOS. You don’t know of anyone making ‘great money’ off it because it simply isn’t viable.
Android’s app market was a long, long way behind iOS’s for many, many years (still is in some ways) before it got some critical mass to the point where it became viable for apps to be developed for it.
The brutal truth is that there is no room whatsoever for a third platform. Any developers that are ignoring hard economics on that are living in a sad, strange little world.
Agree with you here. This is just another crummy who cares about the customer move by google. They have done this plenty of times by dropping services and access to many other technologies that people got used to before. And they historically do not give you any transition time. A month is a joke.
I love this part of the headlined article:
My question is isn’t Google the new Microsoft? Are they not trying to dictate the industry by making these moves? Or is it ok because they like to use Open Standards? If EAS is in place and fills a need for a customer who cares if it is closed source.
I really don’t get it. Google is acting just like MS here and no one seems to see it…
Edited 2012-12-19 00:10 UTC
Yes. It’s certainly infinitely better, certainly.
All this is just going backwards. Instead of going for more seamless and tighter integration – from the users’ points of view – for e-mail services, company interests pollute our landscape. To be fair, Google at least doesn’t just pull out, they leave a way out, which unfortunately is dependent on Microsoft implementing the open protocols. Which is always a lottery-guess at best. So now Microsoft tries to pull users away, who depend on activesync, which is both an opportunity and a failure. Opportunity to build a “private” user base, failure since it shows MS to be as rigid and un-flexible towards adapting to changes as always. Changes, that in this case, at least IMHO, are good. But I’m fairly skewed here, since I don’t depend on activesync. However, all things considered, this whole thing is bad for a number of users, and depdnding on their “affiliation” they can blame either Google or Microsoft, result being they’ll have to consider activesync capability as a requirement for their next phone purchase.
Its one thing to come up with a better protocol and want Microsoft to implement it. But IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV don’t come close to matching EAS (except in some specific cases where Contacts fucking rock using DAV, my friend’s iCloud set up is sick) .
In the end, this is a specific issue to a specific subset of power user. Most people don’t care about “Push this” or “Pull that” or “Sync this”.
The normal layman doesn’t care about all that. Microsoft could just as easily write an adapter to import Contacts into EAS and side-step the entire issue altogether without implementing a thing.
I think that to actually understand Microsoft [or any other huge software player on the market – like Apple, etc] is to realize, that they absolutely don’t care about established standards, the way of doing things. They perceive themselves as the pioneers in revolution. Changing the phones into iPhones, changing “user interface experience” from the “old and ineffective” to the “new and effective” with Metro UI, etc. They are so close-minded with their “revolutionary” and not “evolutionary” thinking, that they end up being arrogant and ignorant to everything that didn’t come out of their own minds. They simply believe that this will give them more money.
The best way to change is is actually to not use it. That’s the only type of pressure they will understand. Vote with you own wallets. If you buy something, if you click on EULA – you are in fact AGREEING to all of this nonsense, whether it’s Microsoft, Apple, Google, or anything else.
So get this right Thom, Google drop support for EAS for non paying customers and you are saying that they are wrong to advertise that they support the same features for free on their own service.
OKAY!
Edited 2012-12-18 11:29 UTC
I’m not saying they are wrong for advertising their own products. I’m saying they are wrong for not actually addressing the very real customer issue that’s about to come up.
Quite the difference.
Why should they?
Have you heard of “That’s not your fault, but it is your problem”?
Here lies Microsoft – not addressing customers’ needs and issues.
Microsoft is a statistical error in the smartphone arena. Their customers aren’t going to switch to Outlook.com just because Microsoft says and there’s nothing keeping people on WP8 versus iOS or Android.
So unless they address the issue in a less arrogant manner, they are not going going anywhere in the smartphone market.
The issue to the customer has been caused by Google in this instance, not MS.
MS/Nokia are currently pushing WP8 as a corporate device which can be linked into your current infrastructure.
More and more UK articles are seemingly discussing the platform in this light. No idea as of yet if this is converting into Real corporate customers, but perception is half the battle in these things.
Google changing their implementation with such short notice just when BYOD is starting to gain real traction seems baffling.
GMail ISNT in “beta” anymore, companies lose trust when a 3rd party suddenly breaks their systems. Especially if it involves the CEO’s shiny new toy….
FYI: GApps for Business will continue to support EAS. So most of your comment is baseless. Only free users will not be able to setup EAS connections.
Windows Phone is positioned as enterprise friendly, in enterprises, EAS is almost ubiquitous.
EAS is an “open” standard by virtue that you can implement it if you pay a royalty bearing license, it is not free, but it is not a black box either. If you’re willing to play ball (Like Samba does, and yes, even Google still does) you can interoperate.
It is not unreasonable to expect Microsoft to want to make money off of a technology, that still, to this day, is better than the alternative. Like I said, I’d have absolutely no problem with this if IMAP+CalDAV and CardDAV provided anywhere near the same level of functionality, but even with IMAP Idle (Which I doubt many very OS vendors implement anyway) its rubbish. Its not true push, more like long polling.
With that said, I also think its important to highlight the fact that Outlook.com doesn’t sacrifice user experience over politics. It is unbelievable that Google has given their consumers such a raw deal.
Google: Hey, we know you love your Ferrari, but we’ve got this cool, open, standard Unicycle for you to try!
User: Uh, what?
Google: Yeah, it’s great. That’s the alternative. A unicycle. It’ll get you from A to B just like your Ferrari.
Google: Oh, and by the way, we’ve just sold your Ferrari for you. Its not open enough, you won’t ever need that anyway.
Huh? does outlook.com implement POP or IMAP yet? It didn’t as of a couple of months ago. That seems like a pretty hefty “sacrifice” for a lot of users and their experience.
Edited 2012-12-18 19:20 UTC
Outlook.com has always supported POP. Microsoft has confirmed IMAP support is coming to Outlook.com
Also, it seems Microsoft may be bringing ActiveSync to the Mac.
Seems like they’re taking a multi-pronged approach, which is refreshing. If they implement CardDAV And CalDAV it’ll be perfect. Here’s hoping.
Microsoft explicitly discourages the use of POP/SMTP on their outlook.com service, and they don’t guarantee their pop server will be there in the future. The only thing that Microsoft has said about IMAP support is that they may or may not support it at some point in the future or ever. And then there is the matter of CalDav, etc. So yeah, Microsoft plays politics just like everybody else.
They’ve explicitly said IMAP support is coming.
The fact of the matter is that once it does come, Microsoft will support EAS, POP, and IMAP. The only missing piece of the puzzle will be the DAV suite. Which I’ve already said I hope they change their tune on.
The difference being that Microsoft isn’t displacing prospective IMAP users, because there was never the expectation that it would be there prior to their announcement.
The equivalent of what Google did would be Microsoft dumping EAS and moving to IMAP with a 2month migration Window. That is irresponsible on Google’s part.
I know it is traditional for microsofties to equate “vapor/vague promise” with “shipping product/feature.” But come on…
I hate to repeat myself; microsoft haven’t provided a time table or any sort of corporate commitment for IMAP support. Furthermore their POP support is flaky and its use is discouraged explicitly (in the actual meaning of the word). And there is ZERO support for DAV suite, unless you use 3rd party plugins. So if my mail user experience depends on protocols that are not proprietary to microsoft, I’m basically shit out of luck with outlook.com. Which flies directly in the face of your narrative.
PS. You keep using that term “the fact of the matter” which does not mean what you want it to mean: “your personal opinion on the matter.”
This is semantics, you think they won’t ship it. I think they will. It isn’t outlandish to not provide a shipping date before you know exactly when it will ship.
Or is Google not working on Android 5.0? They haven’t given me a solid ship date, am I to assume they’re all sitting on their hands? Of course not, it’s ridiculous. Anyone who’s spent a day in software engineering knows this to be true.
How is their POP support flaky? I’m curious. And of COURSE they discourage POP, everyone discourages POP. Even IMAP is a better protocol. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing.
This is true, which I’ve already agreed with you on (yet you feel the need to restate for the third time)
Do you want me to disagree with you? Because I can point out how EAS is supported in most of the scenarios that Outlook wants to enable (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows), which can easily import data that’s been exported from other services.
You’re all over the place trying to fit as many red herrings as you can. Again, I was simply pointing out that outlook.com has its fair share of issues from an end “user experience” standpoint; it only implements microsoft’s own protocols properly, with support for alternative protocols either discouraged or simply non-existent. In contrast, google’s services as of now support EAS, POP, IMAP, and DEV as well.
Your approach thus far is to conjure an alternative future reality in which microsoft has implemented those protocols…
So google is moving away from having to pay microsoft a hefty license fee to access their protocol, whereas microsoft is basically just focusing on their own protocols. The two parties look equally political and self interested to me.
Edited 2012-12-18 21:54 UTC
You neglected to answer how POP support is flaky, or even relevant to the discussion. Outlook.com supports POP, I haven’t run into issues, but its possible others have which is why I asked for clarification (which you so far haven’t given)
The other part of your statement was that POP was discouraged, AS IT SHOULD BE. POP has no place in modern e-mail.
Microsoft has not dropped IMAP for politics, it has just never supported it in the past, but it has stated that it plans to do so.
That’s entirely different from Microsoft supporting IMAP in Outlook and then dropping it and telling users to take a hike and use EAS. That is the difference which you refuse to acknowledge because it is not convenient.
It is one thing for me to say:
– Maybe Microsoft will implement IMAP
it is another thing for me to say:
– Microsoft has stated they will implement IMAP.
You are conflating the two, I mentioned the latter, not the former. You saying that it is vaporware because a ship date hasn’t been announced just shows the weakness of your own argument.
Microsoft will support EAS, POP, and IMAP for all. Gmail will only support EAS if you pay for it, and Google doesn’t use all of IMAP’s features for Push on Android.
So Google is really removing one proprietary protocol, while leaving their proprietary protocol conveniently in place.
Google still pays Microsoft for a license! They have to! Android clients implement ActiveSync.
This is getting ridiculous.
From the outlook.com terms:
That seems pretty flaky to me. In any case, whatever your personal opinion of POP may be is irrelevant. I was just providing a counter example to your original point regarding the supposed better “user experience” of outlook.com, by illustrating how said service can only interoperate with a much smaller fraction of protocols than google services currently do.
And yes by dropping ActiveSync google is reducing significantly the functionality of their services. But that does not mean microsoft is any less “political” since they are yet to support seriously anything other than their own proprietary protocols.
Perhaps you are projecting your own insecurity regarding your argument’s strength? You’re now playing semantic games after trying to pass vapor announcements as fact/features.
Edited 2012-12-19 01:37 UTC
If you still, after numerous comments, do not understand, or refuse to understand the point I am making then I am not one to hold your hand and make you do it.
POP is not “flaky” by any means, it is just discouraged, and in the future may not exist. That’ because the modern web has moved beyond POP and uses EAS.
Regardless, your argument about IMAP is intellectually dishonest and your refusal to admit it shows that you’re not arguing in good faith.
So that is a “yeah” on the projection stuff, got it.
Edited 2012-12-19 01:57 UTC
I agree completely. Actually if ActiveSync is better then the IMAP (with IDLE), CalDAV, and CardDAV solution, then what is their incentive to even support IMAP and the DAV protocols? Microsoft wants to lock people into EAS, not promote the alternative. Why? Simple, they want to sell Exchange (license $$), they want to sell ActiveSync [EAS] (license $$), and they want people to use Outlook.com (ads $$).
So actually Google is doing Microsoft a favor if you look at it, they are driving all these people locked into EAS to migrate over to Outlook.com. So really the company to benefit from Google removing EAS will be Microsoft. Google’s mistake is even offering EAS to begin with for their FREE accounts. All they did is get people used to it and stuck on the proprietary EAS. Now that they are going to pull the plug on it, people don’t want to loose it for free so they will migrate over to Microsoft services. Win for Microsoft.
I hope Microsoft supports IMAP and DAV, but I doubt they will. It is not in their best interests the way I see it. All the money to be made for them is in EAS, not offering open alternative solutions.
Existing connections will still function. They are not shutting down the service. New connections will not be available after Jan
I have read multiple comments on this subject over the last several days, and I don’t understand why so many people are twisting the facts, and so upset. Here are the facts:
1) ActiveSync will be discontinued only for new Google Sync connections. It will continue to work for Ad based (or what people call “FREE”) accounts that already have a connection setup. It will not just “break” for existing connections. So what you have will continue to work without issues.
2) If you are a company, and if you purchase the business edition you will still have ActiveSync. So companies that use some of their profits to purchase a business account will be unaffected.
3) IMAP does do PUSH (IMAP IDLE), and it is not as inefficient as everyone goes on about. This is an old white paper but a good read: http://www.isode.com/whitepapers/imap-idle.html
4) Google has to license each ActiveSync connection. This means they have to pay Microsoft for each connection they support.
So what is the issue? These are “free” accounts, which Google has to pay for. Maybe they decided they could make more money (or Ads were making less for them) by removing the ActiveSync licensing and using open standards. If you are a “free” account user, then I am sure if you want to remain free and use sync for new connections, then implementing CalDAV and CardDAV should not be an issue.
I am “not” a fan of Google, but I do think what Google is doing is a good choice. The real issue is that Microsoft needs to support CalDAV and CardDAV, or open up the ActiveSync protocol. I think they will be forced to do something eventually, just as IE was forced to be more standards complaint. If more companies remove ActiveSync support like Google, Microsoft will be forced to make a move sooner rather then later. Microsoft being forced to do something is not always a bad thing (IE10, .NET, IIS & PHP, etc..). Another good example of this sort of thing happening is Adobe and FLASH, and how they have been forced to adapt to a more standards approach.
Open standards are a good thing.
The issue is that existing configurations, for say, new devices, pre-configure GMail to use EAS because it is a simpler solution to roll out, and because it integrates nicely into the enterprise.
So while no current users are affected, people now have to scramble to alter the way they configure Gmail accounts. For example, on Windows Phone 7, Gmail accounts are auto set up to use Google Sync with EAS.
Meaning after the cut off date, any WP device that comes with Gmail must be reconfigured or it will not work out of the box. That’s a breaking experience.
For now. That’s the really worrying part to business I’d imagine. It must be absolutely horrifying that Google even flirts with the idea of ditching EAS.
When resources are at a premium, say on a mobile device, “not as inefficient” doesn’t really cut it.
IMAP IDLE is flawed in that respect. It becomes increasingly more demanding to receive push emails (Never mind the fact that the e-mail isn’t even downloaded in the background like EAS)
Saying its an alternative to ActiveSync Push is foolish.
I agree with implementing CalDAV and CardDAV, if only for completeness. The ActiveSync protocol is open, its just royalty encumbered. You pay to play. That’s different from not being able to play at all.
Maybe. I just don’t see it happening. There is no good replacement for EAS yet. I think maybe once better IMAP extensions become more mainstream..then we could revisit this conversation but I have a huge problem with degrading the experience for the sake of open standards.
Come up with something better, don’t just stand on the shoulders of the fact that a standard is open.
Wrong (for Android at least).
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7639
Edited 2012-12-18 20:42 UTC
Looks like I stand corrected, thanks. Given the fact that Google is removing EAS and just added CardDav, I am sure they will push that missing support very quickly. Makes no sense they would pull EAS, and offer alternatives which they don’t even support in their own Android OS. Bad Google for that and the short notice on pulling EAS.
Fair enough, I think your positions are completely sensible. I think we differ a little bit, but its been more productive than not having a discussion with you.
Cheers.
I try to be as sensible as possible, which I know is not always easy on the forums. Actually I don’t post very often but I decided to speak out of this since I have been reading so much about it recently. I always enjoy the various perspectives, even if we might differ in views.
I noticed your previous comment with the “**” being for Android users. The funny thing is, even though I support Google’s choice on this, I am not a fan of Google, and don’t use any of their services except for owning a Android phone. Even more, I don’t like Android and looking to move to something new in the near future. The only current alternative I see right now for me to Android is the iPhone, because it has the apps I currently use on Android. Windows Phone (I do like the Lumia 920) doesn’t have enough apps yet. The one I am looking at with curiosity is the new Blackberry 10. I like the fact it can run Android 2.3 apps, so it will be interesting to see if the developers repackage their Android apps for Blackberry store. If that happens it looks like I might go with Blackberry 10 since I will be able to continue with some of the same apps I already use.
Cheers.
Of a competing platform’s unauthorized use.
That’s still Microsoft’s problem and a brilliant move on Google’s part(though not promoting competition, but we know of Google’s views on Microsoft).
Now that is pure FUD. Paying customers are paying customers and they will get what they need. Google has only expanded the services for their GApps for Business users.
It doesn’t ‘integrate nicely into the enterprise’. It’s required for use by Exchange because it’s impossible to get what people want out of Exchange any other way. That’s it.
No one gives a shit about what happens on a Windows Phone quite frankly. I’m also afraid that the market share isn’t there to push enough users into getting Outlook.com addresses.
Microsoft, and you, have this false sense of security that they are in a position of strength but in reality the only position of strength Microsoft have – the enterprise, i.e. Exchange lock-in – is in reality being surrounded by a far larger userbase.
No one cares. Microsoft knows what they can do if they want to fix it. Google could write something for Windows Phone I suppose but I doubt it’s worth even a couple of hours of their time given the number of users it affects.
They will, once Exchange is effectively dead. Until then there are no such worries.
Then why doesn’t Google support it on Android?
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=23971
Now this is a VERY good question I wish I knew the answer to. Actually the only default mobile mail client I know from the past that supported IMAP IDLE is Blackberry. Personally I think all of default mobile mail clients should support IMAP IDLE (Are you listening Microsoft, Google, and Apple).
The good thing about Android and other OS’es is that the 3rd party apps pick up the slack. In the case of Android I use “K-9 Mail” (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9). I actually find “K-9 Mail” much better then the default Google mail client because it supports many more features including IMAP IDLE.
Its a of “do as I say, not as I do”
“Hey we think everyone should use open protocols**”
** Except us on Android, because we recognize the inherent limitations of IMAP, so we engineer around it using proprietary protocols.
What proprietary protocol is google using in this case?
Google Sync.
Android does not implement IMAP Idle.
Google Sync is (or was) a service no?
Edited 2012-12-19 02:01 UTC
There’s some confusion I think because Google calls their EAS implementation Google Sync as well. Its all Google Sync, I think.
I think now that they’ve made their statement, they’re glad to see the Google Sync name disappear and silently switch Android over to some IMAP push extension (That doesn’t suck like IMAP Idle) in the future.
Using IDLE in K9 is an absolute battery life killer. Don’t do it. It wakes up the system every time an email comes in. If you have any sort of email volume the phone never gets to sleep.
I find it is far more efficient to just use polling once each hour. It is email not instant messaging. If they wanted instant responses they’d have used some other message system. Like, say, a phone call.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nitrodesk.droid20…. is free. So you still do have an activesync client for Android.
Also please remember Microsoft wants to be paid for providing activesync. http://thoughtsofanidlemind.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/google-winter-…
None of Microsoft code is used Google side.