[64stang06]

Didn't see this posted on the forums but here's the highlights:

Cocoa. Built from the ground up using Cocoa providing users with improved integration with the Mac OS
New database. A high-speed file-based database with support for backing up files with Time Machine and Spotlight searching
Information Rights Management. Helps prevent sensitive information from being distributed to or read by people who do not have permission to access the content

Tentative release date of holiday season 2010. So it took them almost a full decade to bring Outlook back, and I can bet that Snow Leopard having Exchange functionality built in lit a fire under them finally.

[msuper69]

Now all we need is VB and Access and parity with Windows Office would be within reach.

[TheoCryst]

VBA is coming back with the next Office. As for Access... well, that's pretty much a giant Bag o' Hurt (to paraphrase His Steveness).

[Big Mac]

What makes Access support so difficult? Is it that proprietary?

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

What makes Access support so difficult? Is it that proprietary?

It's been awhile since I read about it, but from the interview it had something to do with the underlying engine/database being tied very tightly into the Windows architecture and that the money they'd sink into a project creating a mac-specific database wouldn't be worth the $$ they'd made selling it.

[P]

What do you mean "coming back"? When did we ever have Outlook for Mac in Office.

As for Access: Access is two things these days: A rather simple database engine called Jet and a sort of rapid development environment that makes apps that run in a runtime against either Jet or an SQL server, such as Microsoft's own. I'm sure Jet could be ported rather easily, if anyone wanted it, but the development environment would be harder. You'd have to port that runtime, and we know from discussions on VBA support that those runtimes are terribly hard to port - precisely because they tie in to parts deep in the Windows API, as Q says. The market just isn't there, with Filemaker being strong on the Mac side, for them to take on such a big project.

[AKcrab]

Access sucks.

[Amorya]

Originally Posted by P 

What do you mean "coming back"? When did we ever have Outlook for Mac in Office.

[Art Vandelay]

I think what was meant was that Outlook was never a part of Mac Office, not that it never existed. Outlook for Mac was a separate program that was not bundled with Mac Office.

[carterx]

Not everyone will have the chance to upgrade to Snow Leopard due to PowerPC computers like the G5 not being able to run Snow Leopard. So this means when users want to upgrade to the next version of office they will still need an OutLook/Entourage client.

Also, from what I have been told, Snow Leopard will only work with a Exchange network running Windows Server 2008 or later. If you have Snow Leopard and you try to connect to a Windows 2003 exchange network then it will not work. In due time I'm sure there will be less and less Exchange 2003 servers out there but this can not always be the case.

[besson3c]

So what will come of Entourage? Will there be a reason to continue to support a crappy POP/IMAP client that will not offer proper Exchange support like Outlook will? Will Outlook be MAPI only, or will it also support POP and IMAP, making Entourage redundant? Will Outlook have an interface similar to Entourage? If so, why the name change?

The only company that can make a crappier IMAP client than Apple is Microsoft.

[Art Vandelay]

More than likely the next Mac Outlook will only work with Exchange Web Services. MAPI is being phased out. It would be a waste of time to implement MAPI support when they are moving away from it on the PC side. It will probably have the same Exchange requirements as Entourage WSE and Snow Leopard's Exchange support.

[besson3c]

Ahhh.. good point. Does Outlook on Windows still work with POP/IMAP? If so, wouldn't it make more sense for Microsoft to do the same with the Mac version of Outlook and phase out Entourage? What happens if you want to connect to both an Outlook account and an IMAP account?

[Art Vandelay]

PC Outlook is also a POP/IMAP client too. I believe they said Mac Outlook is replacing Entourage and it would make sense if it still had POP/IMAP capability.

[Art Vandelay]

From Microsoft...

No specific Exchange version/update requirements to announce at this point for Outlook for Mac.

The one thing I can say is that we have moved completely away from WebDAV and on to Exchange Web Services beginning with the new Entourage 2008, Web Services Edition client that we released just yesterday (8/13). Since Exchange Web Services released with Exchange Server 2007, Entourage, Web Services Edition and clients we release going forward will be built on Exchange Web Services and therefore will not work with Exchange Server 2003 and earlier versions.

I think it is very likely that this also applies to the new Outlook for Mac. They've moved away from the old protocols in Entourage. Why would they bring them back in Outlook?

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Ahhh.. good point. Does Outlook on Windows still work with POP/IMAP?

works great, even simultaneously (Exchange and IMAP).

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay 

I think what was meant was that Outlook was never a part of Mac Office, not that it never existed. Outlook for Mac was a separate program that was not bundled with Mac Office.

Bingo. The last version of Outlook for the Mac was nothing but a dumb Exchange client developed by the Exchange team at Microsoft. When they abandoned it, Entourage was hastily retrofitted with a bare minimum of Exchange support.

As for POP/IMAP support, I don't know for sure what the answer is. I'd assume it won't be going away, especially since Outlook for Windows has it. But that's just a personal guess, not an official comment.

[P]

When MS started working on Office 98 for Mac, they needed to add Outlook to have feature-parity with the Windows version - remember that the latest Mac Office before that was Office 4.2 from 1993-94, which didn't have Outlook. Outlook Express 4 or 5 for Mac was a very good program for its time - far superior to the Windows version, and developed specifically for the Mac by part of the team behind Claris Emailer, so they simply included that.

OE was a freebie program though, and they felt Mac Office needed something more powerful. Instead of porting Windows Outlook, MS MacBU decided to add calendaring features to that Mac OE and that became Entourage. When they eventually decided to retrofitting the Exchange features, that never really worked, and unfortunately they managed to break IMAP at the same time (I remember IMAP in OE5 as rock solid). The interesting part is if this will be based on the OE->Entourage tree, just renamed as marketing, or if it will be a port of Windows Outlook. I actually like Entourage, for all its warts.

And yes, I did mean that Outlook never was part of Mac Office before. It was included in one of the service packs for the Exchange server, and later as an add-on in the Exchange installation. Mac Office has had at least 3 different mail programs included (Entourage, OE and MS Mail back in the olden days), but not Outlook.

[64stang06]

Sorry, title should have read "Outlook coming to Mac again, part of the next Office release". I thought it was included in Office before, but I was wrong.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

Access sucks.

So does Outlook.

[jretzner]

Will I be able to transfer email addressed from Entourage 2008 to Outlook? What about snail mail addresses and envelope/label functions?