Integrated support for Exchange beginning with last year’s iPhone 2.0 means Apple’s mobile platform simply doesn’t need an Outlook client. Now Snow Leopard can also get by without Entourage/Outlook, thanks to new and improved baked-in support for Exchange in Mail, Address Book and iCal.

Microsoft has responded with the announcement that it will now be delivering a real (but still scaled back) version of Outlook for the Mac again, after a decade of giving enterprise Mac users a third rate alternative in Entourage, but Microsoft’s efforts to win back Mac clients may come too late to prevent the significant erosion of one of the primary reasons companies have to pay for Office on the Mac.

With iWork and the built in Exchange client support in Snow Leopard, many users will have no need to even consider Microsoft’s Mac client offerings. It will be very difficult for Microsoft to convince Mac users that they need Office after those users discover suitable alternatives that cost significantly less.

Why the client is so important

With Snow Leopard and the iPhone each now providing their own client layer for accessing Exchange Server, Apple can now offer its users alternative access to other server products as well, from its own MobileMe and Snow Leopard Server offerings to web services from Google and Yahoo. This effectively turns Microsoft from a direct seller into a wholesaler that has to deal with Apple as a middleman retailer.

Ten years ago, Apple was in that position with its hardware sales. It tried hard to get Sears, CompUSA and other retailers to sell Macs for it, but those retailers also sold generic PCs. Because they made more money selling generic PCs, they had little incentive to aggressively market Macs. Apple’s retail stores eventually solved this issue by allowing the company to reach users directly.

In the software business, Microsoft has long known the importance of owning the client end. It worked hard to displace Netscape’s web browser in the late 90s, not because there was any money to be made in giving away browser clients, but because it knew that whoever controlled the client could set up proprietary demands for a specific web server. That’s what Netscape had worked to do as it gave away its web browser in hopes that it could make money selling Netscape web servers; Microsoft first took control of the client with Internet Explorer and then began tying its IE client to its own IIS on the server side with features that gave companies reasons to buy all of their server software from Microsoft.

As Apple takes over the client end of Exchange, it similarly gains market leverage. First and foremost, the move allows Apple to improve the Exchange experience of Mac users so that business users have no reason not to buy Macs. Secondly, it gives Apple a client audience to market its own server solutions, including MobileMe to individual users and Snow Leopard Server to organizations. In concert with providing Exchange Server support, Apple is also delivering integrated support for its own Exchange alternatives in both MobileMe and with Snow Leopard Server’s improved Dovecot email services, Address Book Server, iCal Server, the new Mobile Access secure gateway, and its included Push Notification Server.

Two Birds, One Stone

Apple’s support for Exchange and its promotion of its own Exchange alternatives are two sides of the same coin, in the sense that they use the same technologies. Apple built its support for Exchange using WebDAV, the open specification that Microsoft supports on Exchange Server as a way to deliver messages to mobile clients. Apple did not license Microsoft’s Windows-only “Exchange Active Sync” software; it merely licensed the rights to implement a compatible EAS conduit with Exchange. Apple owns the Snow Leopard software that talks to Exchange.

The client applications Apple has upgraded in Snow Leopard to connect to Exchange, including Mail, Address Book, and iCal, also use WebDAV to talk to Apple’s own Snow Leopard Server applications. Because Apple makes its money almost exclusively from selling hardware, it has opened up its own Snow Leopard Server applications, Address Book Server and iCal Server, as open source Darwin servers that can be compiled to run on Linux. That means Apple is essentially giving away both the client (to Mac users) and the servers (to the community) in order to encourage the use of open standards in messaging and collaboration. That giveaway is being done to help Apple sell Macs.

This effort to support everything from integrated client software owned by Apple makes Snow Leopard’s support for Exchange of use to everyone, even if they don’t use Exchange. The client work Apple has invested in making Macs Exchange-friendly also improves the features available via MobileMe, Snow Leopard Server, and even some other third party services such as those from Google and Yahoo.

Apple’s App Store software model

If this seems like a familiar strategy, it’s because Apple is doing something similar on the iPhone: creating a managed market for third party developers, as long as they support Apple’s business as well. Apple’s iPhone App Store goal is to support and assist small developers in producing high quality, good looking apps that are sold at low prices in high volume. This “managed market” strategy has worked much better than the “laissez faire” conventional third party Mac platform that developed on its own starting in the 80s, where developers set prices relatively high, piracy abounded, quality was unchecked, and the only force keeping software consistent and looking good was the taste of Mac software buyers.

Microsoft did a better job of supporting developers on its DOS and Windows platforms, but also required less of its developers, resulting in a mixed bag of third party PC software that is usually expensive, often buggy and hobbled with old legacy issues, and almost always inconsistent and inelegant. The Linux community, along with Google’s new Android mobile platform, offer even less in terms of minimum standards and quality control, resulting in software that is often free but usually unfinished and typically inaccessible to anyone outside of dedicated tinkerers and hobbyists. While examples of fine open source client software exists, there is no available market driving this kind of development financially.

The success of the iPhone App Store has benefited both developers and users by establishing a competitive market based on meritocracy. Snow Leopard’s support for Exchange, because it opens up equal access to alternative competition, similarly creates an iPhone-like market for desktop messaging services ranked by merit, not the vendor’s current market position. This will provide Snow Leopard users with not just the ability to talk to corporate Exchange Servers, but also the ability to access Apple’s own offerings and other third party services.

The next segment in this series looks at fifth feature of Snow Leopard that has often been misrepresented: its new malware protection and related security features.

• Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7
• Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7
• Snow Leopard touchscreen “evidence,” trademarked Apple chat bubbles
• Snow Leopard from Apple Incompatible with many HP Printers
• Alleged first Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.1 details revealed

Apple says it’s not to blame for a series of exploding iPods and iPhones, according to a report published on Friday. The company has been under fire, so to speak, for devices overheating and shattering across Europe and the U.K.

Sheesh…and you thought the data rates were bad.

Exploding iPhone Investigation

This exploding iPhone business is no laughing matter: The European Union actually launched a formal inquiry last week after a teen in France said his girlfriend’s iPhone screen blew up without warning and sent a shard of glass into his eye. Witnesses told a local paper the phone began to “crackle and pop like a deep-fryer” (only, we assume, without the delicious smell).

The France incident wasn’t alone, either: It was preceded by a handful of other reports of exploding Apple devices in Europe and the U.K. In one instance, a man claimed Apple tried to keep him from talking by offering a full refund in exchange for his signature on a gag order. He reportedly refused, instead bringing the alleged smoking gun to the U.K.’s Times newspaper.

The Blame Game

So if Apple’s not to blame for the detonating devices, who is? The company now says it’s the customers, claiming some sort of improper handling led to the explosions.

“In all cases, the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone,” a London-based spokesperson tells Bloomberg.

That explanation seems to contradict the statement by the teen from France, who’s quoted by the AP as saying his girlfriend’s phone “was not dropped and experienced no unusual shock” before its sudden combustion. (To be fair, applying some sort of “external force” could have been a “usual” occurrence for the couple. Interpret as you will.)

Either way, the investigation doesn’t appear to be over. Apple reps met with French government officials to talk about the complaints and “possible measures” that could be taken, the AP reports, and independent experts from the U.S. are said to be conducting further tests as well.

Of course, you could always just side with the satirists and point the finger at Apple’s “oppressive regime.” Hey, it’s your call.

ama:iphone,1,new

• Apple says it’s not to blame for ‘exploding’ iPhones
• Frenchman hurt by ‘exploding iPhone’
• Apple iPhone 3GS Overheating, Reports Say
• Apple Inc.
• Carphone Warehouse blames Apple not O2 for iPhone 3G problems

Accounts This pane now provides the option of joining a Network Account Server.

Appearance You can no longer specify a font smoothing style (Leopard let you choose from Automatic, Standard, Light, Medium, and Strong); you can choose only whether or not to use the feature and the font size at which it automatically turns on or off.

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Date & Time The most immediately obvious change is that the map of the world you use to choose your time zone is wider and higher-resolution. But the change many OS X users will really welcome is the capability to show the date in the menu bar, using the new Show Date option. Unfortunately, you can’t customize that date’s format; you’re stuck with Aug 28.

Desktop & Screen Saver The Desktop tab gains a number of new—and impressive—Desktop images. The Screen Saver tab gets a new Shuffle entry that lets you create a custom slideshow based on both stock images and your own photos.

Dock There’s now a new option to minimize windows into their parent applications’ Dock icons. See 11 major new Snow Leopard features, or our video of Snow Leopard tricks, for more on this feature.

Keyboard and Mouse Formerly combined in one Keyboard & Mouse pane, these are now separate panes. Each includes a button to set up a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse using the Bluetooth Setup Assistant; if you’ve got Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard or mouse paired with your Mac, each pane now includes the respective battery-level indicator.

More significantly, the Keyboard Shortcuts tab has been redesigned for the better. Shortcuts are grouped by category (Dashboard & Dock, Screen Shots, Universal Access, and so on) on the left; select a category and the relevant shortcuts are displayed to the right. This new design is much easier to navigate than Leopard’s “everything in one long list with lots of disclosure trianges” approach. You can also now temporarily disable individual shortcuts.

The other big change in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab is the inclusion of Services as one of these categories. Within it, you can not only assign keyboard shortcuts to individual services, but you can also specify which services appear in the Services menu. For more on that, see Rob Griffiths’ “Services step out in Snow Leopard” and our Macworld video.

Language & Text Previously known as the International pane, it now has a Text tab that offers a significant new feature: symbol and text substitutions. Similar to the functionality of Microsoft Office’s AutoCorrect and utilities such as TextExpander and TypeIt4Me, Substitutions will automatically replace one text string with another as you type. (Again, see “11 major new Snow Leopard features” and the Macworld video for more details.) Tip: When you’re adding your own substitutions, you can paste text from the Clipboard instead of typing it, and pressing Option-Return—instead of Return—inserts a line-break in the substitution text.

Unfortunately, these substitutions don’t (yet) work in all apps; for example, they work in Pages, TextEdit, and iChat, but not in BBEdit or Word. Developers need to add the right hooks in their software to gain this feature. Snow Leopard’s substitutions feature also isn’t as powerful as dedicated text-macro programs. But for many people, it will be enough.

Another minor change from Leopard’s International pane: the Input Menu tab is now called Input Sources. And within that tab, there’s a new option that lets you select a different input source for each document.

MobileMe There’s now a new sync option: Always Keep The Most Recent Version of a File. With this option selected, if you work on the same iDisk-hosted file on multiple computers, the newest version will be kept when you sync.

QuickTime This pane is gone. See Jon Seff’s “Snow Leopard: Quicktime X” for full details.

Security The Security pane has undergone some big changes from Leopard to Snow Leopard. For starters, if you opt to require a password when waking the computer from sleep or the screen saver, you can now specify a time-delay (5 seconds; 1, 5, or 15 minutes; or 1 or 4 hours) before that password is necessary.

You can also disable Snow Leopard’s new Location Services (see “Snow Leopard’s little changes”) in the Security pane, as well as reset warnings and permissions for applications.

Finally, the firewall settings have been revamped considerably. The main firewall tab provides a simple On/Off setting; to configure the firewall, you click the Advanced button. Your options now include blocking all incoming connections, automatically allowing connections to signed software (those with a valid certificate authority), enabling stealth mode, and configuring individual firewall rules. Leopard’s option to enable and view firewall logs is gone.

Sharing First, there’s a new Scanner Sharing entry for sharing a USB-connected scanner with other computers on your network; in Leopard, this feature was hidden in the Image Capture application. Second, the Printer Sharing screen has gained the same access-control interface as File Sharing, letting you choose—by user and by printer—who can print to which printers.

Trackpad On older Mac laptops with multi-touch-capable trackpads, this pane adds settings for the new four-finger multi-touch gestures. (In the initial release of Snow Leopard, these gestures have some glitches; see Rob Griffiths’ “Snow Leopard’s old and new annoyances”).

Universal Access This pane now allows you to convert stereo audio to mono; the resulting mono audio is played through both channels, a boon for the hearing impaired. (For more on Snow Leopard’s accessibility tools, see Christopher Breen’s “Snow Leopard makes strides in accessibility”.

Finally, System Preferences itself is now a 64-bit application. You can still install and use many 32-bit preference panes. But whenever you access one of them, System Preferences will prompt you to quit it so it can relaunch in 32-bit mode. (Likewise, if you then want to access a 64-bit pane, System Preferences will need to quit and relaunch in 64-bit mode.)

• Snow Leopard touchscreen “evidence,” trademarked Apple chat bubbles
• Snow Leopard: Complete Coverage
• Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7
• Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7
• Snow Leopard from Apple Incompatible with many HP Printers

After all of the hype in the media regarding the Snow Leopard frenzy, Friday’s official release seemed lacking. Not to say Snow Leopard is a dud. By all accounts it puts some zip into lagging Mac OS X systems, but it offers little else to impact the day-to-day experience of most Mac OS X users.

To be fair, Apple has been clear from the start that the focus of Snow Leopard was performance and that the update offers little in the way of new features. But, some in the media have tried to turn the coincidental timing of the Snow Leopard and Windows 7 releases into a battle of the titans with Snow Leopard playing the role of underdog to challenge Microsoft for desktop dominance. Not.

I wrote recently about the various ways that Snow Leopard demonstrates that Mac OS X is maturing into an operating system that can be used in an enterprise, but that doesn’t mean it can take on Windows 7 or threaten Microsoft’s desktop dominance. Let’s examine the ways that the Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 OS battle is delusional:

1. Existing hardware. Windows 7 will work on existing PC hardware. Obviously a faster processor and more RAM will improve performance, but it only requires a 1GHz CPU and 1Gb of RAM- requirements met by the vast majority of systems in use now.

By contrast, Snow Leopard will only work on Intel-based Mac systems. That means that not only will Snow Leopard not work on the hardware most people use, it won’t even work on much of the hardware used by current Mac OS X users.

2. Incremental vs. Monumental: Despite the hype, Snow Leopard is not a new operating system. It is a performance update with some feature tweaks. Microsoft does those as well- they’re called Service Packs and they’re free.

Windows 7 is a new operating system. The “I’m a Mac” crowd might suggest that Windows 7 is simply a flashy update of Windows Vista, but Microsoft already provided Snow Leopard-like updates to Windows Vista- twice. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 already addressed Windows Vista issues.

Windows 7 has a similar UI, but delivers a completely new operating system. Ask anyone who has used Windows Vista and hated it, but fell in love with the Windows 7 Beta and see what they think of comparisons between the two.

Snow Leopard has a significant number of feature enhancements and updates, but with the exception of the built-in support for Microsoft Exchange none of them is really blazing new territory. In fact, contrary to surpassing Windows 7, many of the features seem to just catch Mac OS X up to the capabilities of Windows Vista.

3. Netbooks. Sorry Apple fanboi’s- netbooks are a very attractive platform for the core Mac market. College students, the young, hip market that the “I’m a Mac” dude is supposed to represent, are generally broke. Its hard to justify investing this semester’s beer book money and rent to purchase a Macbook when you can get a netbook for peanuts just by signing up for a contract with Verizon or AT&T.

Rumors have gone back and forth about Apple possibly developing a netbook of its own. History seems to guarantee one thing: any netbook Apple will make will be more expensive than its competitors and proprietary in nature. A Mac netbook might allow Apple to put a finger in the dike, but cost-conscious users will still struggle to justify the steeper investment in an Apple alternative.

Snow Leopard seems to be a relative success. Like Apple’s sensational claims about the number of Safari downloads earlier this year, the sales volume of Snow Leopard is a tad dubious though. Microsoft would be able to report fairly significant operating system sales if they sold Service Packs as new versions as well. It’s a ‘captive audience’.

At $29 Snow Leopard seems like a reasonable investment for existing Mac OS X users fortunate enough to have hardware compatible with the upgrade and who will not be significantly impacted by the various application incompatibilities introduced by Snow Leopard. As far as the desktop market goes, Windows 7 probably faces more of a threat from Linux operating systems like Ubuntu or Fedora that run on the same hardware and are available for free.

Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience. He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com .

ama:snow leopord,1,new

• Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7
• Snow Leopard: Complete Coverage
• New Mac operating system available late August
• Snow Leopard touchscreen “evidence,” trademarked Apple chat bubbles
• Windows 7: Upgrading Can Be Hard to Do

To be fair, Apple has been clear from the start that the focus of Snow Leopard was performance and that the update offers little in the way of new features. But, some in the media have tried to turn the coincidental timing of the Snow Leopard and Windows 7 releases into a battle of the titans with Snow Leopard playing the role of underdog to challenge Microsoft for desktop dominance. Not.
I wrote recently about the various ways that Snow Leopard demonstrates that Mac OS X is maturing into an operating system that can be used in an enterprise, but that doesn’t mean it can take on Windows 7 or threaten Microsoft’s desktop dominance. Let’s examine the ways that the Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 OS battle is delusional:

1. Existing hardware. Windows 7 will work on existing PC hardware. Obviously a faster processor and more RAM will improve performance, but it only requires a 1GHz CPU and 1Gb of RAM- requirements met by the vast majority of systems in use now. By contrast, Snow Leopard will only work on Intel-based Mac systems. That means that not only will Snow Leopard not work on the hardware most people use, it won’t even work on much of the hardware used by current Mac OS X users.

2. Incremental vs. Monumental: Despite the hype, Snow Leopard is not a new operating system. It is a performance update with some feature tweaks. Microsoft does those as well- they’re called Service Packs and they’re free. Windows 7 is a new operating system. The “I’m a Mac” crowd might suggest that Windows 7 is simply a flashy update of Windows Vista, but Microsoft already provided Snow Leopard-like updates to Windows Vista- twice. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 already addressed Windows Vista issues. Windows 7 has a similar UI, but delivers a completely new operating system. Ask anyone who has used Windows Vista and hated it, but fell in love with the Windows 7 Beta and see what they think of comparisons between the two. Snow Leopard has a significant number of feature enhancements and updates, but with the exception of the built-in support for Microsoft Exchange none of them is really blazing new territory. In fact, contrary to surpassing Windows 7, many of the features seem to just catch Mac OS X up to the capabilities of Windows Vista.
3. Netbooks. Sorry Apple fanboi’s- netbooks are a very attractive platform for the core Mac market. College students, the young, hip market that the “I’m a Mac” dude is supposed to represent, are generally broke. Its hard to justify investing this semester’s beer book money and rent to purchase a Macbook when you can get a netbook for peanuts just by signing up for a contract with Verizon or AT&T. Rumors have gone back and forth about Apple possibly developing a netbook of its own. History seems to guarantee one thing: any netbook Apple will make will be more expensive than its competitors and proprietary in nature. A Mac netbook might allow Apple to put a finger in the dike, but cost-conscious users will still struggle to justify the steeper investment in an Apple alternative. Snow Leopard seems to be a relative success. Like Apple’s sensational claims about the number of Safari downloads earlier this year, the sales volume of Snow Leopard is a tad dubious though. Microsoft would be able to report fairly significant operating system sales if they sold Service Packs as new versions as well. It’s a ‘captive audience’. At $29 Snow Leopard seems like a reasonable investment for existing Mac OS X users fortunate enough to have hardware compatible with the upgrade and who will not be significantly impacted by the various application incompatibilities introduced by Snow Leopard. As far as the desktop market goes, Windows 7 probably faces more of a threat from Linux operating systems like Ubuntu or Fedora that run on the same hardware and are available for free.

• Snow Leopard Proves No Threat to Windows 7
• Snow Leopard: Complete Coverage
• Snow Leopard touchscreen “evidence,” trademarked Apple chat bubbles
• New Mac operating system available late August
• Windows 7: Upgrading Can Be Hard to Do