Microsoft Launches Outlook for iOS and Android | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Launches Outlook for iOS and Android

techcrunch.com

122 pointssidcool48 comments

This is just a rebranded Accompli and not a true e-mail client.

From the privacy policy: "We provide a service that indexes and accelerates delivery of your email to your device. That means that our service retrieves your incoming and outgoing email messages and securely pushes them to the app on your device."

So it basically doesn't work if you're trying to reach an on-premise Exchange server via VPN.

Even for hosted email, it would violate most corporate infosec policies.

"Corporate infosec" policies on email have been taking a pretty big beating in the past few years anyhow. "BYOD", bring your own device, is a big buzzword in that field right now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_your_own_device

For all the horror stories of corporate IT lording their position over people lower on the ladder, in the end they are a service organization that is reacting, not dictating, and in this case it's often the executives who get the expensive-at-the-time tech first anyhow.

At least on iOS the company can dictate the security requirements of the device using Exchange. For example because of corporate policies my iOS device is set to wipe itself after 4 invalid passwords have been entered rather than the default 10.

This is an extremely stupid policy.

Lets add it doesn't add really any value to actual security. All it does is tick off the userbase and show you as an "unfriendly" security department. Just absolutely silly and whoever implemented that policy should be fired.

"Corporate infosec" policies on email are getting a lot more attention now that various leaks have made executives and other non-technical people realise exactly how vulnerable corporate data is.

Anecdotally I've seen IT teams having a much easier time explaining why you can't forward everything to GMail, for instance. That chimes with quite a few reports coming out claiming European-based cloud hosting is benefitting at the expense of US-based setups.

BYOD is still a real thing, for sure. But iOS talking to corporate Exchange can relatively easily be made compliant with infosec. A third-party app ingesting corporate email to servers hosted in China under vague licensing? Not so much.

I installed it and was starting to like it. I really, really love Google Inbox and want it so desperately to support our hospital Outlook server.

It never occurred to me that installing "Microsoft Outlook for Android" would mean "upload all your hospital email to some acquihired cloud". When Google abandoned the Email app in Lollipop and forced us all to add our Outlook accounts to the Gmail app, I was concerned (Google does explain quite clearly that this is just a UI thing and that it's not merging the email into the Gmail servers at all) that I would have to go back to those abominations in the Play Store since all the Outlook clients on Android suck and K9 refuses to work with our Exchange server. And here Microsoft releases Outlook for Android and I was all excited for nothing.

Thank god I didn't receive any emails containing PHI while I had it enabled.

Try touchdown instead?

Touchdown has always been buggy (it loves to go into battery-draining fits) and is extremely buggy on Lollypop. It also hasn't been updated in tech-eons.

It is so extremely frustrating to have to deal with a corporate Outlook server on Android. That's why I was excited that Microsoft finally put out something.

Shame this is simplistic to the point of nearly being useless.

Give Nine a go : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ninefolder...

Installed, started and then realized that you have to give them your credentials so their server can download your mail rather than the app doing this. I understand the benefits of these cloud mail checkers but this is just a 'no go' for me. Too bad.

They should implement OAuth2.0, then there's no need to give them your password. Meanwhile creating an app specific password might do as well?

That wouldn't change anything for me/us as they would still have access to my private mail which bothers me and/or access to my company mail which I'm sure bothers my company.

OAuth is implemented for products that support it, such as Google and Gmail accounts. Exchange doesn't support OAuth. See https://www.acompli.com/privacy-policy/.

Jesus. How did you even realize this, I didn't see that anywhere? Goddamnit.

I think this is the only way to do a push email app on iOS with support for third party email accounts.

Same interface as accompli. In fact accompli is really good.

It is. Microsoft acquired it, so they probably pulled a Sparrow. :)

I would add that Acompli isn't on the AppStore anymore so it's probably a pure rebranding of the app.

Oh, I didn't even notice that. Looks like the Outlook app doesn't have the bottom buttons with links to e-mail and calendar, which would be a real bummer.

Well that explains the surprisingly fast turnaround from acquisition to release! :-)

About time. I have bought Nine for Exchange stuff because Outlook for Android just didn't cut it while Nine is basically perfect. I hope this will raise the bar.

Edit : no support for aliases. Well, it's not suitable for me then.

> no support for aliases.

It does show aliases in my Gmail account i setup in Outlook for iOS.

Not for me (Android + Outlook.com account).

I bought Nine for Exchange some time ago and Outlook still is far behind Nine.

The first thing I wondered about was remote wipe and password policy. Outlook does not enforce them... but still downloads your mail to third-party! That's a big no-no. The very nice feature of Nine is ability to sandbox the remote wipe and password policies to app only - very nice, if you are contractor using your own device with account on your customer's Exchange.

Another thing is Calendar - Nine creates calendar provider and the system Calendar app will display it together with your own. Outlook has its own Calendar and you have to switch between them. You cannot see your agenda in single list. Same with contacts.

Nine also allows encrypting and signing messages.

So far, I don't see any reason switching from Nine. It was 8 EUR well spent.

I think you just sold me on this, going to go check out Nine.

Per their security policy, the app and servers respect exchange initiated remote wipes see section 3 "User data retention" at https://www.acompli.com/security/

I thought I remember reading that Acompli was developed in China as well. So does this mean that their servers are still in China? Just curious to see if anyone knows. I couldn't find any info on that.

That will be a selling point for Windows-based smartphones.

Now if only i could access my Outlook.com contacts & calendar from my Mac. If anyone has any solutions I'd love to hear them

My family is subscribed to Office365, largely to get OneDrive. I am going to wait a few days for more reviews to come in and then probably try it on my iPad and droid phone.

I have a custom domain name for email and I use gmail. I would think that mapping a custom domain to Office365's email hosting and using gmail separately in the new apps would be well supported.

As others have noted, this is a rebranded Accompli. Reviews on Accompli should be relevant.

I find Accompli to be decent and I'm happy to see Microsoft move quickly with it post acquisition. I have noticed a few crashes on my Nexus 5, but in general it works well. I would recommend it over the Google provided Android solution.

It's really excellent to see Microsoft understanding the need for cross platform support. I'm much more likely to trust them as a user, knowing that I'll have support for whatever device I'm on in the future.

Wow, this is a painful app for me to use. I have a subfolder of people I need to deal with that mail gets sorted into but this I have to drill down to get to it and can't set it as a default view.

This thing is simplistic and horrible.

The best feature is that your corporate IT goons are no longer able to remote-wipe your entire device simply because you hooked up to work email. With the Outlook app they can only wipe your email.

From the app:

To use this app, your mailbox must be running on

* Exchange Server 2013 CU3

That requirement may hurt adoption.

From the app description: 'Outlook works with Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com, iCloud, Gmail and Yahoo Mail.'

And (sadly) that covers 90% of email setups.

If your Exchange sysadmin blocks iPhone access, this app won't work. For that reason, I'm sticking with CloudMagic, which works regardless of Exchange device-level permissions.

Doesn't CloudMagic collect data in their cloud to offer push as well ?

The OWA mobile app for IOS would be an embarrassment if released by a few developers working in their spare time, much less a multi-billion dollar company.

I saw the comments here about giving your password to Microsoft, but on iPhone it uses OAuth (at least for GMail and hosted Google accounts).

I wonder if it properly supports shared mailboxes, thats the one thing third party clients never properly support.

I am happy to see more high-quality native mail apps on iOS.. Competition is good.

Microsoft Rebrands App As Outlook for iOS and Android, would be more accurate.

Yeah. Sticking with K-9 mail, thanks. Some of us try to keep our android devices as FOSS as possible.

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