Apple is looking for an Exchange QA staffer for iPhone

Even if iPhones are further into the enterprise market than some might think (or desire), the lack of native non-IMAP support for Exchange accounts on the device has given some users and their IT departments pause. While there are some solid third-party options coming along (Visto and SyncML among others), only an Apple-blessed solution is going to satisfy in the end. Is there progress on the home front? Chadwick sent along a link via ModMyiPhone.com to an Apple job posting for a QA engineer:

The iPhone Quality team is looking for a motivated, highly-technical Exchange test/sync engineer with excellent problem solving and communication skills. You will join a dynamic team responsible for qualifying the latest iPhone products. Your focus will be testing Exchange and Outlook functionality with Apple's innovative new phone. The successful candidate will complete both documented and adhoc testing to ensure high quality releases.

Hiring a QA engineer implies that the Exchange connector code under development is getting ready for testing and release. Could an Exchange hookup for the iPhone be coming in time for Macworld Expo? Dee-lightful.

Thanks, Chadwick.

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Source: http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJ…

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Even if iPhones are further into the enterprise market than some might think (or desire), the lack of native non-IMAP support for Exchange...

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Roland de Lange

What about support for Exchange in Mac OSX? Unfortunately Tiger hasn't brought that yet...

December 22 2007 at 9:18 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Roland de Lange's comment

Roland de Lange

I meant Leopard: no support for Exchange.

December 22 2007 at 9:23 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jubei

I find it amazing that email has become such a burden for companies that millions are spent just for email to be brought in house, secured and maintained. Save yourself the headaches and money and let the ISPs who offer Exchange Services run it for you.

December 21 2007 at 7:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Seth McFarland

This is at least a week old:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/12/14/apple-job-posting-hints-at-improved-iphone-exchange-support

December 21 2007 at 2:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

itguy07

Who cares? Exchange is a POS application on all levels and, while it's used by a lot of companies (enterprise messaging is split almost evenly Exchange and Notes), it's an absolute horrible platform for stable, reliable, and scalable e-mail.

Apple would be better served by going the Blackberry route and designing connectors for all mail platforms like BES. They could tie it to OS X and release a version of the server side software + Xserve + OS X for clients. Then they could get traction into corporate accounts and slowly win them over.

Heck, they could even offer to help you Exchange into a REAL groupware platform!

December 21 2007 at 1:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to itguy07's comment

Chris

Who cares?

Let's see, for starters everyone carrying around an iPhone because it's awesome and a Blackberry (depite their inherent crappiness) because that's all they can connect to the corporate email server. In many large companies IT will not allow IMAP even if it's over SSL.

Or the people that refuse to carry two devices but lust after the iPhone and are stuck with the aforementioned Blackberry or a shitty Windows Mobile phone.

Or people that have an iPhone and would use it to connect to their corporate email if it were possible, but instead live without.

Yeah, I can't imagine who would care about native Exchange sync.

December 21 2007 at 2:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

JMS

So, this would mean seamless Exchange support, right? Just like I now have on my Windows Mobile phone...push email, transparent contact/calendar syncing, etc?

December 21 2007 at 12:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply