Microsoft got some great positive press from eWeek as the saviours of the iPhone when they fixed a bug with Exchange Server 2007 which might have prevented iPhone from getting email using IMAP4. It’s lucky for the rest of us that Microsoft stepped in like this or where would the world have been?
 Of course, it’s bogus.
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Exchange 2007 has had some difficulties with the IMAP4 protocol implementation, which are at least partially expected to be addressed with Exchange 2007 Rollup 3.
iPhone and Mac OS X’s Mail application are not the only IMAP4 clients out there. In fact virtually every mail client, including the crappy one built into my Sony-Ericsson K800i can use IMAP4. The problem here was Microsoft’s usual attitude to standards and making internet standards second-class citizens on their servers. When IMAP didn’t work as expected, Windows SysAdmins could point the finger at the “non-standard” (read: Not Outlook) mail client and blame that or the end user for installing it.
But here we are. Getting some nice positive spin for Microsoft actually managing to ship a product with bugs which later have to be fixed just to get them working. And they call Mac users blinkered!
The article continues with the opine that Apple should have licensed ActiveSync to enable the iPhone to connect to Exchange Servers using their own proprietary protocol, MAPI. This would have the effect of promoting the use of Exchange servers which, on the face of it, is a bad idea anyway.
The article then finishes with an infomercial about Azaleos’ MobileXchange product. No wonder they want to promote the use of Exchange out there and thank Microsoft for saving the iPhone…