One of my deal breaker criteria for taking a new job or not is if they use the Exchange platform. I find it insufferable. Eliminating MS Exchange from my life has made me exponentially happier. Calendaring and email are too big a part of my workflow to entrust to a system that I can “just get by” in. My platform needs to be as fun to use as Photo Booth and as reliable or NetNewsWire.

There has been a HUGE opportunity for third party developers here for a long time. You think someone would have jumped on it by now. Don’t make me learn Objective C, man. Apple can’t be the only company allowed to license ActiveSync from Microsoft.

I hate Mail. I use Thunderbird. But not real happy with it. I use IMAP Gmail (for Domain Hosted) for e-mail. I use this crazy script I found on Lifehacker called GCalDaemon to sync Calendar (I haven’t gotten it to work on contacts yet).

But if I could have a stable, syncable Calendar, Address Book, Meeting Management, and E-mail – I would seriously reconsider using Apple Mail, Calendar & Address Book.

I don’t know if the same incentive exists on the Mac proper. Microsoft has Entourage—it’s garbage, but satisfies Apple’s ability to check the box that says “we *can* support Exchange on Macs”. Maybe they could release a paid upgrade for Mail.app that supported Exchange for enterprises.