OS X Snow Leopard bringing integrated MS Exchange support

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is bringing integrated Microsoft Exchange support to Mail, iCal and Address Book, which other than the performance improvements, is likely to be the most significant new feature coming in the new OS X release coming any day now.

Office for Mac has had Entourage, a Mac specific, somewhat scaled down version of Outlook, which is included in Office for Mac for sometime now, but given that it’s not a full version of Outlook, it’s a half hearted approach from Microsoft to bring full integration with Exchange to the Mac. But you can appreciate Microsoft’s reasoning – they want you to be accessing Exchange from Windows based PCs not Macs, so why would they provide anything better?

Full Exchange integration across the native Mac OS X apps Mail, iCal and Address Book is somewhat of a game changer though. You no longer need to buy Office for Mac just to get Entourage. With Snow Leopard you will have native support built in to Mac OS X. If lack of interoperability between Macs and Exchange, which in most enterprise environments is the dominant email/calendar system, was previously a reason not to use Macs in the workplace, that argument is soon to disappear.

Is Microsoft set to become the GM of the software industry?

Microsoft have had their day. They’ve been cruising on autopilot with no one at the controls for the past few years. XP was a step up from 95/98/ME for home users, but only a small incremental step up from NT. They’ve been enjoying the fruits of Bill’s original ‘deal made in heaven’ which propelled Microsoft into the stratosphere, and resulted in Windows being pre-installed on the majority of all new PCs sold worldwide.

The tide has started to turn though, and while the Microsoft machine has been stuck on autopilot with Bill out of the driving seat and Ballmer jumping around doing his monkey impersonations, the rest of the world has been catching up… fast.

Apple have kept to their beliefs and continued to develop hardware and software combinations that work together in tandem to do just that… work. And work very well. Without driver issues, installation issues, hardware stability issues, blue screens of death, viruses, trojan horses, you name it. iPods are everywhere. iPhones are everywhere. College students are gravitating towards Macs as ‘standard issue’. Media professionals have always believed in Macs. Microsoft must be filling it’s pants, because right now they are very much in danger of being made irrelevant.

This article on investor news site Seeking Alpha absolutely slams Microsoft for resting on their laurels and basically doing nothing while Apple and Google are moving in to their space and owning it. I’d like to fast forward another 10 years or so in to the future to see what Microsoft is up to 10 years from now, because I’m starting to wonder if they are on their way out… is Microsoft set to become the GM of the software industry?