The Mac Lawyer Using Macs in Law Firms | Attorney Ben Stevens

Microsoft Announces Plans to Bring Outlook to Macs in 2010

By J. Benjamin Stevens on Posted in Software

Microsoft announced that it intends to finally include Outlook in its updated Mac:Office suite, scheduled to be released in late 2010.  Until now, it has included Entourage, "a sort-of-like-Outlook, sort-of-different application that got great reviews when it debuted but which has also suffered from iffy compatibility with Outlook and Exchange."

Of course, Mac users already have excellent email options, including Apple’s Mail, which now is more compatible with Microsoft’s Exchange server under the new OS X Snow Leopard.  Therefore, while I anticipate this announcement may create some buzz for PC users still considering the switch and for larger firms who are tied to an Exchange based system, I don’t believe that it will have much impact on smaller firms, as many of them (like my firm) have completely broken free and no longer suckle at the Microsoft teat.

What impact, if any, do you think that Microsoft’s bringing Outlook to the Mac will have on law firms?  Please submit your comments below, as I look forward to reading them.

Source:  "Outlook is Coming to the Mac in 2010" by Harry McCracken, published at Technologizer.

  • Greg

    My office still uses Small Business Server 2003 and Exchange 2003… Snow Leopard’s Mail.app actually sent me searching for my Office disc to install Entourage. I’ll likely wind up using Outlook if it hits before 2003 support comes to Mail.app.

  • http://www.millard-law.com John

    This is something that interests me a lot, as I’ve used Amicus Attorney for years for case management, and must sync my data to my BlackBerry via Outlook. Amicus works great for me, and I have no intention of changing to a new CMS. I do understand that I can run Amicus on a mac using Parallels, but the holdback for me has been how to sync the Amicus Attorney data to my BlackBerry (or iPhone for that matter). Currently, that must be done via a sync with Outlook. Frankly, I think Outlook is crap as an email program, and it is the source of a lot of my PC issues. But I’m not willing to give up the Amicus. So this my be just what I need to finally make the PC to OS switch at work.
    I use an iMac at home, and absolutely love it. I have grown very weary of the constant PC problems at work, including daily updates for viruses, patches, restarts and just slow performance. I spend about 2 hours a week dealing with my PC (piece crap), so any argument about macs costing more is bogus to me. My iMac never causes any problems whatsoever, and I never turn it off…just to sleep and it awakens instantly. If my PC is shutdown for any reason, it is literally 30 minutes before all the BS loads and allows it to be used. There’s nothing more frustrating than arriving at work all ready to go, only to have your computer delay your work for half an hour. So this is good news for me.

  • http://www.warecornell.com Ware Cornell

    This just serves to annoy me.
    The people at MS seemed to have assumed that people wanted outlook so much they would accept over hyped, virus-infected operating systems and software.
    Outlook is a dated boring contact manager. You won’t get me to bite.

  • http://divorcecollaborative.com Steve McDonough, Esq.

    Ugh! I wanted to get away from MS applications and am very happy with the Mac email program. I especially like the ease of setting up smart mailboxes to automatically capture client emails for a particular case. I do need to run VM so I can use a couple of specific windows apps, but feel like I am introducing the swine flu to a nursery school every time I open up windows on my Mac.
    Since I use Rocket Matter, everything synchs easily with my iphone, so I do not have the Exchange issue to contend with.
    I just switched a few months ago, and love not paying my PC tech lots of money to tweak things all the time. I have no regrets for making the move to Macs.
    Thanks Ben for a great blog!

  • http://mintzwords.wordpress.com Mike Mintz

    The inclusion of Outlook in the MS suite will do a lot to boost business and law firm use of Mac. One of the main reasons my company still uses Blackberry is the difficulty of syncing Exchange with the Mac mail options. I have gone open source at home with my Mac (downloading alternative MS programs like Neo Office), but the inclusion of Outlook is a definite plus.

  • http://www.windsorlawfirm.com John Windsor

    Frankly, with my experience with Entourage, I am looking at iWork and Open Office to break free of MS all together, but my document production is HotDocs on a PC, so not sure about cross platform issues. Sick of MS, though, with updates, crashes, “join the experience”.

  • http://www.rocketmatter.com Larry Port

    I see this ironically as a migration path away from Windows. I don’t think it will be embraced by the current legions of Mac faithful. But I think some PC users will be emboldened to make the switch to OS X because they’ll see that all of the office tools will be present on the Mac platform.