Apologies for not blogging lately but I've been a little busy over the last couple of weeks. Anyway I want to touch on a bit of Apple/iPhone/MobileMe/Exchange stuff.
So as I'm sure most people are aware Apple announced "push" e-mail with their MobileMe service launched a few weeks ago which costs $100 a year, of course everyone, well those in the Apple Cult anyway, were raving about it. Apple dubbed it "[Microsoft] Exchange for the rest of us".
However "push" has recently been completely dropped, which has added to the continuing failure that is MobileMe.
Some on the blogosphere though are asking where Microsoft's consumer level Exchange is?
You see, somewhere along the lines of Xbox breakdowns, Vista problems/negative PR, and chasing after copying Apple with Zune, Microsoft completely missed the boat. For a nominal fee to the user, Microsoft should have created "Exchange Hotmail": a paid-for part of Hotmail that "brings your data with you at the speed of *push*" (my marketing tagline).
Microsoft already offer push support for Hotmail, and custom domains that use Hotmail as their backend, and they offer this for free, and have done for a year or two.
You see, somewhere along the lines of buying into the anti-Microsoft fanboy nonsense, this blogger forgot to actually check what they were talking about.
Exchange Hotmail would have been a perfect play for Microsoft. So in the end, Microsoft is left with a very popular online mail solution (Hotmail) yet has not made a significant effort to monetize it.
Yeah I think it was a good move for Microsoft. It's just unfortunate people like yourself either don't know it exists, or pretends it doesn't so you can claim that Apple were first.
But it wasn't to be. Apple brought it first because Microsoft was too busy defending its "server plays".
It also runs on more than just Windows Mobile phones (which have ten times the marketshare of the iPhone), but also on Blackberrys, Symbian and any other phone with the full Windows Live client.
Less of the reality distortion field please.