I’m a bit annoyed by the Fantastical subscription turn and was thinking I never use Outlook even though it’s included in Office and has been reviewed quite well on iOS. I don’t use exchange or other MS mail or calendar services.
Thoughts?
I use it and find it fine - my work account is exchange thought and have personal imap account.
I have tried using Outlook on iOS several times. The app is fine. Those reviews are authentic. If you are living in a corporate environment with Exchange our if your data is being stored in a Microsoft cloud solution, I could see Outlook as the app to go to.
What makes Outlook great is the combination of mail, contacts and calendars in one app. It works and it is powerful.
But… If you use iCloud for mail, contacts and your calendar, Outlook works to some degree, but it is limited. It does not shine that brightly any more… You can subscribe to iCloud calendars. As far as I am aware, it is a read-only subscription like basically sharing your iCloud calendar with different persons. Your contacts have to live inside of Outlook and they can be synced, but then they live inside Microsoft’s ecosystem.
I want to have my data available via iCloud, because I want to have Siri being able to access my data when using my Homepods or when I am in the car. I do not like to enter a second ecosystem.
Still, you could Outlook on iOS that way, but then it is far less compelling.
My employer, an academic institution, requires the use of Outlook for meetings and such. Outlook for iOS has been great for that. We don’t use Exchange, however it is an Office 365 setup. I would recommend the app for that. The ability to schedule meetings with others is super and see their availability, the email is good. Sometimes I find that when I clean out the Inbox on iOS, it doesn’t “take” on the macOS version or the web version.
My two cents
I use it. It’s fine.
I’d prefer to use the native iOS mail and calendar apps but my company won’t allow it, and truly the native iOS apps are only very, very slightly better.
One feature I like in the native iOS app that I can’t do in Outlook – I can set a flag on a particular email thread and get an immediate notification when someone replies to the thread. Very handy when I’m at a conference and want to change a meeting location to someplace a few hundred feet away, or to let someone know I’ll be 15 minutes late, or something like that.
(I sent that in to MPU as a piece of recorded feedback a few years ago and after @MacSparky played the tip he commented, “Using email like IM?! Blech!!” Ha!)
On the other hand, Outlook has a Focused Inbox feature that’s like SaneBox SaneLater. So that’s a point for Outlook over the stock Mail app.
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I have had my domain’s email hosted in Office365 for 3-4 years. Most of my clients over the years also use O365 too, and in most cases using configuration profiles for personal and enterprise-owned devices for security purposes.
These security restrictions pretty much prevent you using any other app other that Outlook, espectially on iOS. Outlook iOS is actually pretty good these days - I’ve long since given up using third party email clients, both on iOS and macOS.
That’s a good point. My various perusals of Apple podcasts and blogs lead me to believe that every third-party and indy email client is buggy. Spark, etc. All subject to flaking out in various ways. Unreliable.
Not Outlook. It seems to be rock-solid.
I just re-read @dfay’s original post. You’re asking about the calendar:
I see no advantage to the Outlook iOS calendar over the native Calendar app.
Why not just use the default calendar app?
It has great OS integration and shortcuts support.
Yeah, that’s where I’m leaning.
If you have to schedule meetings and rely on free busy time with an O365 or Exchange backend, you really do need Outlook.
Else for me the native apps are fine, I’ve dabbled with fantastical through all versions it just didn’t land for me (I need a daily view).
Take a quick look at Calendars from Reedle, it’s quite good and not subscription.
I’ve been using the iOS Outlook app for years now. It’s under active and significant development as is the backend of the Office 365 service I use with it.
As others have said, it’s not terribly compelling when used with other services, but with Exchange, Office 365 or Outlook.com - it’s best of breed.
Specifically the calendar is the best experience of any other app when connecting to an Exchange calendar. It gives you all the calendars associated with your account, your delegate calendars, calendars shared with you and all the associated Teams and Groups calendars as well.
It doesn’t presently have categories for mail or calendar events, but I’m guessing that’s coming given the changes that have been made to the web view client.
I have both. I tend to not use the calendar feature of Outlook, mostly because it’s two clicks away.
But as was just said, it’s the best place to see the calendars of everyone else at my company. I can also set up “Delegates” in fantastical, but I do like the Outlook implementation better.
I’m in contract management and have two email accounts (one from my employer, one from my client). I vastly prefer using my employers Outlook calendar through Office 365 and even transfer client calendar items to that.
Outlook for iOS works well for me professionally. It’s visually simple/effective and the calendar has some decent filtering options that are useful as well.
Thanks all for the feedback - it’s nice to hear reactions to using a microsoft product besides the 1990s knee jerk hatred one often sees in the mac world.