It doesn't matter as long as the phone is getting charged. Push notifications and badge updates work for me when the phone is on external power. As soon as i switch to battery power things get flakey (like push notifications 15min late).
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mail from a reliability / deliverability standpoint: iCloud vs Outlook.com vs others
- Thread starter exi
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It doesn't matter as long as the phone is getting charged. Push notifications and badge updates work for me when the phone is on external power. As soon as i switch to battery power things get flakey (like push notifications 15min late).
Who knows? In my test case I can't add a contact photo at Outlook.com OR on my Mac.
Didn't work for me. I have iCloud and Outlook setup on my iPhone native mail app. Both are set to Push in settings and fetch (although not set for anything but holiday calendars) is set to manual. I have never gotten realtime mail badge updates, including now with my outlook.com account configured for exchange. Is anyone else seeing this?
I moved from Gmail to iCloud almost a year ago but sometimes I do wish I had kept with Gmail since it makes getting an Android phone easier. I also moved my contacts, reminders, and calendar to iCloud so I am kind of stuck with Apple unless I decide to switch back. I still think Gmail and Google services is king but I have not much experience with Outlook. From what MS is trying to do with Windows 10 and Office/Outlook and everything, it is looking very promising.
Interestingly, read status updates with Outlook.com seems to work when tested today when it didn't in the past. Messages read on Apple Mail on my MacBook Pro were automatically marked as read on my iPhone without intervention.
That said: excluding whitelist use, is it fair to say Outlook.com even somewhat rivals Gmail for send/receive reliability?
That said: excluding whitelist use, is it fair to say Outlook.com even somewhat rivals Gmail for send/receive reliability?
Right -- mine were too. Yet when trying yesterday, it was updating within 15 seconds or so. Go figure.
This sounds slightly subjective.. I've never had an issue with iCloud or Outlook mail.
Would agree. Outlook IMAP was a little on the slow side upon its debut, but it seems to have improved. And then there's this read status update issue which has been addressed here before.
Looking to definitively move mail, and only mail, to Outlook and keep the default iOS client, OR back to my Gmail account and switch to Outlook's mail client on iOS since it utilizes push notifications through Microsoft servers, but trying to get a feel for whether Outlook is as reliable as Gmail in the sense of not silently filtering too aggressively.
Not to beat a dead horse, but is it unreasonable of me to worry that, if I switch to Outlook, I'll run into the same silent filtering worries I have with iCloud (as compared to Gmail)?
For example: https://blog.paranoidpenguin.net/2015/01/outlook-com-is-silently-discarding-email-messages/
It's all six versus half-dozen from there. Gmail is what I'm comparing things to. Outlook has true alias support. Gmail can't do push but has great IMAP IDLE support. Outlook supports ActiveSync. Gmail contact field labels are actually supported; Outlook contacts, being an ActiveSync connection, does that goofy "email" as the label for all email addresses for everyone.
For example: https://blog.paranoidpenguin.net/2015/01/outlook-com-is-silently-discarding-email-messages/
It's all six versus half-dozen from there. Gmail is what I'm comparing things to. Outlook has true alias support. Gmail can't do push but has great IMAP IDLE support. Outlook supports ActiveSync. Gmail contact field labels are actually supported; Outlook contacts, being an ActiveSync connection, does that goofy "email" as the label for all email addresses for everyone.
Last edited:
I was quite happy with iCloud until I started getting spam and found out the filters are crap. Even messages I marked as junk kept hitting my inbox. So then I started forwarding iCloud mail to Gmail and my mail clients get mail from there. It works like a charm.
Surely. Thing is, I'm not sure I'll be moving my contacts, calendaring, and tasks/reminders back to Google, so using Gmail's mail app -- which also supports push notifications on iOS -- is an iffy proposition as it wouldn't be as seamless, especially since I have an institutional Exchange account which I check in tandem and which couldn't be accessed through the Gmail app, except if I were to set a redirect rule in the Exchange account for mail.
Third-party clients which support push for Gmail on iOS are out of the question because they save login credentials onto their respective servers. I'm not a paranoid sort of guy; just a pragmatic one. Fewer weak points is better.
As an update, I'm hearing that MS will likely have all Outlook.com accounts switched over to Exchange by the end of June.
Are you having any trouble when subscribing to on-line calendars? For example, a sports team calendar? I am. When I subscribe via outlook.com, it takes the web link, but none of the vents show on my calendar?
I would think it has something to do with the source. For me, a new, Exchange-based Outook.com address adds calendars from an MLB team and also TripIt and seem to both work fine.
Thanks for this.
Any word on this whole read status updating in the background issue that we talked about before?
One item for debate: is Outlook.com, post-migration, as reliable as Gmail as far as counting on mail to arrive and not "silently filtering" as has been iCloud's issue?
Ask because I've been able to find some talk of similar problems with Outlook.com.
Ask because I've been able to find some talk of similar problems with Outlook.com.
Not to obnoxiously keep posting to my own thread, and hopefully this helps someone else toying with services, but I've been tinkering with Fastmail lately on a free trial for mail only. Not sold yet, but it's actually pretty impressive. Here's why:
- Flawless push support on iOS, better than what Apple currently does with iCloud (new messages are pushed to all devices, and read/flag/pin status updates in the background when changed on webmail interface or in a mail client)
- Speedy. Delivery within seconds. Background updating as above has thus far been within a few seconds, and never more than ten seconds in limited testing.
- Extensive alias support for usernames and custom sender names for each. No autodetection of aliases (which iCloud does) within iOS/OS X, but aliases can easily be manually added on and seem to work as intended. iOS aliases cannot have custom sender names for aliases as far as I know -- something that isn't an issue with iCloud.
- Options for power users I appreciate but will never need (virtual domains, etc).
- Customizable rules on par with Outlook.com in terms of complexity.
- For those appreciative of such things, mandatory SSL/TLS, with encryption on Fastmail servers.
Still can't speak to being able to count on the service. It's basically this versus Outlook.com at this point, with a move back to Gmail a distant third.
Any Fastmail fans out there?
- Flawless push support on iOS, better than what Apple currently does with iCloud (new messages are pushed to all devices, and read/flag/pin status updates in the background when changed on webmail interface or in a mail client)
- Speedy. Delivery within seconds. Background updating as above has thus far been within a few seconds, and never more than ten seconds in limited testing.
- Extensive alias support for usernames and custom sender names for each. No autodetection of aliases (which iCloud does) within iOS/OS X, but aliases can easily be manually added on and seem to work as intended. iOS aliases cannot have custom sender names for aliases as far as I know -- something that isn't an issue with iCloud.
- Options for power users I appreciate but will never need (virtual domains, etc).
- Customizable rules on par with Outlook.com in terms of complexity.
- For those appreciative of such things, mandatory SSL/TLS, with encryption on Fastmail servers.
Still can't speak to being able to count on the service. It's basically this versus Outlook.com at this point, with a move back to Gmail a distant third.
Any Fastmail fans out there?