MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry

Interesting timing.

2 days ago a place I'm at switched us from Google mail + calendar + meet to Microsoft outlook + calendar + teams.

I almost can't believe at how good Google's suite of tools are compared to Microsoft. I never used any of MS' office tools until a few days ago.

Outlook's web app doesn't even let you click into an email to mark it as read. You have to explicitly click the mark as read button. It also doesn't intuitively support filters with emails that have + in their name (each email ends up being unique instead of Google doing the more expected thing of letting the filter match all + variants). It also doesn't update its title bar with a count of emails in your inbox. That's things I discovered after using it for about 10 minutes.

Microsoft's calendar is designed so poorly, there's so many quality of life things that aren't there vs Google. There's too many to list but the biggest one is not being able to see the calendar details of team mates when inviting them to an event. All you see is a blocked out amount of time, you can't see their exact schedules even if they shared their calendar with you. This removes a huge human element to scheduling meetings because often times I'll avoid scheduling meetings when folks are just getting out of a long meeting, or I'll buffer it by 15-30 minutes depending on who is doing what beforehand.

I'm not not looking forward to the day when we'll need to use all of MS' tools to replace Google docs + spreadsheet and Slack.

I stated two things I like about it over it's competitors, I didn't brand them as the best or most important features on offer.

I specifically stated PDF editing, not just viewing PDF files.

SSO works better on Edge in a work environment, mainly as it connects to the Windows profile. This means that I do not need to make changes to additional browsers or have end users struggling to sign in to various applications. Specifically with Edge, I can simply provide each user profile a folder with shortcuts to the likes of email quarantine, support, Outlook etcetera and they will either see their account listed or only need to enter their email address.

Coupled with appropriate training, this has cut down on users signing into Microsoft login pages that have been designed to look like the legitimate organisation using logo's and other branding. When in doubt, the users can visit the shortcut provided to them.

No.

> And it's not Apple leveraging one monopoly (they don't have) into trying to take over an other domain as a new entrant. iOS started from the position of being completely locked down.

Apple is absolutely trying to leverage their OS in order to drive usage in other markets. One big example of this is Apple Maps, which is being used as a default on iOS no matter if you like it or not. Both "Contacts" and "Find My" uses Apple Maps as the only option for starting navigating to another address, and if the application is not installed, but Google Maps or any other app, they still ask you to install Apple Maps instead of doing what everyone else in the ecosystem is doing, which is to ask which navigation app to use.

> Which was almost certainly on Apple's timeline anyway, though we'll never know for sure.

Yes, absolutely. The manufacturer who almost never use standard connectors were gonna start using standard connectors suddenly, no because regulation forced them to, but because that was in their timeline anyways...

Most companies don’t have the resources and manpower to run their own chat and videocall service. A previous employer of mine did (using some open-source tools) and it was painful to use due to the tools’ wonky UX and networking glitches.