thank you microsoft .... vent ....

After spending close to 5 hours on various " help " desks via chat or on the phone ( my most frustrating experience in 15 year of frustrating experiences dealing with " help " desks ) , trying to get my calendar and contacts on Outlook 2016 to sync between different computers / tablets / iphones ( I have office 365 ...) i was told to set up an icloud email address and ring apple ...

Luckily the apple web site had relatively clear instructions on how to do this and once I set that up everything was fairly self explanatory and quick.


Cliff

 

It's frustrating, I've been down that path many times.

 

Its fairly basic, don't be afraid to sing out.

 

All to do with the backend server.. wont work with a bog standard pop3/imap style isp account needs a server with an activesync backend eg Exchange

 

Its all done now .

What was frustrating was the " support " people following scripts and not knowing enough about what they were doing to say at the beginning
to say what I needed to do.

It took over 90 mins of trying before the initial chat support person worked out ( for what ever reason - still unknown ) he couldn't get their remote applet to give him remote access .

I knew I couldn't do it with my Email server as my contacts / calendar aren't synced on it and the emails were coming via a pop link , but what did I need ?

Apple had a simple solution .

Cliff

 

And this is why it dominates the market.

Say what you will about the product but the simplicity of the user interface is why it's so successful.
You may not be able to 'tinker' or expand its capability as well or as easily. But for the vast majority of users this isn't needed.

My 18month old son can open his games app and music.
My 65yo+ have learned to operate pith a desktop and phone. Neither have ever used a computer previously.

All my devices are apple (both of them). Simply because they all talk to each other and are 'plug and play'.

Blacky

 

i use apple for phone , iPad and iMac for my music ( Logic ) , but still use PC for work related functions.

Though I notice that MYOB do have a Mac version ….

Cliff

 

Personally I can't stand Apple devices, I think any device that takes half a day to update a wifi password when you change it on your router is not going to impress me. (Macbook Air, about 3 years ago, something about having to delete keychains or some such thing).

I have a mixture of devices and OS's, PC and Surface Pro are Windows 10, 1 phone and 1 tablet are android, other phone and tablet are IOS (Apple), 3 Raspberry Pi's are Linux and my NAS is a linux build also.

They all talk to each other with no issue, the PC announces the TV schedule across the network and any device with a browser on the network can see it. All devices can stream from the NAS (incidentally the hardest one to set up for this was the iPad due to the way the App store works and how everything is so locked down, there is no free solution for MKV's with a specific audio stream, Dolby from memory but I could be wrong).

Apple seem to make things unnecessarily complex and then give the impression that they hide it from you to make it simple when in actual fact, it's mostly simple.

Yes I am highly technical so I am always going to pick the device that gives me more control but my wife was an iPhone user for years, once I got her onto an Android, she was blown away by it's simplicity AND functionality. She LOVED the upgrade process, no backing up to a PC with iTunes, just put your gmail address in and you are done. It will pull all your contacts down, all the keys for your known wifi connections and it will download the apps you had installed on your last one. Essentially enter your details and then just leave the device alone for 10 mins, once it's finished it's set up exactly how your old one was.

Interestingly enough, she is considering going back to an iPhone now, cos they make a rose gold one.

Apple don't make easy to use devices, they make shiny pretty things which is why they are so popular . My nephews can control my Android tablet just as well as they can control an i device.

 

Each to their own I guess.
My mum could not work out how to use a PC but she can make her way around her iPad without too many issues.

Apple devices are a breeze to use, especially when used in an Apple environment. With everything connected to one Apple ID, contacts, notes, favourites etc are all carried and updated across devices. Too easy. Mixing Windows and Apple does not work very well though. But then again, I personally have no need - nor want - for the "customisation" of a Windows computer. In fact I don't want to have to get all technical to get things to work.
The wife used to have an iPhone, then moved to an android phone, like it for a month and after she got a few viruses from downloading some legit looking apps from the official store and general complexity in setting things up she now came back to iPhone and is happy with it.

There are really 2 camps in this regard!

 

Yeah, but youre a tech head - so will never love the apple products. They control they functionality of the device and lock it down so you cant modify it. This prevents a lot of the problems caused by us incompetent techos who try to do something simple, find ourselves in the depth of the device and 'try this - see if that works' and screw everything up entirely.

TBH - I couldnt actually understand half of your post. And havent even heard about half of the products you were talking about. Such is my level of 'non-techo-guru-status'.

I dont want to know how or why something works. I just want it to work. Hence I go to Apple for both my laptop and my phone (my only 2 gadgets).

Blacky

 

The iPhone is fine once you eliminate iTunes. I'm still using my iPhone 5S and run the core backup to iCloud (this is small as it's just basic phone settings and app settings, I don't send anything else to iCloud), photos and video sync to my server using PhotoSync, contacts go to Gmail and music syncs with MediaMonkey. My phone has been free from iTunes for around a year and I haven't had to think about it ever since. Did the same thing to my wife's iPhone 5 and iPad 4 and she's had no problems either.

I'm a Windows man for home and especially in the enterprise space and whilst I happen to own 3 Mac minis, all of which have now been relegated to being used as TV streaming machines, they all run Windows 10 because of petty things made difficult by Apple like trying to get remote controls to work.

Having said that, I completely understand @See Change getting grumpy with Microsoft Support... if it's any consolation Microsoft's premier support for enterprise is no better than the crap they offer for home users. Particularly with the newer or less mainstream products, it's absolutely pathetic.