Hi All,
Well, this still present even in Yosemite 10.10.1 after the "Exchange Sync improvements" fix.
There are 2 things that really find annoying since 3/4 major OS X releases ago:
-Mail's inability to send and read correctly Outlook-formatted email (which, for example Airmail does)
-Calendar's inability to save a simple event (not to say with all additional data that goes in special iCloud fields like traffic&travel info) for some timezones when using Exchange 2010 as a backend.
After all the debugging and tests I've made, I really think that this is related to Apple's Mail.app not using the TZ name strings that Exchange 2010 would expect for an save-event request. This is specially noticeable when using a TZ that has Daylight variations (ex. Mexico City's TZ never achieves to save but I've worked up to a couple of weeks using Canada's Saskatoon TZ with no problem, however issue manages to strike back)
My guess is that Exchange changed its TZ naming when moving to 2010 and Mail.app still not, making the mismatch.
So, best ways I've managed this is:
-For Mail, well, still stuck at it as Indev's Mailtags and Mail Act-On add-ons are superb for email managing, which I find way more important than email formatting at this time. If Indev releases its products for Airmail or Airmail happens to do the job itself, then Mail.app will just go away.
-For Calendar, the most reliable way is using BusyCal instead of Calendar and disable Calendar sync from the Exchange account in System Settings. If you don't want to spend money but time then DavMail (download from Sourceforge.net)
-For tasks, I ditched all but Things, what a great and simple app 🙂
-For notes, I rely on both: Evernote as the archive/trunk and DayOne as the daily note taking/journal. Btw, Evernote+Moleskine notebooks Evernote Edition is just amazing.
Airmail, Evernote, Things, DayOne and BusyCal are available on Mac AppStore.
Finally, 2 more cents:
-A new MS Outlook along with a complete new Office:Mac suite is being rumoured to be released on Q1 2015, there are even some screenshots surfacing on the web which look a lot like the apps for iOS. Given the new focus of MS in its software (which never should had lost) I am betting on being a much more solid upgrade than previous releases, and at the price point of an office 356 "lease" looks like a real winner.
-BusyCal makers, BusyMac, is releasing also a contact manager soon (yes! BusyContacts) which I believe will manage Exchange contacts much better than OS X Contacts, as it is very sad that until now we cannot save pictures to Exchange Contacts and even more than it can't "map" correctly iCloud fields to Exchange's
Not the best answer (or hopes) for native productivity apps but I hope you guys/gals find anything on my experience useful.
