Exchange servers and Mavericks Mail

It's undeniable that Mavericks' Mail has many issues with Exchange. I have been struggling with those issues since its release and have not been able to get it to work well with Exchange while my MBP with ML works just fine on the same account, same environment.

There is also no question that everybody pays - directly or indirectly - for the software that we are complaining about. In some cases, was the upgrade free? It doesn't matter, because it was recommended by Apple, the manufacturer of the computers and it's OS.

I tried almost all suggestions made here in regard to Mail configuration and I'm glad to know that some people got theirs to work fine, but I am not sure their example fits, as their accounts, mailbox size and organization varies.

In my case, I surely cannot blame it on poor Exchange configuration: we use Office 365 Corporate, so our Exchange (2013) is configured and operated by Microsoft itself and they are well aware that we have many Mac users in the company. If anyone here has evidence that Exchange under Office 365 is poorly configured, please let me know and I will gladly forward all your inputs to MS.

Apple support couldn't help either, so if there's any other suggestion to make them work together, it will be very welcome.

Csound1 wrote:

Take a look backk through this thread, solutions have been posted, acted upon and solved the problem for more than one person here.

If you want a fix then you need to do more than complain, reading the thread would be a start.

I have read the thread. Reading back page by page I've found little more than you and inked calling people stupid for 45 pages now, thus my irritation with you.

Fixes like removing the files and having it resync are a proven waste of time. Unless the user had a corrupted local mailbox they are placebo fixes. You can do this all you want, and the problem reappears in TCP sessions anyway. Likewise with destroying the mailbox and recreating it. The problem reappears within a few hours (e.g. same timeframe as not doing anything at all)

If you were actually helping people as you claim, you'd link to the instructions. Not keep telling people they're stupid for not taking advice you aren't giving. Cause like I said, all I can find is your insults.

I concur, no issues here with any of our clients. Though, there still is minor issues with Mac Mail, nothing that is not resolved with a quick restart.

Jorhett, this lab that you have built. Can you provide more details? I apologize in advance for asking redundant questions but I do not have time to sift through the drama above and would rather you copy and past the "meat" of the details from above in a consolidated reply.

Is your test server and client on the same subnet network? If not, please describe.

Please clarify if you are wanting to discuss IMAP or Exchange in these conversations.

What version of Exchange Server? Service Pack? CU?

What version of OS X?

I work with developers to whom restarting their Mac would cost them hours of lost productivity. "nothing that is not resolved with a quick restart" is simply not an acceptable response to bugs open for 7 months now.

Lab: IMAP is irrelevant to this forum topic. We tested both at the same time because of reported problems with both and to validate if the problem only occurred when both were enabled. That test was not successful -- the problem shows up with equal frequency when only Exchange is enabled.

ML and Mavericks Macbooks side by side (same hardware) with nothing other than the operating system installed. Another Macbook running ML and Wireshark connected to a mirroring port examining the session flows. Exchange server for most tests is two hops away (where there is significant real mail), but we also built one in the lab and confirmed identical behavior.

Size of the mailbox does not appear to affect results. No change in TCP session issues whether or not the exchange server was local. Exchange server in the lab never registered even 1% utilization (16 core 64 G ram) at any time.

ML Macbook always saw new mail within 15 seconds, and delivered outbound mail within 20 seconds in every test.

(Prior to the latest 10.9.2 patch) Mavericks saw new mail within a range of 2-1280 seconds although would sometimes stop seeing new mail entirely until reboot. Mavericks was almost a minute slower sending out mail compared to ML every time, and would sometimes stall and not attempt to send out mail until a reboot was completed. Restarting Mail.app would sometimes solve inbound mail, but would never solve an outbound mail stall.

We are retesting with 10.9.2 but more than a hundred users so far have reported marginal if any improvement.

IMAP is irrelevant to this forum topic

So why bring it up, another complaint in the formative stage possibly?

Csound1 wrote:

IMAP is irrelevant to this forum topic

So why bring it up, another complaint in the formative stage possibly?

To answer the question "Please clarify if you are wanting to discuss IMAP or Exchange"

As always, you demonstrate that no logic can withstand your burning need to be a jerk. I have officially requested of Apple that you be censored in this forum.

More BS from you

This is where YOU brought Imap up, and not in response to an Imap question either.

If you told the truth it might be easier to get help, and assuming that we are fools only makes it worse.

I agree with Csound1, let's stay on topice. Exchange EWS only. Disussing IMAP will just add to an already bloated thead. Start a new thread and label it "Mac Mail does not adhear to IMAP standards" or something to that effect.

You might want to also head over to the Micosoft forums and create a few more threads, something like "Exchange does not adhear to the IMAP standards" "Outlook does not adhear to the IMAP standards." "Exchange EWS throttle settings wreaking havok with my applications" etc...

bradhs wrote:

I agree with Csound1, let's stay on topice. Exchange EWS only. Disussing IMAP will just add to an already bloated thead. Start a new thread and label it "Mac Mail does not adhear to IMAP standards" or something to that effect.

You might want to also head over to the Micosoft forums and create a few more threads, something like "Exchange does not adhear to the IMAP standards" "Outlook does not adhear to the IMAP standards." "Exchange EWS throttle settings wreaking havok with my applications" etc...

Bradhs, that is exactly what I said in my previous post." IMAP is irrelevant to this forum topic." I was only talking about Exchange. Every word after that clarification sentence was only about Exchange.

Csound1 took my clarification as a chance to attack me. Are you saying that you agree with this attack? Really?

Jorhett, I should leave it. Whilst there are people like these who have had no problems, you will just dig a deeper hole for yourself. We were assured that a fix would be in 10.9.2 (even though there wasn't a problem) but it did not fix every case. Apple appear to have done all they intend to., its now up to MS. Anyone who's IT team still cannot get round this, your best option is to do what we did and move to MS Office Outlook mail client and drop mavericks Mail as a bad job. Write to apple.com/feedback and then move on.

peter_watt wrote:

Jorhett, I should leave it. Whilst there are people like these who have had no problems, you will just dig a deeper hole for yourself. We were assured that a fix would be in 10.9.2 (even though there wasn't a problem) but it did not fix every case. Apple appear to have done all they intend to., its now up to MS. Anyone who's IT team still cannot get round this, your best option is to do what we did and move to MS Office Outlook mail client and drop mavericks Mail as a bad job. Write to apple.com/feedback and then move on.

There is no "deep hole" for me. There is a deep hole for Apple where we explain that 20,000 of us will be losing our Mac desktops and receive M$ Windows platforms to replace them because of how they have failed to respond to this issue.

Ok well yeah that isn't great for me, but this isn't a hole I'm digging. Apple has already dug the hole. Our salesperson is losing 7 digits from her sales figures this year.

Also your statement about IT teams makes no sense. What could an IT team do about broken software? They can't fix Mail.app which I have packet captures that prove it's a problem in its failure to respond. What they can do is take away the Mac desktop and replace it with Windows-- which many IT departments (ours included) are all way too happy to do.

If you have a 20,000 mac workstation company have your CIO call Apple. They dont read read this stuff.

jorhett,

I agree, let's all keep this about Exchange EWS. Since you've got a lab built, let's talk about that. What are you experiencing? Can you grab any logs that show errors? Post some detials and I'll see if I can help.

Make sure you lab is setup to properly handle Autodiscover or disable Autodiscover completey and manually enter your server settings.

peter_watt wrote:

If you have a 20,000 mac workstation company have your CIO call Apple. They dont read read this stuff.

A company with 20k mac desktops that are a minority of systems ... the CIO does not get involved in desktop purchases. If the CIO is forced to deal with it, he'll simply remove the minority problem. This isn't being handled anywhere close to the CIO level and won't be.

That said, yes Apple is deeply aware of the issues. I have also escalated the forum behavior here, and there is now active monitoring on this topic.

My main reason for posting in this topic was because I was watching inked and csound insult person after person, telling them that this problem was their own fault. I have objective proof that these accusations are nonsense and I wanted people to know that real bugs do exist, and that csound and inked's insults are unfounded.

Don't worry, those on level 2 and above mostly monitor the forum. You may have noticed your last post was removed.

bradhs wrote:

jorhett,

I agree, let's all keep this about Exchange EWS. Since you've got a lab built, let's talk about that. What are you experiencing? Can you grab any logs that show errors? Post some detials and I'll see if I can help.

Make sure you lab is setup to properly handle Autodiscover or disable Autodiscover completey and manually enter your server settings.

We weren't using Autodiscover for obvious reasons, but I'm curious as to why Autodiscover would be related to this problem? If you are aware of some issues surrounding this please share. We have seen no problems with autodiscover -- the values are all correct in every instance enabled via autodiscover here.

There are no logs per se that demonstrate the problems. The problems we saw were visible in PCAP captures of the network traffic. For example, Mail never logs any problem for why it does not attempt to connect to Exchange to deliver mail, but sniffing on the wire shows that it never did -- even while it was retrieving new mail.

Unfortunately as we were using our own accounts for testing (to correlate large mailbox sizes with the problem) the packet captures I have handy I must get security release to share with you. I can discuss what we saw in some depth if that is acceptable to you. If you need actual wireframes, I'll see about getting the exchange server rebuilt in our lab without any actual company content on it so we can recreate the localized test. That will take a few days at least.