Quote:
Originally Posted by redge
The outstanding question is whether to use Apple's or FastMail's Contact and Calendar functions. I haven't quite figured out the implications either way.
|
For most it's generally a flip of the coin, as iCloud is basically the came CalDAV and CardDAV technology under the hood that FastMail uses, although there are some pros and cons to each....
The upside of using iCloud Calendar and Contacts is that it's easier to set up, since most users will already have an iCloud account anyway. FastMail requires some manual configuration, or at least the pushing out of profiles onto user's Macs and iOS devices.
iCloud also makes it easier to share calendars with other iCloud users; this can be done with FastMail as well, but it's not natively built into the Calendars app on iOS.
If you want to use the "VIP" contacts feature in Apple Mail, you'll need to at least keep iCloud Contacts sync enabled to sync these VIP lists between your devices. Oddly, however, you don't appear to actually need to have any contacts
stored in iCloud — you can empty out your iCloud contacts entirely, and use FastMail exclusively, but you need to keep the iCloud Contacts
sync option enabled to sync the VIP list between your devices.
On the FastMail side, the main advantage of using FastMail for your contacts is that you will be able to take advantage of server-side rules based on your contacts or contact lists. At the most basic level, this includes things like not marking a message as spam if the sender is in your address book, but you can also create rules based on what address book group a contact is in. Of course, you can do this in Apple Mail on the Mac as well, but that requires the Mac to be up and running in order to process the rules.
FastMail also allows for the ability to have shared address books, which iCloud does not presently offer, although these don't really translate as well well into the iOS and Mac Contacts apps, so I don't really consider that much of an advantage unless you live in the web interface.
Quote:
|
Given that we'll be using iCloud for storage and sharing, I also haven't decided whether there is a role for FastMail's Files storage function. My gut sense, perhaps wrong, is that it is a bit anachronistic in an age of ubiquitous cloud storage. It's unclear to me what the practical use case is for it.
|
FastMail's files storage function is definitely not something I'd consider suitable for workgroup file sharing.
It's mostly a place to make files available online, create simple photo galleries, and publish static websites. It could be useful for you for that last feature if your company has a simple static site (no PHP or other server-side scripting), but most companies already have other hosting providers anyway.
iCloud isn't particularly ideal for this either, however, as its sharing features are still quite rudimentary compared to Dropbox or Google Drive. For instance, there's no way to share an entire folder with other members of your team. That said, if you're primarily collaborating on individual files in Apple's own iWork apps (Pages/Numbers/Keynote), it actually works very well.