Outlook 2013 with Google ActiveSync

Gmail ActiveSync is version 12, Office 2013 beta needs version 14 or better.

Exchange and Exchange ActiveSync are 2 different flavors from Microsoft. Exchange is enterprise-oriented, while Exchange ActivSync offers a subset of these features and more geared towards the consumer market.

Previous versions of Outlook supported just Exchange, and services like Gmail and Hotmail offer Exchange ActiveSync -- which is why a plugin is required to sync Outlook with them.

Exchange ActiveSync is being implemented (finally) in Outlook 2013. In press-statements following the announcement of Office 2013, Microsoft representatives mentioned that Outlook 2013 Exchange ActiveSync implementation was in very early development and full of bugs. So far, they've been only testing it with Hotmail. Wider compatibility is coming 'soon', however, no specific time frame was provided.

Knowing that it will be working with Outlook 2013 by October is good enough for me. Currently, I prefer Chrome over Outlook 2010 with a plugin as my front-end to Google Apps. The plugin method hiccups fairly often, and I'm never 100% sure I'm looking at an accurate representation of my Google Apps data. I'd prefer Outlook though, and am glad it's coming.

I'm hoping Google will finally offer the full Exchange ActiveSync feature set and sync Tasks as well, like Hotmail does. Hotmail users have it better in that regard, being able to sync iOS Reminders (something that works very well with Siri) with To-Do lists in Hotmail and Tasks in Outlook.

If there are any paid Google Apps users reading, email a support request for Google Tasks sync to be turned on in their Exchange ActiveSync service -- then we'll have the best of all worlds when it all works in Outlook 2013 :-)