Snow Leopard brings out of the box support for Exchange

With Snow Leopard, the Mac is the only computer with built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server.

Well that's what Apple would have you believe. Truth be told Leopard and to a lesser extent Tiger had out of the box support for Exchange using the built in Mac Mail. I think the point they are trying to tactfully get across is that Windows doesn't have out of the box support but Mac does.

I have read apple's sales blurb on Snow Leopard and this miracle Microsoft Exchange support which can be found here http://www.apple.com/macosx/exchange.html. After reading this I feel the marketing department at Apple changed the wording for dramatic effect. What Apple mean to get across is that they have improved the feature set of Mail, iCal and Address Book so they now provide nearly all the functions you would expect to get out of Exchange Server, like Auto Discover of the server for clients. So does this mean you won't need Entourage? Well that's a good question, Apple's sales blurb doesn't mention opening other users mailboxes, something which Entourage does do. However it may be an option we will just have to wait and see.

I think they key point that isn't covered is the imminent Exchange 2010 and whether Snow Leopard will support that out of the box. It would seem a shame if Snow Leopard is out for only a few months and then Apple's Out of the Box experience only works with the previous version of Exchange.