iPhone: Firmware 1.1.1 – Delete Messages from Exchange Server, Calendar Invites and incompatible Vircom ModusMail

I’m looking for as many positives as I can with the new 1.1.1 iPhone firmware (and I haven’t found too many and I still miss my 3rd party apps) but this is one “fix” that I’m thankful for. With previous versions of the iPhone firmware, deleting messages from Exchange-based email accounts used to have no effect…until now. If you have mapped a Microsoft Exchange email account in your iPhone (a good tutorial on how to set up Exchange 2003 can be found here), you would have noticed that pre-1.1.1, you could not delete messages. Now, automagically, you can.

Microsoft Exchange
I tested this real-time and was able to watch the messages I deleted on my iPhone disappear from my inbox on my Exchange account. Finally, I can actually do some email maintenance remotely. Now, if only the iPhone would support Exchange Appointment invites! The current behavior of this is that invites simply do not show. I would have thought at a minimum, the “text-version” of the invite, showing the time and date , would show, but in this case, the ENTIRE MESSAGE (Invite) doesn’t show. That is not a true integration with Exchange (yet). Ideally, you should be able to see the invite and Accept or Decline it right from the iPhone.

Apple iCal
In all fairness, trying to accept an iCal generated invite works only marginally better. In this case, you DO receive the email invite, you can VIEW the invitation information (subject, time and date), there IS an iCal attachment, but after that, you are on your own. You cannot launch the request nor import it into your calendar. At the minimum, I would think that Apple would support their own standard of iCal. I guess not.

Vircom ModusMail
On a separate note, there is STILL an incompatibility with the iPhone IMAP and Vircom email servers. When the iPhone first came out, I tried to set up one of my email accounts that is using Vircom’s ModusMail. When setting up the account, it was recognized but then I got repeated errors when trying to receive emails. Essentially, IMAP with iPhone and ModusMail just doesn’t work (as of this writing). I submitted a bug to my ISP on July 17th, 2007 as well as posted on the Apple Support Forums. The response I got from my ISP was as follows:

The developers are already aware of the problem and are working to resolve it. The fix will more than likely come in the form of a new release of the Modus system. No ETA at this time.

In speaking with my ISP’s support, I guess this was a common complaint that Modus has been receiving. [Note: ModusMail is a very good email server for ISP and it has dramatically helped reduce the spam level in my account. I helped my ISP beta test the release of ModusMail to its customers and must say that it was light years ahead of what I was using before!] If this issue with ModusMail/iPhone incompatibility is resolved, I will be a very happy person. But right now, I have to use a very kludgey technique of forwarding all of my emails to a different IMAP server and setting the reply-to and from items to my “non-working” account and doing all of my emailing from that second account.

HTD says: Well, one email success out of a few issues isn’t bad. But email still seems like it could go a bit further in the feature set. At least this time, it is not all Apple’s fault.