Kolab iRony with CalDAV and CardDAV support

Group iRony

Presentable: Mac OS X

iRony also supports the second widespread proprietary platform on the desktop: Apple's Mac OS X with the default Calendar application (Figure 9). The setup is fairly straightforward; after following the how-to on MyKolab.com [10], everything works out of the box – a fact the manufacturer is quite proud of (see the "Macs at Kolab Systems" box). The integration of iBooks and iMacs, in addition to mobile devices, must have been one of the main drivers behind iRony, and the quality of the connector is thus unsurprising. The market of affluent Apple customers is too big and lucrative for Kolab to ignore permanently.

Figure 9: Mac OS X talks iRony: Contacts, calendar, tasks, and email all can be integrated into Apple's tools (e.g., Apple Mail, Contacts, Calendar).

Macs at Kolab Systems

When Linux Magazine inquired, Thorsten Grote, the "Kolab evangelist" and a member of Kolab Systems' staff, confirmed: "One of our iRony developers has a Mac; this is probably why this platform is best supported. Personally, I also find it a little sad that Evolution and Thunderbird are faltering; iRony makes their perspectives so much better. There used to be a Thunderbird SyncKolab extension, but this is no longer recommended. We thus advise readers to use the DAV protocols, and even if all of this is fairly easy to install, we still recommend our hosted service. Everything is pre-configured, especially for users who do not want to run their own server."

The problems are mainly caused by the clients. In particular, the partial, patchy implementation of service discovery can make life difficult even for experienced users.

Thanks to SabreDAV, Kolab's release 3.1 supported WebDAV, thus making it so much easier to manage files via the integrated web client. By using middleware, you can tap into various types of file storage and even integrate with ownCloud or Dropbox.

Conclusions: Positive

The newcomer iRony carries out its work exactly as it should: inconspicuously and reliably. After a few preparatory steps for the administrator, which should not be necessary now that version 3.2 has been released, you can look forward to a powerful, standards-based interface for sharing calendars, contacts, and tasks. iRony thus opens a plethora of established clients to Kolab.

Infos