Still no photo sync? Really? I would have to agree with the consensus throughout this conversation that it is absurd Microsoft is not allowing contact photo sync between Outlook desktop and Outlook.com. There are no cross-platform integration issues here
to blame it on, either. It's all under the MSFT umbrella and there are no excuses as MSFT controls the dev resources on all sides of this thing. This is not hard stuff, which leads me to believe MSFT is either withholding this functionality for some intentional
reason or really doesn't understand the basic tenants of real-world User Experience.
People want to control how their contacts are displayed when email, text, or phone call is received. That may mean a photo to be displayed on one of these devices shouldn't necessarily pull from a MSFT account or 3rd party social connector where the contact
may often change photos. I suspect many people, like me, desire to be able to have control of the photo to ensure consistency each time we see that email, text, or call come in for quick, visual recognition of the caller/sender. It's much quicker (and safer
when driving a car) to quickly glance and recognize the contact by face rather than by reading the name--which can be challenging for those of us who need reading glasses to make out text, by the way. Facebook photos, in my opinion, often don't represent
the caller in the recognizable format. I know what my friend John Doe looks like and though I appreciate the picture of his kids on his linked Facebook or Twitter account, it doesn't help me recognize that it's John that is calling me.
Linking a user-defined photo to a friend's contact record to enjoy a consistent experience across devices is a basic design principle known by software companies who have done their research and understand their consumers. Apple and Google get it. Not
sure why Microsoft doesn't. And the fact that nothing has changed in the last few years in this regard tells me they have their priorities mixed up.