

yay more email clients: solving the wrong problem - blasdel
http://jerakeen.org/notes/2010/01/yay-more-email-clients/

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fragmede
I agree with the author's point - that current implementations of IMAP seem
insufficient for today's world. It seems, then, the way to is implement the
best damn email client AND 'imap' server, _cough_ extending RFC2060 as you go,
with features for moving mail to your imap server. For completeness, you would
actually need a few frontends: local app (on windows, os x and linux), web
app, iPhone/android app. Unfortunately, I don't see any viable business plans
after that.

Sell email for your domain, similar to google apps? Sell the software
directly? Sell support/custom development for the software?

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Elepsis
Erm, isn't what you're proposing pretty successful and called Exchange and
Outlook (or Domino/Lotus Notes for the especially unfortunate)?

It's not exactly an easy market to enter, but there most certainly is one, and
it's quite large.

Coincidentally, the article itself sounds like the author has never used
Exchange, either.

~~~
angelbob
Or he hates it. I've used Exchange, and the main reason I'd have written this
about GMail instead of Exchange is that Exchange does too many things, poorly.

It's fine for email, in the sense that I would never use it for personal email
and I don't care if it occasionally loses a piece of work email. But its
scheduling makes its email processing look _reasonable_ , in that it only
occasionally loses a random piece of email, but it loses schedule items
_constantly_.

This is, again, fine, because I only use it at work, and so when you say
"Exchange lost it", you're surrounded by sympathetic people who constantly
have the same experience. If I were, say, running a startup, I would actually
care about not having my email system lose things constantly, and so I would
avoid Exchange scrupulously.

I mean, maybe it's just been misconfigured in two or three large companies
where I've worked? Misconfigured by professional system administrators, who
don't hate configuring Microsoft products the way I do? If so, then it's hard
enough to configure that I should never do it for myself. I'm a good
programmer, but only an indifferent Windows admin.

For all of these reasons, it's possible that the OP didn't want to imply that
"Exchange is solving the right problem" when he could instead be saying "GMail
is solving the right problem." If it were me, that's what I'd be doing.

~~~
jerakeen
OP here. I've used Exchange, and I'd agree that it does solve the same
problem. Gmail just makes a better example, not least because I prefer it.

Exchange also has the flaw that you can only do most of the clever stuff using
Outlook. The web version of the front-end is passable, but it's clearly a
fall-back rather than the primary interface - I much prefer GMail's attitude -
everyone has a web browser. If you can build a better client than a web page
then go for it, but the web interface sets a high standard.

