MBOX-Line: From mrc+imap at panda.com  Wed May 18 22:45:15 2011
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc+imap@panda.com>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:46 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Thoughts on keyword improvements/enhancements
In-Reply-To: <20110519045851.GA23466@brong.net>
References: <20110518011645.Horde.6sTkboF5lbhN03Jd3XNndCA@bigworm.curecanti.org>
	<BANLkTikVbKdXg01nnajJ-=XLNfTpjjjG0Q@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.1105181108180.24932@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<20110518210716.GA12636@brong.net>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.1105181519330.24932@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<20110519045851.GA23466@brong.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.2.00.1105182203320.24932@hsinghsing.panda.com>

On Thu, 19 May 2011, Bron Gondwana wrote:
>> Email synchronization is a fool's errand; but there seem to be an abundant
>> supply of fools that undertake it.
> God yeah, because - y'know, people WANT it.  There's two approaches to
> that.  Rail against the stupidity of people, or accept that just, perhaps,
> it might be OK for people to want things.

They "want" it because they have been told they want it, and they have
never been shown an alternative.  It's the same reason that North Koreans
support their government.

What consumers really want from email is that it works.  Synchronization
vs. non-synchronization, bombastic blurdybloops vs. wallflower sarasoops,
none of that matters.  The only thing that matters is that it work.

>> At least Android
>> has k9mail which - just barely - steps over the line into "usability".
> Barely is right.

By "barely" I mean that (unlike the default Google Mail app) it
condescends to cope with 4 mail sources, and a total of about 200
messages, without crashing on every new message.

Clearly an unreasonable demand on my part.

> A search that could find emails older than yesterday
> would be nice.

A problem that was solved nearly 40 years ago.

> I don't know about you - but I'm using offlineimap+mutt as my email client
> on my laptop precisely to avoid all this nonsense.  offlineimap speaks a
> very minimal IMAP protocol and does the great evil of email synchronisation
> (more fool me) so that I can actually access all my email when I'm, y'know,
> OFFLINE.  I find myself benefiting from that multiple times per month
> despite theoretically having mobile access everywhere.

The only time I ever find myself offline is when I am in very remote areas
of northern British Columbia or the Yukon; and that's only because I chose
not to cough up the dough for satellite.  Even in rural Alaska, where I
have to carry a firearm for bear protection on my property, I have
continuous reliable online access.

> And it's all on an
> SSD, so searches are stupidly fast even if I wind up doing body scans.

Except that at some time you had to download the body to that device.
Given the number of devices that I use, the volume of mail that I deal,
and the large attachments in that mail, that is not a viable option.

> Besides I'm not sharing my IO queue with 5,000 other connected users when
> I go to actually access my email.

If a server can't handle the I/O load for a mere 5000 connected users then
it has no business being a server for 5000 connected users.

> The downside of offlineimap is, as Brendan pointed out for gmail's case,
> a 100k message mailbox will cause 6Mb of traffic just to synchronise flags,
> because there's no way to say "tell me what changed since last time".

That is because of the stupidity of doing such synchronization in the
first place.  Unless you have such a large screen that it can show the
flags of 100K messages, there is no reason that the UI needs it.

A webmail server doesn't transmit data 100,000 messages to the web
browser.

Think about that.

> The money is in making $FOO work the way users want, rather than telling
> them what to want.  Unless you have a huge advertising budget it's much
> easier to sell people something they already think they want than to make
> them want something you would prefer to sell.

The problem is not in producing a product that people would want to use.
The problem is getting ROI on the development costs; and that in turn
requires people to care enough about email that doesn't suck to pay money
for it.

The only email software that people buy is software that is purposed to
make email work less well.  There is quite a bit of money in doing that.
They'll pay quite a bit per-seat for that, but will throw you out of the
office if you suggest that they pay a fraction as much for an email client
that does not suck.

Think about that.

All other email software is "free", or is part of a collaboration suite
(and there is one big player in that game that makes the others look like
mice by comparison).  People don't buy a collaboration suite to get email;
they buy a collaboration suite to get a collaboration suite.  Email is an
afterthought; yet having paid the costs for the collaboration suite they
aren't about to pay for separate email, no matter how badly email sucks in
the collaboration suite and/or how amazingly great the separate email may
be.

There's no ROI on email clients.  Most people use webmail anyway.  The
proof is that there are NO good email clients on mobile devices.  If there
was a market, it would be filled with high-priced competition and people
would be paying it.  It isn't and they aren't.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

