When the company brain trust repairs to the Ballmer Bunker to chew over its next big idea, post-Yahoo, I’ve got a suggestion: how about doing something to deal with e-mail and its discontents? Something grand–like bringing Microsoft Outlook into the 21st century. I don’t mean a tweak here and there; I’m talking about a top-to-bottom overhaul.
The product debuted in 1997 and has improved very little since. Given the absence of real competition for most of the last decade, you shouldn’t be surprised at the glacial pace of improvement. ^
John C. Dvorak refers to himself as a “cranky geek,” but the word he’s really looking for is cynical. Cynicism means you know that people are out in the world acting selfishly, and you see the results, and then realize it’s very little — another two hundred person hours, another 10% of budget and time — that separates the mediocre standard products we have now from ones that are actually a joy to use like the applications that inspire people to go into computing.
I agree with the authors above that Microsoft Outlook is a piece of junk, although it has some surprisingly flexible features, and that its interface is as god-awful as Windows 3.1. However, I have to ask: why is it so hard for humanity to produce good versions of its most basic software needs, like browsers, email clients, even internet forums and blogs?
I haven’t yet found an email client on Windows that I like. Pegasus I can respect, but there are parts of its interface that are so brick-stupid it’s impossible not to scorn it and some point, and although it functions well in most cases, under heavy load in some areas it snaps like a twig. Thunderbird? Junk. Opera’s built-in mail? OK, with some glaring oversights. Eudora? Mostly, except it has always been feeble like most Macintosh software. It’ll do OK if you have very basic needs, but put it under pressure and it doesn’t even make it to twig strength.
The same could be said of browsers. Opera is all-around the best, but even it collapses when Flash plugins tax it. Firefox is good, but often has inexplicable problems and seems to crash quite a bit, a good deal more than IE and much, much more than Opera. IE… well, Microsoft had a good five years without competition and did nothing impressive, and now it’s fairly big and some of its standards interpretations are weird. Safari? Who needs Safari? It’s like a Firefox clone with bad JavaScript.
I could go on, but you see the point. The everyday apps are the ones that people assume have no glory, so they get ignored. If they’re not ignored, the high competition means no one is going to jump into the fray and try to shave off some percentage of a massive userbase. Let’s not forget that Firefox inherited Netscape’s userbase, and Opera has forged a might 1.69% after ten years of existence. Uh, yeah.
I wish the Open Source community would tackle more of these fights, because what needs to be done is clear. Outlook could be replaced by a program that took Eudora’s approach to interface, Pegasus’ approach to file formats and data handling, and Lotus Notes’ approach to calendaring and encrypted, revisioned mail. It really isn’t that hard. Just go through what exists, pick the best features, find a way to make them work together, and then code something as light and fast as possible. The users would benefit.