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Is Microsoft Trying To Make Windows 10 Mail Worse? (venturebeat.com)

Emil Protalinski via VentureBeat argues that "Windows Mail is unusable, and instead of improving it, Microsoft is looking to drive users away": Microsoft started forcing Mail to use Edge for email links in Windows 10 build 17623 last month. This week, the company started including Office 365 ads right at the bottom of the app. But even these poor decisions are just extra nails in the coffin. Windows Mail has difficulty sending and receiving email. No, I'm not exaggerating for effect. If you have an email open and Windows Mail detects that a new email has hit your inbox, you'll get a notification. Standard stuff. If, however, you then click on said notification, Windows Mail will take you to the open email message, rather than the one that you just clicked on. That's half of the time. The other half of the time this happens, Windows Mail will crash altogether. Apparently having one email open and trying to open another one that just came in is overwhelming for Windows Mail. But that's not the end of it.

Windows Mail is also notorious for not sending emails. Multiple times a week, I open an email, hit reply, type out a quick message, hit send, and alt-tab back to Chrome or Word. Any normal email client will send the message despite the app not being the active window. With Windows Mail, countless times I have wondered why I never got heard back to a specific reply, only to discover hours later, and completely by accident, that the message is still a draft. It's not even sitting in my outbox -- it's just a fucking draft. I end up debating whether to send the email hours late, or if it doesn't make sense to send it anymore. That's not a decision I should have to make. There are of course small features I would like to see added to Windows Mail, like being able to set formatted signatures (as opposed to just plain text), but that's hardly a priority. Windows Mail is unusable, which means Windows 10 doesn't come with an email client. That's incredibly sad.

10 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Another client? by paolo.redaelli · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't you use another client, such as ThunderBird?

  2. They all hate email by joh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Email is de-centralized, it's an open standard and with some effort you can use it for basically everything. So they hate it. They all want you to use centralized, closed platforms with every bit of data going through their servers. They = MS, Google, FaceBook, all of them.

    The fact that you need to jump through hoops meanwhile to get a sane email environment isn't at all an accident. They don't want you to use email. So fucking use it.

    1. Re:They all hate email by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That might make sense if they had a competitor to email, but they don't. In fact Microsoft profits heavily from email, through Exchange servers, Exchange cloud services, Outlook and so on. It is deeply integrated into their platform, hooked in to calendaring, meeting organization and collaboration tools.

      Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. Just look at Windows 8 and how long it took them to get that UI semi-usable, and even now it's a poor rip-off of much better ones. It's actually a miracle that Windows Mail was ever usable at all, and it was only a matter of time before some UX and .NET experts screwed it up.

      --
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      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Intentionally? Doubt it. Financially? Yes. by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's the business case for making Windows Mail better? It's not going to sell Windows 10. It doesn't make any money on its own. It's the email analogy to Solitaire and MS Paint. It's probably just there to make sure it doesn't become an anti-trust issue if they integrate it, like Windows has always come with a (crappy useless) email client. And as such they've probably outsourced it to some shit tier support and what you're seeing is code monkeys creating a train wreck. But they don't care because everyone (except you, apparently) will either go webmail, Office 365 or use a third party client.

    --
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    1. Re:Intentionally? Doubt it. Financially? Yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah. Honestly, I don't attribute this to 'malice'. Incompetence, lack of time, money, resource, and nobody caring? All plausible. Lack of vision. I'd also believe "keeping the thing at lowest common denominator" which means it's a toy, not a tool.

      But, my honest opinion:
      If you think of it as a 'mobile phone email client that accidentally ended up on the desktop' it makes a lot more sense. Only one email open at a time? Save in drafts? That's fairly common (iOS's email does that). And remember, this was Microsoft's approach, mobile versions of apps that work on phones AND desktops...

  4. Re:Feature or bug? by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exchange Server has nothing to do with Windows Mail.

    Now, Windows Mail is like Notepad. Basic application, doing basic stuff. Sort of "better than nothing".
    There are zounds of free e-mail clients out there, why are you stuck with using Windows Mail is beyond me.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  5. Problem with all "modern-ui" aka Metro-style" apps by Dorianny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problems are not specific to the mail app but mostly showcase the limitations of the "sand-boxed application" model. The whole idea of "one OS to rule them all" was idiotic from the start. Phones and pc's have very different usage scenarios, what works on one doesn't work very well on the other

  6. Re: So just don't use it? by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You may think that Thunderbird is a bit old, but it's working pretty well and don't cause any trouble.

    It's not "a bit old", it's "good enough and does what you want". It has the added benefit that Mozilla have decided to leave it alone, unlike Firefox which they're determined to keep fucking up more and more until their last users decide that since it's just a crappy copy of Chrome anyway they may as well use the real thing.

  7. Re: So just don't use it? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not "a bit old", it's "good enough and does what you want". It has the added benefit that Mozilla have decided to leave it alone, unlike Firefox which they're determined to keep fucking up more and more until their last users decide that since it's just a crappy copy of Chrome anyway they may as well use the real thing.

    Leaving older software alone seems to be the best way to have software that works. I've been keeping a Windows 7 computer and an old Core 2 duo imac around because newer systems purposely break software, or in this case, are just Microsoft being Microsoft and screwing up.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  8. Re: Feature or bug? by Brockmire · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The newbies I run into have only used mail in a browser and have never used a client, except for their phone's email account so long as it had good autodiscover and didn't require knowing server names and ports, just needing email and password.