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Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

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Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#191

Post by tveyben »

m132 wrote: post #12

And to think that the "old" Outlook's splash screen is there for a reason: it used to take a while to open before SSDs became commonplace! Windows in general used to be usable on HDDs; SSDs would blow everyone's pants off making everything open instantly. These days we have 20+ Gbps SSDs without the AHCI latency tax and they're no longer enough to open an e-mail. THAT'S how low the ball has been dropped.

Why this enshittification…

I also see this bad design pattern - tried to clone an outlook calendar event, a meeting with a teams link it that I need repeatedly at sporadic new times (thus can not set it up as repeating).

Outlook native is unable to do that - I am then forced to use Teams to clone the event, likely because Teams need a new meeting id - but why the f••• is Outlook native not able to do that (oh - it’s a webthing).

Too bad they are making changes for the sake of changes (and $$$) in stead of user needs …

Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#193

Post by rafterydj »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #174

hey, I have a question for any product managers who are in charge of making decisions re: rebuilding app UI in Electron, like 1Password with their entire app, Adobe with their dialog boxes, Windows with their Start Bar (!#@!$!) My understanding was that the proposition of Electron is that it’s there's some cross-platform advantages, also it’s basically easier and you can hire a junior dev to wing it. My understanding…

Not a product manager but I habitually try to play devil's advocate as one. I think it's popularity, full stop. You _could_ vibe code a native app no problem - but then you're targeting one set of hardware. If you're already just vibing it, why not make something that will work cross-platform while you're at it? And if an LLM is prompted with that, they'll usually go with the popular choice: web app on Electron.

Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#194

Post by rafterydj »

fwlr wrote: post #163

As Casey Muratori likes to say, “My superpower is that I’m old, so I remember when computers used to be fast.”

Man, I've really been falling into his stuff. So refreshing to hear someone speak from a perspective of care. It's good for my soul in this world of slop.

Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#195

Post by Telaneo »

ksec wrote: post #153

That is why I said the 2x improvement about Webview they said earlier doesn't matter. And I believe the 10sec already accounted for the 2x improvements. >the new Outlook uses between 490 MB and 636 MB of RAM while idle, with individual sessions varying based on mailbox size. Outlook Classic, doing the same job, uses around 117 MB to 148 MB at idle. A roughly fourfold difference. In the old days, we would have cried a…

> In the old days, we would have cried about 150MB memory usage idle as being bloat.

I'm curious how much of those 150 are things that can't be boiled down to 'text', since that should be roughly the same size as on completely un-bloated software. The database of emails, the plain text of said emails, and all the basic UI should all be nothing but text and take up next to nothing.

Images on the other hand. I'd imagine Outlook Classic hasn't been made with 1 MB PNGs for all their icons, so it's probably not that that's pulling the memory usage, although it's probably contributing. Meanwhile, New Outlook (New) probably didn't optimise a single thing, so it probably is using 1 MB icons, which then quickly piles up. Not to mention the whole webview rendering backend, since we apparently can't make anything without going through a few layers of abstraction first.

Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#197

Post by marcosdumay »

nticompass wrote: post #13
marcosdumay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, not the one that comes inside Copilot :)

Wait, which Copilot is this? :-P

There are 2 that are a bunch of software. But AFAIK, they have the same Outlook inside.

Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#199

Post by bob1029 »

patates wrote: post #8

> Outlook is based on WebView2, and like all web apps, it’s slow Fastmail also has a web based email client, which is as fast as (if not faster than) Outlook Classic. The new Outlook is just bad. Load order is wrong, it renders everything on every window, loads unnecessary data, etc. Plain annoying.

WebView2 can be a fantastic experience when the application is designed around it with intent. It can't be a technological afterthought. Taking an application that was designed for web and throwing it in a desktop shell is how you wind up with bad experiences. A hybrid of WebView2 and native elements seems to be the best approach. You can completely hide the browser startup delay with these techniques. The Discord engineers decided to just throw a splash screen in front and call it a day. You could do that too. It seems to fly.

Re: Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly

#200

Post by nasretdinov »

Twirrim wrote: post #156
patates wrote: post #8

> Outlook is based on WebView2, and like all web apps, it’s slow Fastmail also has a web based email client, which is as fast as (if not faster than) Outlook Classic. The new Outlook is just bad. Load order is wrong, it renders everything on every window, loads unnecessary data, etc. Plain annoying.

Gmail used to offer a low bandwidth / performance webmail interface, that was essentially their original UI. Ran like greased lightning, used barely any memory. Emails loaded almost instantly. It was nice while it lasted.

Isn't it still the case then? I used the basic HTML version when I was working at Google to try to understand whether or not it was slow because of the (unoptimal) frontend or not (it was the backend that sometimes took >=600ms to load messages unfortunately, not the frontend).
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