Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can still blame them. They're a corporation with a 470B market cap, designing machines for which email is a primary use-case. They employ thousands and thousand of engineers. They should be able to build a mail client. Many much smaller organizations manage alright.
Agreed. How is Apple not to blame? If this article was about Gmail instead of Mail.app, every comment would definitely be blaming Google.
What real innovation has there been on Mac OS X since Bertrand Serlet left?
Where are all the adult engineers?
I've met a few people now who are contracted by Apple to work on their customer facing Apps. They commute to Cupertino from the Bay Area every day. Nice people but they're second tier. They never critique Apple, think Apple is the best at everything, and shrug their shoulders at any technology developed outside of Apple. There's always an excuse for things that don't work, from broken iCloud APIs to Apple Maps.
They're competent engineers, they'll do what they are told, but they're not the mavericks who will break new ground. Just my opinion, but perhaps this is something other people have experienced.
EDIT: To poster below, with regards to the Bay Area which covers a large geographic region, I'm talking about the San Francisco peninsula area. Amongst people I know, Cupertino (which is in Santa Clara) is generally referred to as being in South Bay rather than the Bay Area.