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The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

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Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#131

Post by FractalHQ »

ksec wrote: post #128
codethief wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant Are we using the same Thunderbird? For me it feels rather sluggish.

99% of HN suggest VSCode is very fast, when Sublime exist. It is one reason why the other day we have a submission "Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened" Most people aren't latency sensitive. Or do not care about it enough. The world of computing has then settle of sluggish behaviour being the norm. As most are OK with it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933

I’m pretty sure the apps do a lot more now than they did on windows XT. I wouldn’t build with Electron over something like Tauri+Svelte but I also don’t mind waiting 1 second for hundreds of great extensions and lsps to load once for a 4 hour session.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#132

Post by AnonC »

Propelloni wrote: post #76
AnonC wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, Thunderbird is becoming (or has become) a non-option in companies that use Outlook365/Microsoft365. Microsoft seems to have been quite effective in disabling IMAP and SMTP as a default in these tenants and scaring companies that even with OAuth2, these are insecure and not as safe as sticking with Outlook as the client. Companies (actually the information security teams) may be taking shortcuts based on Micros…

Well, there is Owl [1], which I have mentioned before. Of course, it is the old "chase the rabbit" game we know since the 2000s -- MS365 is just a faster moving target than Exchange on MS Windows Server. So far the devs have kept up well, I can count the instances I had to fall back to OWA on one hand over the last year. And I use it daily within my company. [1] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en/thunderbird/addon/owl…

Yes, I know there’s Owl as well as some other (non-Thunderbird) options. But at the higher level, the teams defining what protocols to allow or disallow also manage the policies. That’s what I meant by Microsoft (influencing and) locking in companies.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#133

Post by AnonC »

donmcronald wrote: post #107
jmaker wrote: post #52

Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the past few years. I think they’re migrating the entire UI into the browser. The Office macOS UI appears and feels substantially worse to me than its Windows counterpart. I had to migrate from Windows to macOS because I was no longer feeling comfortable on Windows. My UX with the Apple office suite is by far better. Put formally, the set difference between th…

> Microsoft has been dismantling the desktop UX for me over the past few years. I think they’re migrating the entire UI into the browser. I think it's more about trapping you in the MS365 silo than anything. They want all your data in the cloud because it makes it makes it non-portable. I think the big push they'll make after the desktop apps are replaced will be about data governance because it let's them increase l…

I fully agree that this is all about a permanent lock-in (as mentioned in my other comment, though not in as much detail). It doesn’t seem like companies bother much. As long as there are some “this is free”, “this is cheap” and “this just works better” promises, they’ll just go with it.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#134

Post by rstuart4133 »

codethief wrote: post #99
tmikaeld wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant, especially when browsing thousands of e-mails in lists and sorting through them. I'd never be able to go back to scrolling with "skeleton rows" that's the web default because it can't render fast enough..

> The native views of thunderbird are wonderfully performant Are we using the same Thunderbird? For me it feels rather sluggish.

Sluggish?

It's near instantaneous at everything, except when it's doing network operations. It literally does a keyword stem search on a 4GB mailbox in under a 1/10 of a second. That's the fastest inverted index lookup I've ever seen - all accomplished with just sqlite. I consider it amazing. It makes the old version of Outlook look like a dog. A one legged dog. And the leg is broken.

As others have noted, as soon at it has to access the network it slows down. A lot. And it you queue up enough operations, it can get confused - particularly if the network drops out in the middle and it has to re-sync everything. But it is imap, so I forgive it.

To get it's native non-networked speed, you do have to ensure every folder is downloaded to local storage. Do that, and it's amazingly quick.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#135

Post by steve1977 »

JohnFen wrote: post #39
unregistereddev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I agree. Microsoft has failed to provide a viable platform for native GUI development, and IMO there is still a place for native desktop applications. Part of the reason Windows stayed so prevalent for so long is its rich software ecosystem - arguably, an ecosystem that partially resulted from MS's focus on developers. However, there may be additional reasons for building new products with web tech. Someone al…

> By replacing the native desktop app with a wrapper around their existing web application, Microsoft reduces the need to separately build and maintain features in both platforms. True, but it's at the price of having an inferior product. But perhaps Microsoft doesn't care about that.

Microsoft built their whole business on providing inferior copies of other products, they never cared and never will.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#136

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

tanseydavid wrote: post #101
PTOB wrote: post #66

Business user here. I remember how much work I could get done in Outlook 2007 using a 1024x768 monitor on a crap workstation with 1GB RAM. I admit that this performance was often chilled by the many pitfalls of on-premise Exchange setups, lack of interop with non-Exchange services, and lack of standards-compatible email formats. Today's Outlook is less buggy, but slower. This new version gives me the chills. I can un…

When there are problems with fundamental features like this, it ends up feeling the software is "gaslighting" me. Context menu key does nothing? That's weird -- I must need a new keyboard.

Companies can’t ever admit mistakes. It dehumanises them.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#137

Post by steve1977 »

msh wrote: post #112
mrcsharp wrote: post #25

I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place compared to native applications. Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either ab…

Oh how i loved winforms back in the day. IMHO the best desktop toolkit there ever was.

Not sure about that. On Windows, MFC was the peak IMHO. It was a beast to develop for, but the results were good. Everything .NET was already inferior.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#138

Post by Atotalnoob »

D13Fd wrote: post #125
jupp0r wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is just a horrible product overall. It wouldn't be better with a completely native app.

I really don't get the Teams hate. Or lure organization uses Teams every day to great effect. None of its competitors have apps worth equivalent functionality at a similar price point. It absolutely has bugs and issues, but what it does and what it costs seem to easily outweigh those.

Mattermost?

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#139

Post by dexterlagan » 

  No less than 3 (THREE) pop-ups, huge banner ads everywhere, VIDEO pop-up. Writers make less and less money with writing; advertisers are getting desperate; readers frustrated and information lost - leaking from a pipe riddled with holes. 

  And we pretend to be capable of making contact with a new form of intelligent life? This consciousness is watching us, molding us, and we do not know if it is attempting to co-exist with us or change us for its own purpose. We have a lot to learn. There needs to be a revolution of the mind.

Re: The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea

#140

Post by lawgimenez »

mrcsharp wrote: post #25

I've switched to Thunderbird after hearing about this a couple of weeks ago. I simply do not want yet another WebView/Electron-based application on my machine. They feel slow and out of place compared to native applications. Microsoft, in the past 10 years, have failed to provide a good UI option for developers. WinForms is legacy. WPF is legacy. WinRT is dead. UWP is dead. MAUI is a mess. WinUI looks to be either ab…

I developed a Windows phone app before using UWP and it was decent during that time. I could deploy on Windows Phone, Windows and Xbox in one codebase. But then Windows phone became obsolete in the blink of an eye.
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