Email For The People: Devs Start Planning A New Email Client
5:22 am, January 18th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Photo by mattwi1s0n, used under CC License
Users of Mac OS X are spoilt for choice when it comes to notepad apps. We have dozens of text editors and word processors to choose from. There are more browsers than we can shake a collective stick at.
But email clients? Well, there’s not so many of those. And one developer, Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire fame, says he’d like to see at least one more.
This weekend, he posted a request for help. There’s a need for a new email client, he said: perhaps by starting the conversation and rallying together some developers, he’d be able to kick off a new development project. (He has no wish to lead it, and might not even be able to contribute code; his post was more of a call-to-arms.)
So, what’s been the reaction so far?
Quite a few developers and non-developers have piped up with their ideas on the email-init mailing list Brent set up to begin the conversation. There’s a separate list, letters-dev, for technical discussion.
The idea already has support from developers including Gus Mueller (creator of Acorn and VoodooPad) and Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Software, inside whose blog editor MarsEdit I am typing these words. So, you know: people who know their stuff. There’s obviously some energetic support to be tapped here.
Building a good email client from scratch is no easy task, though. Back in 2006, someone had a very similar idea. It was called Kiwi. Some screenshots appeared, but downloads didn’t.
Then again, Kiwi was not born in the same way. Brent Simmons’ idea is ambitious, there’s no doubt about that; but by calling for help from his fellows and friends in the OS X development community, he’s given it the best possible start in life.
We wish the project the very best of luck and look forward to seeing the results 
Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, Software | Comment on this article
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I am happy with Mail.app from Apple. It does what its supposed to do – nothing else. But it woundt hurt to implement some new thinking and improvements
Yngve, on January 18th, 2010 at 7:23 am
I looked for alternatives for quite awhile, and tried pretty much everything out there. I finally settled on GyazMail and am quite happy with it. However, I’d love to see a project like this materialize, because competition should force Mail.app – and GyazMail – to continue to refine their products.
Richard Stoddard, on January 18th, 2010 at 7:59 am
Postbox. The end.
Joseph, on January 18th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Bring back Eudora for Mac, and make it native to Mac OSX
Mattzook, on January 18th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
I’ve been looking and wanting a better mail app for years now. I want my app to do more than just mail, I really want Outlook for the Mac, but want it to actually perform as well as Outlook for the PC. Glad I’m not the only one!
Erfon Elijah, on January 18th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
I have used Entourage for many years and happy with it.
Tried Apple Mail but it still hasn’t fixed the day of week bug after almost a decade, ignoring regional settings and insisting Day 1 is Sunday irrespective of where you are.
Thunderbird just seemed look and feel like a program still in development. Never seemed to appeal out of the box.
Postbox felt much better but still had some annoying Thunderbird like issues for me betraying its Mozila engine.
I don’t think its enough to be email only anymore. A PIM style client for email, calendar and tasks is what has made Outlook popular on Windows and what is what I want from an app therefore Entourage will still be the one for me for a little while yet.
Mark Rich, on January 19th, 2010 at 9:19 am