4 ms·

I don't get how anyone (that are somewhat computer savvy) can live without one. Sure, webmail is an awesome backup for when you don't use your main device. But

by tjoff 10y ago

I don't get how anyone (that are somewhat computer savvy) can live without one. Sure, webmail is an awesome backup for when you don't use your main device. But seriously, gmail and the like are absolutely horrible to use compared to a real client. I guess the sad state of affair in regards to email syncing protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are partly to blame, JMAP might help a little but I guess it's too late.

ashark 10y ago
> I guess the sad state of affair in regards to email syncing protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are partly to blame, JMAP might help a little but I guess it's too late. I'd say it's entirely that. Sync was so often half-broken with real email clients across multiple devices that having no offline access was a price nearly everyone was willing to pay to fix that, provided the web client were good enough (and, clearly, the problem was so bad that it didn't even need to be that good). [EDIT] Also: accessing your email on devices you don't own/control.
jldugger 10y ago
GMail seems fine? The threading & quote collapse feature is a godsend compared to godawful attempts by offline clients.
- tripzilch 10y ago
  threading, agreed. but the way quote collapse features and is pushed in Gmail basically created or greatly exacerbated the very problem it's a solution for. People used to clean their quotes for relevance, but now they're hidden out of mind, and every mail contains nearly the full conversation, collapsed. it's useless extra data quietly dragging along every mail in a thread, hardly any human ever sees it, but I bet it's super useful for their machine learning (targeted advertising) priorities.
chrisseaton 10y ago
What are you doing that's so complicated with email? I get email. I read them. I archive them. I only interact with each email for about 10s and then it's gone, usually forever. Very occasionally I need to search for something in the archive. I also need to send so I just need a text box to write in and somewhere to drop attachments. What else is there that you need in a client?
- statictype 10y ago
  Being able to search through old emails and conversations. Finding an attachment someone sent last week that you didn't have time to look at until now. Finding a long set of instructions you sent to someone two years ago so you can forward it to someone else.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    But searching seems like something that is definitely don't better as a web service with people like Google and their extremely sophisticated and proprietary searching and natural language analysis algorithms. That's a reason to use web services rather than local clients.
    - ionised 10y ago
      > and their extremely sophisticated and proprietary searching and natural language analysis algorithms. That they use to read your emails, harvest your data and advertise to you.
    - tripzilch 10y ago
      Google's biggest trick has been convincing people that "search" is something that is much too hard and sophisticated to do locally. see https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/ your email archive just isn't that big as for natural language processing, I'm not aware that Gmail does this for user search? maybe it does, but I haven't noticed more than some basic stemming. and given the choice (is not hidden), even most basic users prefer exact/stemmed keyword search over "cleverly" second-guessing returning noise results you didn't ask for. also there's many non-proprietary search result sorting and filtering techniques that do a great (and predictable!) job, locally, without having to go all deeplearning about it. remember that a lot of the sophisticated NLP analysis stuff Gmail does, is for the benefit of targeted advertising first and user experience second.
  - oridecon 10y ago
    Gmail covers almost everything I need. I still use Thunderbird to create temporary IMAP backups (so I have another backup besides Google Takeout) and also to transfer e-mails from multiple providers just by drag and dropping from their inboxes or the file manager. Or when I want to edit the header of an email so that Gmail doesn't group them up in a conversation, this is a very rare / edge case that allows me to still use the conversations feature. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190 Plus labels and filters allow me to automatically "tag" messages based on sender/domain/wildcards/other variables I don't have a huge amount of emails but I manage 3 Gmail accounts using a single client (with inbox delegation) and also older Ymail and Hotmail accounts as POP3.
Sophistifunk 10y ago
For me, it's search. Search is absolutely terrible in every email client I've ever tried, except Google.
- lucideer 10y ago
  Two observations: 1. Search was better in Opera 12 than in any email client I've ever used (Gmail included). That has never been surpassed. 2. Gmail used to have excellent search, until recently. Recently I've observed many very glaring bugs with it, where swathes of matching emails are completely omitted from search results. This is something that may have gone unnoticed if I'd not begun to use the search function to regularly recall emails I knew existed, but it's become a repeated, almost reliably testable phenomenon with my own account.
djsumdog 10y ago
Gmail's IMAP implementation is terribly buggy and broken. I got sick of every saved draft turning into part of an e-mail thread/conversation. I switching to running my own e-mail server around 2013 and have had a much better experience using just Thunderbird and occasionally RoundCube.
troyvit 10y ago
I think you're right about the syncing protocols. I held onto thunderbird to work with my company's gmail server for six years and it was awful. Sure it was more configurable, but since I switched to the web client I no longer deal with: + 2+ minute wait for new emails to hit my inbox, + spinning wheel every time I load the inbox, and + oddly formatted html mail from coworkers. Maybe those issues are to do with google's slow imap servers, but I finally realized no matter where the issues come from I need to get work done. That can't happen with the combination of gmail, large accounts, and any external client I know of. And I have to say, after installing a keyboard plugin I can read email without using the mouse. Something I never got right with t-bird.

by tjoff 10y ago

ashark 10y ago

> I guess the sad state of affair in regards to email syncing protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are partly to blame, JMAP might help a little but I guess it's too late. I'd say it's entirely that. Sync was so often half-broken with real email clients across multiple devices that having no offline access was a price nearly everyone was willing to pay to fix that, provided the web client were good enough (and, clearly, the problem was so bad that it didn't even need to be that good). [EDIT] Also: accessing your email on devices you don't own/control.

jldugger 10y ago

GMail seems fine? The threading & quote collapse feature is a godsend compared to godawful attempts by offline clients.

tripzilch 10y ago
threading, agreed. but the way quote collapse features and is pushed in Gmail basically created or greatly exacerbated the very problem it's a solution for. People used to clean their quotes for relevance, but now they're hidden out of mind, and every mail contains nearly the full conversation, collapsed. it's useless extra data quietly dragging along every mail in a thread, hardly any human ever sees it, but I bet it's super useful for their machine learning (targeted advertising) priorities.

chrisseaton 10y ago

What are you doing that's so complicated with email? I get email. I read them. I archive them. I only interact with each email for about 10s and then it's gone, usually forever. Very occasionally I need to search for something in the archive. I also need to send so I just need a text box to write in and somewhere to drop attachments. What else is there that you need in a client?

statictype 10y ago
Being able to search through old emails and conversations. Finding an attachment someone sent last week that you didn't have time to look at until now. Finding a long set of instructions you sent to someone two years ago so you can forward it to someone else.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  But searching seems like something that is definitely don't better as a web service with people like Google and their extremely sophisticated and proprietary searching and natural language analysis algorithms. That's a reason to use web services rather than local clients.
  - ionised 10y ago
    > and their extremely sophisticated and proprietary searching and natural language analysis algorithms. That they use to read your emails, harvest your data and advertise to you.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    Google's biggest trick has been convincing people that "search" is something that is much too hard and sophisticated to do locally. see https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/ your email archive just isn't that big as for natural language processing, I'm not aware that Gmail does this for user search? maybe it does, but I haven't noticed more than some basic stemming. and given the choice (is not hidden), even most basic users prefer exact/stemmed keyword search over "cleverly" second-guessing returning noise results you didn't ask for. also there's many non-proprietary search result sorting and filtering techniques that do a great (and predictable!) job, locally, without having to go all deeplearning about it. remember that a lot of the sophisticated NLP analysis stuff Gmail does, is for the benefit of targeted advertising first and user experience second.
- oridecon 10y ago
  Gmail covers almost everything I need. I still use Thunderbird to create temporary IMAP backups (so I have another backup besides Google Takeout) and also to transfer e-mails from multiple providers just by drag and dropping from their inboxes or the file manager. Or when I want to edit the header of an email so that Gmail doesn't group them up in a conversation, this is a very rare / edge case that allows me to still use the conversations feature. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190 Plus labels and filters allow me to automatically "tag" messages based on sender/domain/wildcards/other variables I don't have a huge amount of emails but I manage 3 Gmail accounts using a single client (with inbox delegation) and also older Ymail and Hotmail accounts as POP3.

Sophistifunk 10y ago

For me, it's search. Search is absolutely terrible in every email client I've ever tried, except Google.

lucideer 10y ago
Two observations: 1. Search was better in Opera 12 than in any email client I've ever used (Gmail included). That has never been surpassed. 2. Gmail used to have excellent search, until recently. Recently I've observed many very glaring bugs with it, where swathes of matching emails are completely omitted from search results. This is something that may have gone unnoticed if I'd not begun to use the search function to regularly recall emails I knew existed, but it's become a repeated, almost reliably testable phenomenon with my own account.

djsumdog 10y ago

Gmail's IMAP implementation is terribly buggy and broken. I got sick of every saved draft turning into part of an e-mail thread/conversation. I switching to running my own e-mail server around 2013 and have had a much better experience using just Thunderbird and occasionally RoundCube.

troyvit 10y ago

I think you're right about the syncing protocols. I held onto thunderbird to work with my company's gmail server for six years and it was awful. Sure it was more configurable, but since I switched to the web client I no longer deal with: + 2+ minute wait for new emails to hit my inbox, + spinning wheel every time I load the inbox, and + oddly formatted html mail from coworkers. Maybe those issues are to do with google's slow imap servers, but I finally realized no matter where the issues come from I need to get work done. That can't happen with the combination of gmail, large accounts, and any external client I know of. And I have to say, after installing a keyboard plugin I can read email without using the mouse. Something I never got right with t-bird.