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I feel all of this is why email is dead. It's not because Slack or anything killed email. It's because Gmail (and other web clients) killed email. They made it

I feel all of this is why email is dead. It's not because Slack or anything killed email. It's because Gmail (and other web clients) killed email. They made it dreadfully slow to do anything in. Go download Thunderbird. I haven't used it in 10 years, so it could be worse today. But I remember it being a joy to use. Or the Agent usenet/email reader.

_alex_ 6y ago
i’m playing with mailmate on macos and it’s making me hate email so much less.
- boringg 6y ago
  mimestream for me.
prepend 6y ago
It’s funny that I recently started using the Mac desktop mail app and outlook app and they are so quick compared to gmail (or outlook.com). I had forgotten how nice it was to quickly go through email and remember how quick gmail was when it launched. A colleague said “it’s just five seconds to open and load an email, that’s not a lot of time.” But that adds up.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  > that’s not a lot of time. That’s an extreme amount of time… GMail and Outlook are both horribly slow and I can’t understand how anyone wants to use them. Outlook even manages to be slow with their desktop app. Not as slow as either web app, but still a noticeable delay. Fastmail at least is true to it’s name and fast.
- ksec 6y ago
  >A colleague said “it’s just five seconds to open and load an email, that’s not a lot of time.” But that adds up. I guess that is why people dont understand I am annoyed as I will only give a time budget of 500ms to open and load an Email on the Web.
  - bosie 6y ago
    how do you open an email in 500ms even locally on your desktop? do you use spotlight or something to find and open it? asking since even when i am in thunderbird, it takes me way longer than 500ms to open an email
    - black_puppydog 6y ago
      More than 500ms to open an email? One that's already stored locally?! If that is the case, I advise you check what's taking so long, I get nothing like it with my thunderbird setup. Given, I disable html formatting where I can, that might make a difference. But even on my 2009 i5 desktop with hdd storage it doesn't take that long to load the actual email.
      - bosie 6y ago
        It takes me longer than 500ms to find that email. if we are talking about browsing a list of emails already on the screen and i can simply use a shortcut to go to the next email, that is instant in thunderbird/gmail.com /fastmail.com. that just isn't my use case most of the time. opening an email is always longer than 500ms, rendering it isn't in any system i use. hence i am not sure what we are talking here. if we are talking opening, then the 3seconds initial bootup of gmail isn't worth talking about imo. the bottleneck for me at least is always finding the email and thunderbird is by far the worst unfortunately.
pmohun 6y ago
Whenever I read a comment that says "email is dead" I feel it is my responsibility to point out that ~it doesn't have to be this way~ The email standard(s) are great. Powerful, decentralized, and damn near universal. It's just that we live in a world where a Duopoly has taken over most of what we consider to be email. If this comment resonated with you, I am working on something you might be interested in. Feel free to DM me for details.
slightwinder 6y ago
Email started "dying" long before GMail even was a thing. AOL and ICQ startet it, Twitter and Facebook continued it and now it ends with Whatsapp, Slack and Discord. And I doubt that Whatsapp/Facebook/Discord are significant faster than Gmail or Slack, so this can't be the reason. E-Mail is just a transport-protocol, poor in ability compared do other solutions and rather complicated, especially when it should be made safe.

_alex_ 6y ago

i’m playing with mailmate on macos and it’s making me hate email so much less.

boringg 6y ago
mimestream for me.

prepend 6y ago

It’s funny that I recently started using the Mac desktop mail app and outlook app and they are so quick compared to gmail (or outlook.com). I had forgotten how nice it was to quickly go through email and remember how quick gmail was when it launched. A colleague said “it’s just five seconds to open and load an email, that’s not a lot of time.” But that adds up.

Semaphor 6y ago
> that’s not a lot of time. That’s an extreme amount of time… GMail and Outlook are both horribly slow and I can’t understand how anyone wants to use them. Outlook even manages to be slow with their desktop app. Not as slow as either web app, but still a noticeable delay. Fastmail at least is true to it’s name and fast.
ksec 6y ago
>A colleague said “it’s just five seconds to open and load an email, that’s not a lot of time.” But that adds up. I guess that is why people dont understand I am annoyed as I will only give a time budget of 500ms to open and load an Email on the Web.
- bosie 6y ago
  how do you open an email in 500ms even locally on your desktop? do you use spotlight or something to find and open it? asking since even when i am in thunderbird, it takes me way longer than 500ms to open an email
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    More than 500ms to open an email? One that's already stored locally?! If that is the case, I advise you check what's taking so long, I get nothing like it with my thunderbird setup. Given, I disable html formatting where I can, that might make a difference. But even on my 2009 i5 desktop with hdd storage it doesn't take that long to load the actual email.
    - bosie 6y ago
      It takes me longer than 500ms to find that email. if we are talking about browsing a list of emails already on the screen and i can simply use a shortcut to go to the next email, that is instant in thunderbird/gmail.com /fastmail.com. that just isn't my use case most of the time. opening an email is always longer than 500ms, rendering it isn't in any system i use. hence i am not sure what we are talking here. if we are talking opening, then the 3seconds initial bootup of gmail isn't worth talking about imo. the bottleneck for me at least is always finding the email and thunderbird is by far the worst unfortunately.

pmohun 6y ago

Whenever I read a comment that says "email is dead" I feel it is my responsibility to point out that ~it doesn't have to be this way~ The email standard(s) are great. Powerful, decentralized, and damn near universal. It's just that we live in a world where a Duopoly has taken over most of what we consider to be email. If this comment resonated with you, I am working on something you might be interested in. Feel free to DM me for details.

slightwinder 6y ago

Email started "dying" long before GMail even was a thing. AOL and ICQ startet it, Twitter and Facebook continued it and now it ends with Whatsapp, Slack and Discord. And I doubt that Whatsapp/Facebook/Discord are significant faster than Gmail or Slack, so this can't be the reason. E-Mail is just a transport-protocol, poor in ability compared do other solutions and rather complicated, especially when it should be made safe.