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> While at Apple, I also led the department developing the Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Messages and FaceTime apps on OS X—as well as Core Services, a set of frame

> While at Apple, I also led the department developing the Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Messages and FaceTime apps on OS X—as well as Core Services, a set of frameworks familiar to anyone programming for the Mac. My teams did the original versions of some built-in iPad applications. And, of course, I was responsible for WebKit on iOS in addition to the desktop. Huh. I wish Apple still focused on these apps. Those apps used to be great at the time this guy was there. Nowadays it's all kind of lame. But yeah these days all the development on desktop seem to go on JS/HTML - partly thanks to WebKit (which was a basis for Chrome later, which was basis of Electron) - which makes the app kind of suck, but honestly the development side is much easier. And people actually use phones in 2023 more than desktop. So, whatever.

nlitened 4y ago
I use Mail, Reminders, Calendar, and Notes as my main productivity tools on both my Mac and iPhone. They are actually great!
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  Drive, iTunes and photo sync, and keychain all work well on Windows these days too! Notes, reminders, and the rest of the web apps work well enough too. A windows/gaming pc plus a MacBook is a pretty good combination now.
- narrowtux 4y ago
  Honestly I wish there were mail, calendar and contact apps for other systems, as good as apples with solid webdav/caldav support. Thunderbird is kind of lacking in all aspects.
Veen 4y ago
They do focus on them. Reminders has had loads of updates in recent years: it's actually a pretty good todo app these days. Mail is updated every year with new features. Messages is key to Apple's services push, and get a massive amount of attention. Calendar and contacts remain a bit crap though.
- hbn 4y ago
  Reminders was one of the biggest improvements when I moved from Android to iOS. I don't know why Google is so bad at reminders, and maybe it's different now but for years there were various implementations of reminders across multiple apps and services. They sometimes seemed to sync but it didn't seem consistent, and they had different feature sets. It never felt like there was a centralized hub for reminders, it was always just tucked off into ugly sub-menus in various apps and would occasionally move around. I think I used to mainly set reminders from a Google search, where if you phrased the query as a reminder you'd get a little widget at the top of the result with a pre-filled reminder, and you'd click the check to add it. But then at some point they broke that and I can't remember if they ever fixed it. Not to mention the outages that seemed to be not uncommon[1]. Apple's reminders feel like a godsend by comparison. It does exactly what it needs to, and syncs flawlessly between my phone and Macs. I can set reminders through Siri, and it even has a really intuitive way of setting date/time for reminders, where you just type, e.g. "tomorrow 5pm" and it'll highlight the text and give you a suggestion to make the reminder happen then, you click it and it yanks the text out and populates the appropriate time. You can even set reminders to appear when you're messaging a certain contact, and it'll appear within the Messages app in that contact's conversation. And it got even better with the new lockscreen widgets in iOS16, where I can see my reminders for the day front-and-center on my lockscreen. I gotta give props to Apple for their reminders system, cause I didn't even have any sort of expectations in the first place, but it's continually impressed me and become a consistent part of my daily routines. [1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/07/11/reminders-via-google-search-are-broken-again-again/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/07/11/reminders-via-googl...
vladvasiliu 4y ago
I don't know if things changed in the last two (I think?) releases of mac os, but up until my late 2013 MBP was still supported, I absolutely loved Mail. It's by far what I miss the most since I moved to Linux. Outlook for web wipes the floor with regular outlook IME (it's much, much faster) but it's still a pain to use compared to Apple Mail. If anyone has any comparable solution for Linux, I'd be glad to know. That would be something streamlined, not having to cobble together random different programs for obtaining the mails from an Exchange Online server, some other app for not-quite-fully-working calendar support, etc.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  What about Apple Mail made it so great? Was it only the speed? I've found it kind of anemic and prefer the Linux mail clients (Kmail, Evolution, Thunderbird) and their plugins.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    I really enjoyed being able to have a "unified inbox" across multiple accounts. It was also very smooth, and I didn't have to wait around for it doing who knows what, but this hasn't been an issue with KMail when I used it regularly some 12 years ago (without Exchange, though). Only Outlook ever felt noticeably slow. Some other creature comforts were great, like integration with quick look (tap space on an attachment, and you can see it in a popup). I could also have a unified calendar with my personal (Gmail) and work (Exchange online) accounts. I only had to tell it "this is my exchange account, and this is my gmail account, now do your thing" – and it did, complete with OAuth2 and all. I haven't tried KMail recently, but last I've seen (a few years ago) it didn't support Exchange online. Thunderbid had some Exchange support, but it was a bit wonky (around 2019). I don't think the calendar was actually working. Maybe things have improved, I seem to remember there was a major upgrade recently. Evolution, IIRC, had some kind of support via EWS, but I never "clicked" with it so never tried it seriously. Installing a gazillion gnome packages didn't help its case, either (I don't use gnome otherwise). According to the Arch Wiki [0] it should support mail + calendar through MS's Exchange ActiveSync (which is proprietary, but I don't have an issue with that if it works). [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Evolution#Microsoft_Exchange_and_Office_365 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Evolution#Microsoft_E...

nlitened 4y ago

I use Mail, Reminders, Calendar, and Notes as my main productivity tools on both my Mac and iPhone. They are actually great!

johnwalkr 4y ago
Drive, iTunes and photo sync, and keychain all work well on Windows these days too! Notes, reminders, and the rest of the web apps work well enough too. A windows/gaming pc plus a MacBook is a pretty good combination now.
narrowtux 4y ago
Honestly I wish there were mail, calendar and contact apps for other systems, as good as apples with solid webdav/caldav support. Thunderbird is kind of lacking in all aspects.

Veen 4y ago

They do focus on them. Reminders has had loads of updates in recent years: it's actually a pretty good todo app these days. Mail is updated every year with new features. Messages is key to Apple's services push, and get a massive amount of attention. Calendar and contacts remain a bit crap though.

hbn 4y ago
Reminders was one of the biggest improvements when I moved from Android to iOS. I don't know why Google is so bad at reminders, and maybe it's different now but for years there were various implementations of reminders across multiple apps and services. They sometimes seemed to sync but it didn't seem consistent, and they had different feature sets. It never felt like there was a centralized hub for reminders, it was always just tucked off into ugly sub-menus in various apps and would occasionally move around. I think I used to mainly set reminders from a Google search, where if you phrased the query as a reminder you'd get a little widget at the top of the result with a pre-filled reminder, and you'd click the check to add it. But then at some point they broke that and I can't remember if they ever fixed it. Not to mention the outages that seemed to be not uncommon[1]. Apple's reminders feel like a godsend by comparison. It does exactly what it needs to, and syncs flawlessly between my phone and Macs. I can set reminders through Siri, and it even has a really intuitive way of setting date/time for reminders, where you just type, e.g. "tomorrow 5pm" and it'll highlight the text and give you a suggestion to make the reminder happen then, you click it and it yanks the text out and populates the appropriate time. You can even set reminders to appear when you're messaging a certain contact, and it'll appear within the Messages app in that contact's conversation. And it got even better with the new lockscreen widgets in iOS16, where I can see my reminders for the day front-and-center on my lockscreen. I gotta give props to Apple for their reminders system, cause I didn't even have any sort of expectations in the first place, but it's continually impressed me and become a consistent part of my daily routines. [1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/07/11/reminders-via-google-search-are-broken-again-again/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/07/11/reminders-via-googl...

vladvasiliu 4y ago

I don't know if things changed in the last two (I think?) releases of mac os, but up until my late 2013 MBP was still supported, I absolutely loved Mail. It's by far what I miss the most since I moved to Linux. Outlook for web wipes the floor with regular outlook IME (it's much, much faster) but it's still a pain to use compared to Apple Mail. If anyone has any comparable solution for Linux, I'd be glad to know. That would be something streamlined, not having to cobble together random different programs for obtaining the mails from an Exchange Online server, some other app for not-quite-fully-working calendar support, etc.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
What about Apple Mail made it so great? Was it only the speed? I've found it kind of anemic and prefer the Linux mail clients (Kmail, Evolution, Thunderbird) and their plugins.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  I really enjoyed being able to have a "unified inbox" across multiple accounts. It was also very smooth, and I didn't have to wait around for it doing who knows what, but this hasn't been an issue with KMail when I used it regularly some 12 years ago (without Exchange, though). Only Outlook ever felt noticeably slow. Some other creature comforts were great, like integration with quick look (tap space on an attachment, and you can see it in a popup). I could also have a unified calendar with my personal (Gmail) and work (Exchange online) accounts. I only had to tell it "this is my exchange account, and this is my gmail account, now do your thing" – and it did, complete with OAuth2 and all. I haven't tried KMail recently, but last I've seen (a few years ago) it didn't support Exchange online. Thunderbid had some Exchange support, but it was a bit wonky (around 2019). I don't think the calendar was actually working. Maybe things have improved, I seem to remember there was a major upgrade recently. Evolution, IIRC, had some kind of support via EWS, but I never "clicked" with it so never tried it seriously. Installing a gazillion gnome packages didn't help its case, either (I don't use gnome otherwise). According to the Arch Wiki [0] it should support mail + calendar through MS's Exchange ActiveSync (which is proprietary, but I don't have an issue with that if it works). [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Evolution#Microsoft_Exchange_and_Office_365 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Evolution#Microsoft_E...