That's nice as an optional feature but as a baseline it just seems like sentimental skeumorphism/metaphorism. Chat being real-time is certainly "approaching re

That's nice as an optional feature but as a baseline it just seems like sentimental skeumorphism/metaphorism. Chat being real-time is certainly "approaching real life" much moreso than fully asynchronous email, but most people don't want either to be real life: chat still needs an element of asynchronicity to distinguish it as a technologically useful medium improving over actually walking into a real room. To put it another way: if I'm in a real life room where being present for the full conversation is necessary, it's easy to excuse being late or going to the bathroom as unfortunate parts of life when people are repeating themselves. When there's simple technological solutions that can easily prevent me from missing anything important, and someone's telling me they don't want it because they like the inconvenience, that's harder to justify.