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What is Microsoft aversion to their "classic" Outlook? I never understood why they didn't just bundle that version with Windows. They've always attempt to foist
by mrweasel 2y ago
What is Microsoft aversion to their "classic" Outlook? I never understood why they didn't just bundle that version with Windows. They've always attempt to foist an inferior version upon home users, starting with Outlook Express.
And why rewrite and push a new inferior version to users who already paid for the "good version". This is a tools that millions of their users rely on to do their job every day, it's extremely unprofessional.
- haradion 2y agoWell, for one thing, classic Outlook's HTML rendering engine (to the extent it's even an "HTML" rendering engine instead of a Word document rendering engine) has some fairly radical divergences from standard HTML/CSS behavior. For those of us who have to generate HTML e-mail for whatever reason, it's distinctly unpleasant. That might not be enough reason in and of itself to throw out the whole application, but I sure won't miss that one part of Outlook.
- mrweasel 2y agoWhile I obviously don't know, I'd guess that they could plunk in Edge/Blink and call it Outlook 2025.
- sebazzz 2y agoWell, older versions of Outlook actually used MSHTML/Trident as a render engine: the engine of Internet Explorer. They could, if they want, use WebView2 - embedding MS Edge.
- Aloha 2y agoI suspect a bunch of technical debt - the core of the application dates to 2000 or before (there are menu's changed for a very very long time).
- OtherShrezzing 2y agoDoes the design need to change to address technical debt?
- sebazzz 2y agoI feel like at some point Microsoft deliberately decided not to want to maintain "old stuff" anymore. You see this with many other products as well. Desktop is bad, web is good.
- wvenable 2y agoMicrosoft is moving away from the single-platform; they want their apps to run on Windows, web, Mac OS, iOS, Android, and maybe even Linux. They do not want to maintain radically different versions for all these different platforms.
- sebazzz 2y agoYes, at the cost of the desktop experience - it seems. And at the cost of customization.
- wvenable 2y agoThe desktop experience has been secondary for years now -- Microsoft is only now catching up to that trend.
- mrweasel 2y agoThey shouldn't. Microsofts most valuable users are on desktop.
- xboxnolifes 2y agoI'm not so sure. Desktop, particularly Windows, is definitely important, but mobile is used a ton even in business.
- mrweasel 2y agoMicrosofts tools obviously needs to work well on mobile, and I can understand not wanting to maintain multiple code bases, but I think their hurting their users by not doing it. I know at least one CEO who will absolutely explode if they fuck up his Outlook. He probably have 20 years of business correspondences in there. Is that a good idea? Probably not, but he does. If Microsoft mess up Outlook, then there's very little reason for his company to not look at Google and Gmail, and he probably will just because he'll feel like Microsoft screwed him over.
- canucker2016 2y agoFirst version of Outlook was Outlook 97. It was supposed to be Outlook 95 and ship with Office 95, but the app was late.
- userbinator 2y agoOutlook Express is still a much better experience compared to the new Outlook.
- mr_person 2y agoI believe it has a lot to do with the fact that new Outlook operates on email in their cloud, and that means they can … process your email as they see fit. Remember that adding an account to new outlook means all your email gets uploaded to O365 servers. It no longer interacts locally. That includes external services like Gmail etc.