Why hasn't Opera updated their mail program?
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rh99 last edited by
It was so well laid out, so well organized. I still use it though I need to find an updated replacement. Tried Thunderbird but really didn't like the way it was organized though it feels right to use something from a non-profit when it comes to something as important as email where you don't want people seeking financial gain by extracting information from you and selling it. You just don't want that bias. It also has to be free to be private. Of course one can pay with a prepaid credit card bought with cash but its a hassle.
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rh99 last edited by
@leocg Why not just update the existing one to modern standards? Is that not possible? Having an email program would encourage more people to adapt both in their lives. I think that's the point of these companies....to expand. Everyone's doing it. Anyway obviously they view the idea is untenable. Maybe in the future though. We need to encourage people to move away from the severe limitations of webmail. Its the communication mode of cave men. Really dumb cave men.
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donq last edited by donq
@rh99 said in Why hasn't Opera updated their mail program?:
Why not just update the existing one to modern standards? Is that not possible?
I (as developer myself) would think that this would take even more resources than rewriting entire mail program from scratch. I have no idea about your familiarity with modern standards - internally they are big nasty mess of over 20 years of architecting by many, often conflicting parties.
Having an email program would encourage more people to adapt both in their lives. I think that's the point of these companies....to expand. Everyone's doing it.
What would their incentive to spread their free e-mail program? Browsers are profitable - user data is sold with good margin. Social media is profitable - user data is sold with even better margin. There are many kind of free services, paid by selling user data.
What data to sell about mail users? Mail content or contact list? Some of this is likely against law (well, contacts can be harvested from traffic, content not so easily - and mail servers can gather data anyway) and information gathering rate is way lower than from social media or from browsing habits.
Paid program would be barely possible - I know few people, who would pay for it. (They actually are Opera users since times, when Opera was paid program.)
But I think that it would be not easy (if even possible) to sell good mail software for Windows; I'm using one such program, but even they likely struggle with expanding userbase, most users just buy upgrades every few years. On Mac there are likely more paid mail programs (at least I have told so).Anyway obviously they view the idea is untenable. Maybe in the future though. We need to encourage people to move away from the severe limitations of webmail. Its the communication mode of cave men. Really dumb cave men.
Who uses mail nowadays? This is so 20th century tech
Well, e-mail is used in corporate environments, but (at least here) most companies are using some kind of Office/Exchange/Outlook variant (rarely gmail too), no point for them to use and manage alternate e-mail client. Then there is some kind on Mail app in Windows - many people, who don't like webmail, are using it for personal needs.
I don't know about smartphones (consider me dinosaur, not cave man), but I think often people just use mail app, which is preinstalled on their phone; they have no idea, is that webmail client or synchronized desktop mail client or whatever. If even Opera would update its mail program for desktop users, then they need to create mail app for phones too - this would double resource need.
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@888larson It still has some major bugs - biggest for me is not recognizing non-Yahoo Yahoo addresses. Since it doesn't realize Yahoo provides email for many other ISPs it can't configure my primary account.
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888larson last edited by
@sgunhouse Good to know. I'm only using addresses from my ISP and a Gmail account.
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blackbird71 last edited by@rh99 Thing is, Vivaldi has spent literally years developing/debugging their email program, perhaps involving more effort than for their browser - certainly it took a longer time. In their case, it came about largely as a result of a labor of love by the owner. Developing a modern email program is more complex than many folks realize, and the cost thereof is almost guaranteed to be non-recoverable. Given that there are already multiple competent email programs already out there (Outlook, Thunderbird, Vivaldi, etc), there's little payoff but a lot of existing 'competition'... so Opera has little incentive to fire up a redesign/updating of an aging email program built around a nearly-extinct codebase (Presto).
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leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@rh99 said:
Why not just update the existing one to modern standards? Is that not possible?
Basically for the reasons I've mentioned. It would cost money, time and people to develop a kind of program that has being less and less used nowadays.
Having an email program would encourage more people to adapt both in their lives.
But why encourage people to have something that they don't need? People don't use email that often.
We need to encourage people to move away from the severe limitations of webmail.
About ten years ago I could have agreed with you, but nowadays a good webmail has (almost) everything that I email program has.
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leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@donq said in:
Well, e-mail is used in corporate environments, but (at least here) most companies are using some kind of Office/Exchange/Outlook variant (rarely gmail too), no point for them to use and manage alternate e-mail client.
At work I'm currently using an Office365 based email and I can only access its web version and while I'm on work.
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