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Letters is a Mac email client that we hope to see one day
For some people, the built-in Mail.app on the Mac is all they need in an email client. For others, it is frustratingly close to being what they need, but lacking in some key areas.
The problem is that because Mail.app comes with every copy of OS X, and it's not a bad email client, the perception among the Mac development community is that there is no money to be made making a better Mac mail client. This is a case where "good enough" seems to be standing in the way of "great".
This scenario frustrated Brent Simmons (of NetNewWire fame) greatly. So greatly, in fact, that he was driven to write a blog post titled Email init begging the Mac development community to get together and collectively write a new, better email client. That post went up on Saturday, January 16, and a little over a week later, quite a bit has happened.
As part of the post, Brent created a mailing list for the yet-to-be-named app, which subsequently has been named Letters. A vote was also held to determine who would act as the President of the project. The role of president will be held by various people, and each president's job will be to marshall the project to the next major version release. The inaugural president for Letters will be John Gruber, who will hold that position until Letters 1.0 is released.
If you're interested in the philosophy behind Letters, check out the Letters vision document that first appeared on the mailing list. You can also follow Letters.app on Twitter.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsJoshuaJan 25th 2010 4:58PM
Mail is perfectly adequate for me, but I'm very interested in seeing how this plays out.
Hugh JassoleJan 25th 2010 5:09PM
Outlook for Mac will be available before Letters gets off the ground.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/aug09/08-13MacOutlookPR.mspx
Jon H.Jan 26th 2010 10:01AM
From "Email init:"
"It should just do IMAP. (Not POP or Exchange.)"
This is unfortunately a deal-breaker for me, as Comcast mail only supports POP.
I do use Mail.app, with a number of add-ons like MailActOn that make the good better but, as the article author says, still not great. I am still looking for something better, but it sadly won't be this.
weldoJan 29th 2010 2:31PM
I hope Brent doesn't botch it all up like he did his once great, now also ran RSS reader.
Bigdaddie MumfuzzJan 30th 2010 12:25AM
There already are two better mail apps. One is called Postbox, which has some compelling features and costs about $30. The other is Thunderbird, which has most of the features of Postbox, can be skinned to look like Mail.app, has all kinds of add ons for it, and is completely free. I'm interested in seeing what they come up with for Letters but I doubt it will be better than these two apps.