As anyone reading this blog is almost certainly aware, Apple announced the long-awaited iPad last week; and the tech world collectively lost their fucking minds. As I’ve already opined, I think that Fraser Speirs has written the best analysis of the collective pants-shitting and I would highly recommend reading Fraser’s article if you haven’t already. Flying somewhat under the radar during all this babble was another phenomenon which I think provides an interesting parallel to some of the ideas that Fraser articulates so well.
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed references to something called “Letters.app.” For those unaware, here is some background. Earlier this month developer Brent Simmons put out a call-to-arms for the development of a new email client to fit the needs of “developers and power-users.” The argument being that all extant instances of email clients (specifically for the Mac OS, but presumably for all platforms) are lacking in some way that makes them unsuitable for “developers and power-users.” The goal of the project, soon dubbed Letters.app was to harness the skills and creativity of the indie Mac development community to build the perfect beast. Shortly afterwards, the project completely and very publicly imploded.
At this point I need to take an aside and clarify what I mean by “imploded,” as my asshole-sense can already detect the prepping of a thousand responses telling me that I am wrong. First of all, it is true that the Letters.app project is still under active development. Project president John Gruber (Daring Fireball) and project lead Gus Mueller (Flying Meat Software) continue to make progress and I eagerly anticipate seeing the fruits of their labors. I consider myself an email power-user and hope that Letters.app might fit my needs.
However, I maintain that a read of the archives of the (now closed) public discussion email list proves my assertion. The mailing list discussion is rife with contention, rigid-thinking, straw-man arguments and an overwhelming dismissal of the needs and requirements of anyone who disagrees with a given poster. In almost every case those dismissals are phrased something like this: “Letters must/must not do X because it is meant only for ‘developers and power-users’ and you don’t apply.” What is constantly missed, even in the face of it being pointed out, is that there are many people who are “power-users” of email who have never seen a line of code and who can barely reboot their computer. In one particularly ironic twist, at several points the proverbial “non-power-user” is described as a “bored secretary.” This, more than anything, demonstrates the myopia of some of the “indie developer” camp on the list. Having been a long-term denizen of the corporate world I can tell you, “secretaries,” or “Administrative Assistants” as we call them in the enlightened post-1960’s are almost always the largest consumer /producer of email in an organization, and have the most need for power features.
So, the question is: “What does this have to do with the iPad?”
I would argue that the same myopic dismissal of anyone who isn’t a developer, and IT person or a technology wonk as a “non-power-user” is as much responsible for the “future shock” that Fraser describes as it was the never-ending argument on the Letters.app list. It is easy for us, and I include myself in this class on two of the three counts mentioned before, to dismiss the needs of non-technical power users. I’ve even seen some of this attitude in iPad defenders when they extol the virtue of the iPad as a device for their kids, or parents, or anyone who is presumably “not good with computers.” Fortunately Apple isn’t so myopic.
Assuredly, the iPad will be a good fit for those users. I contend it will also be a good fit for corporate users who already have a primary desktop system and need a basic communication and content creation tool for limited travel. I contend that, with the proper third party applications, the iPad will be a good tool for many artists who work in the field. My Angry Mac Bastards co-host Peter Cohen is excited about the possibility of an “Aperture Touch” product in conjunction with the iPad Camera Connection kit. I myself and excited about the possibility of taking my writing on the road without the overhead of a full Mac OS laptop. People I know in the education segment, from K-12 all the way though higher education have expressed excitement over how the iPad may be integrated into their workflows. Not to mention the plethora of vertical market opportunities.
What the tech media tends to miss is that all of the user classes I’ve just mentioned contain “power users.” They’re just not necessarily power users of computer development and administration tools. As Fraser points out, people want to do “Real Work.” And for the vast majority of the world “Real Work” is not maintaining computers. Apple computers and operating systems have always been about enabling “the rest of us.” The iPad is just the next step towards that goal. I choose to embrace that future. The iPad may not be the device for you, but to deny that there is a vast market for it is to show the same myopia that led to inane suggestions for Letters.app such as requiring the user to run a mail server on their desktop just to enable local storage of email; something even most power-users would agree is just retarded.
The public face imploded. We'll see if the behind the scenes did too, probably not. I think opening the mailing list to public that quickly was a mistake, but I hope we convinced them to support real IMAP.
Changing the IT paradigm isn't going to be easy… I see it as being like tax accounting. There are powerful people and companies that derive a lot of revenue from the existing fuckedupness. It is mainly those people who bitch about changing the system: the rest if us just want to do what we do.
The HTML email bit has been a pet peeve of mine for years. The idea that you have to use idiotic ASCII formatting instead of a freaking HTML table drives me nuts. Sane links, bare minimum formatting capabilities, syntax highlighted code samples? All easily within the realm of possibility, but shot down by some fear of purple text on a pink background, which by the way, your grandmother is still going to send you, it's not like she knows or cares about this “text only” religion.
How bout we have a mail client that sends structural and semantic HTML, sans colors and fonts, and lets the receiving client style it as per the users preference? How great would that be?
I may not have made it clear enough, but you're correct, it was the public face that imploded. We'll see how things progress on the letters-dev list.
100% agreement. Anyone who thinks that, were email invented today, it wouldn't default to some sort of styled text, is insane. Yet we insist on hobbling ourselves with metaphors imposed by pre-1990 technologies. I think that the parallel to the iPad bed-wetting is obvious.
People need to realize there's a difference between “power users who are also developers and tinkerers” and “power users who just use something a fuck ton”. And a device like the iPad will encourage *more* people to become “power computer users”, just like the iPhone encouraged people to use data from their cell phone provider.
I think Speirs (and you) hit the nail on the head. When I hear that such-and-such a device can't do “Real Work™”, in most cases it turns out the speaker considers “real work” to be fucking around with the computer trying to get it to do something—anything. Which is great if that's your job, but it's not for all of us.
Agree with you, Drunky (and I'm stone sober, btw., as always), but, where Letters.app is concerned, how can ANYONE seriously treat a concept described solely as “awesome” ["Need new email client; must be awesome"]; there is no obvious Mission Statement (that I can see); and the ensuing project of writing presumably RFC-822-compliant mail client is led by someone who can not even be bothered to submit messages in archive-readable format? Or else, how do you propose we read the discussion msgs with unbroken paragraph-length lines? ( E.g. http://lists.ranchero.com/pipermail/email-init-... )
To be fair, they did come up with a Vision Statement at some point (for the life of me I can't find it now though) and I think that the consensus is that the formatting issues have to do with Mail.app using format=quoted-printable instead of format=flowed. Nonetheless, they're still wankers.
Before self-imploding, did anyone there even attempt to reexamine/ redefine the basic sequential-message-river paradigm of email clients, or was it all a battle over fave features? Email badly needs a new client model, one designed with human, rather than machine heuristics in mind [ http://google.com/search?q=define%3Aheuristics ]. Example: when viewing any single message, the client should display instantly-compiled (e.g.) mail exchange frequency diagram(s) for that correspondent; most frequent common words (=pseudo-tag clouds); statistics over length and original-to-quoted text (akin to signal:noise) ratios; percentages of threads unanswered, etc. The client already knows all that [and Gmail makes use of it], some of it well in advance and very suitable for iterative accumulation, so why shouldn't the recipients get to see it as well?
Maybe I'm missin' something here, but why would I (or any other human “client”) want to see almost any of that, when viewing a message?
What will a message exchange frequency diagram tell me (that I didn't already know; “X talks to me a lot” or “X doesn't talk to me a lot”).
Even worse, a word tag cloud?
I mean, I suppose the proof is in the pudding and it would be worth looking at if someone made it, just to see if somehow it's useful – but on its face, it's stuff I don't care about masquerading as information, taking up screen real-estate and cognitive effort.
Maybe email really does need a new client model … but I don't think that's the one it needs.
I'm all fired up about music, sheet music and tabs, for me and the band and students as well (all turn the pages together, now.)
I can't believe that people are dismissing it as a toy. All I'll need on the road is a phone and the pad. Big win for my wrists.
I'm glad you're questioning my by necessity sketchy EXAMPLES of enhancements now missing in email clients. Observe I never said any of that should be permanently on screen, preferably configurable on demand. Because some of the listed functions indeed are novel, here is what I IMAGINE they'd be good for (and bear in mind that I am talking about heavy mail usage: in excess of 150 messages a day; 3000-4000 per month; and [cumulatively] several thousand valid inquiries under a 10-year period – I no longer care to remember, nor trust my instinctive recall of history of/for each inquiry).
• mail-frequency diagram: an at-a-glance
graphic overview of historical mail flow
with the same individual mail-originator/
recipient.
• a pseudo-tag cloud: auto-compiled from
exchanges ONLY with said originator; to
abet in determining the nature of recurring
inquiries (if any).
• “statistical” diagrams of signal:noise
ratios (however defined): helps me decide
me whether correspondent is “serious”
(however defined), and cares to express
herself clearly without endless tail
inclusions (which lower overall compre-
hension of the exchange and can not be
relied upon to provide the background).
• percentage of threads un/answered:
cumulative values of un/ resolved or
one-off/ recurring nature of the
correspondence.
Observe that these were just EXAMPLES of functions possible within current mail-client model, all perfectly suitable to be expressed by e.g. space-saving Tuftian sparklines [ http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch... ]; and I could think of several more complex ones were mail paradigm to change….
OK, great. Now, please tell us WHY you want them.
OK, great. Now, please tell us WHY you want them.