[seasonalgrit]

"a nicer UI"

ok, I feel a little bad adding to the dogpile here, but . . . one of the great things about email is that it's an open standard -- you can use whatever software you want, or even write your own. the very article we're commenting on is about a new email client offering, among other things, an extremely shiny UI. :p

[londons_explore]

The standard doesn't allow you to implement things for a great UX.

For example, you can't search for people if you don't know their email address. You can't know if an email was successfully delivered or read. The "quoting" of replies is a mess with no standard for doing it.