Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dreamcompiler 283 days ago
I used to love Apple Mail but it was precisely this bug that made me move permanently to Thunderbird. It's hard for me to fathom a bug so severe that it caused data loss on an IMAP server, but Apple created said bug and put it into production.

Thunderbird has the nice advantage of working on both MacOS and Linux with the same UI. It's not quite as nice as Apple Mail's classic UI (which is no longer available -- see (3) above) but it's good enough.
2 comments
isaachinman 283 days ago
Also ran into serious issues with Apple Mail, and started building a new product:

https://marcoapp.io

link
AlexandrB 283 days ago
I can't seem to select any text on your website so had to go screenshot, then select. But:

> All your devices, synced

> Mac, Windows, iOS, Android-stay in sync across all platforms.

Does this mean email passes through a server like Spark[1]?

[1] https://sparkmailapp.com

link
dreamcompiler 283 days ago
Your screenshot looks nice. I hope you succeed with this, and I'd be happy to try it. From what little I know, building a fully-compliant IMAP client is hard work.
link
isaachinman 283 days ago
Yes, it's been over a year of extremely hard work but we're nearly there!
link
TomaszZielinski 283 days ago
I can imagine that some race condition slips into production, but what's hard for me to process is why it’s 5 or 6 years later and it’s still not fully fixed.

I mean, even if you have no idea what's the cause, you e.g. stuff counters everywhere and when they don't match you send the telemetry with the details. Privacy is preserved and over time you get an idea what to look for.

I admit I have no idea how mail client works, but clearly there must be some way they could pinpoint it, with such large userbase..

link
ethbr1 283 days ago
> but what's hard for me to process is why it’s 5 or 6 years later and it’s still not fully fixed

Because Apple's (the company's, as a whole) bug -> triage -> engineering -> deployment process is fundamentally broken, and obviously has been for decades at this point.

Say what you want about MS, but at least critical issues that actual customers are experiencing tend to get fixed.

Apple seems to have some weird 'maybe someone will look at it, if they have time, after they get done implementing new features for the next release' process. (Glaring example: daisy chaining DisplayPort support)

link