Yup, IMAP is powerful, but it's gathered some baggage over the years.
Switchboard uses a simplified interface based on JMAP[1] for client's and workers, which it does proxy into IMAP commands. One of the conveniences of Switchboard is it manages the IMAP connections: restarting them as they fail and allowing concurrent access.
The application uses IMAP UID/UIDVALIDITY values, typically along with IDLE, to identify new emails in a mailbox. These don't change when an email is read, so marking as read doesn't introduce any race conditions in this case.
Switchboard uses a simplified interface based on JMAP[1] for client's and workers, which it does proxy into IMAP commands. One of the conveniences of Switchboard is it manages the IMAP connections: restarting them as they fail and allowing concurrent access.
[1] http://jmap.io/