The state of email
Published July 6th, 2007 in Mac OS X, Software, KiwiEmail has struck a cord with many prominent Mac bloggers:
- No suitable email apps for Mac OS X
- The Rise of the OS
- It could work: a 3rd party email client for OS X
- The Rise Of The OS
- The state of Mac email
- Daring Fireball
- Regarding Mail Pro
- Free advice about a pro email client
- Dear Apple, we want MailKit
- Restarting Innovation
- Michael Tsai: Restarting Innovation
- More Follow-up To Mail, The OS And Frameworks
With all this talk of e-mail in the air I wanted to add a little bit:
I am still actively working on MailCore/Kiwi, and my drive is only stronger after the “features” for Leopard Mail were revealed. Progress has been slow due to time constraints: during the school year I’m a computer science student at UIUC and now I’m an intern on the iPhoto team. So, don’t expect anything an alpha immediately, but I am hacking on it.
Another interesting tidbit has been raised, bloggers, like Michael McCracken, believe there is a market for a power user e-mail client; I have to agree. In fact, I’ve been thinking for the past 6 months about the commercial potential in Kiwi. I initially announced that Kiwi would be open source, but am now toying with the idea of making a Kiwi closed source and the email framework, MailCore, as open source. I’m curious what your thoughts are on this.
Update:
Wow, “Mail Pro” is hot topic. I’ve included links to more blog posts discussing email.
I think you can do a comercial… Yes, go for it!
Its never late to open sources. But with lack of good IMAP mail clients for Mac (i’m not sure about Win & Linux though) its a very good chance. All you can do it create a good app. BTW there one more Kiwi competitor around - Correo. Yet version 0.2… But with good competitiveness.. I d/loaded it today. Didn’t use it still so no personal comments.
PS
Think good about a price
I’m all for a new commercial email client, if that’s what you want. As long as you make the framework Open Source, of course
As my article stated, I’m totally in favor of a commercial client, but _especially_ one with proper IMAP support. You’ve already showed your knowledge in that area in previous posts.
I’ve been watching the progress and will continue to, greatly appreciate the update, and am very glad to hear that Leopard is giving you more motivation.
Definitely shoot for commercial - it will be tough to shift consumers away from the “pre-packaged” Apple Mail anyway, regardless of how much better Kiwi is. You can always open-source it if it doesn’t work out, so aim for commercial/high-end for now.
THe combination commercial app open-source framework is a great route to go, particularly when your users will be computer-savvy users, that will appreciate the giving-back-to-the-community aspect. In general, a plug-in architeecture is also a great plus. Look at iPhoto for example… Uh, no, don’t!! (maybe you can do something about that, too
I’m curious to know some of the reasons why you’re considering making Kiwi commercial, “hybrid”, or something else. Seems the question of which way to take it might answer itself if those reasons are clear enough.
Definitely fo comercial… It will give you real motivation if you actually make some money out of it, and there is definitely a market for it!
Just to notify that it’s not a problem for me. And hope you will still give the needed contributions to libetpan.
But, sure, a framework for Mac OS X, based on libetpan would be nice.
There is definitely a market for a pro email client on OS X.
I coughed up the 18 bucks for Gyaz mail when imap was implemented and so far its been money well spent. I have occasionally gone back to try Mail, Thunderbird and Entourage but so far Gyaz’s imap works far quicker and more smoothly especially when disconnected, as I am a lot of the time.
Good luck with Kiwi, I look forward to giving it a go.
There is definately a market out there and I think that you should shoot for commercial. There is definitely and area to make some good money. Good luck