Outside of Outlook at work, I can't even remember the last time I used an actual "client" for e-mail. I use the browser interface of the couple different email services I use.<p>This is likely just a support/cost issue. When you leave something "open" in Windows, it has to be tested and supported and it's not as simple as "all of these things use the same protocols". So they narrowed the support strategy and focused testing on the main email services.<p>I see no problem with this.
I think the author is being unintentionally ironic with the title. Windows 10 does have support for all major email providers. The article is claiming it could just as easily have support for niche ones as well.<p>I really don't know why people are assuming that MS is being malicious -- they support exactly their direct and realistic competitors to Exchange. If the author seriously thinks that 腾讯首页 or Nextcloud, which doesn't even have an email server component, are sapping users from Exchange he's crazy.
Honestly, the decision to lock down to a golden path smells more to me like a way of keeping support responsibilities constrained. What happens if the integrating service has a quirk? Microsoft and that service might argue which service is at fault and in the meantime customers will blame Windows.
It would be interesting to run CalDav and CardDav compliance tests against all the providers and see who's actually compliant. This seems like a "We don't want to deal with someone wondering why their ______ service won't work even though it's returning a completely invalid response" decision.
Windows could have had a proper update system that security updates all software not just Microsoft products. Instead we got the Windows store updates which is a strange in that normal Windows programs do not get security patched.<p>In the future I think Windows will be a paid compatibility layer in Linux. Building on SQL server libraries for Linux could be a start for such a compatibility layer. Cloud and web apps has made Windows desktop more irrelevant.<p>Most likely there will be an Linux desktop alliance between for example Ubuntu, Amazon, Steam and PC makers that will make the Linux desktop more user friendly.
What would be a worse headline?<p>Something like that probably:<p>> Sniggering Linux users who believe in open code and open standards can take a hike. The Online Accounts systems in GNOME, Ubuntu Unity, Plasma, and MATE do the exact same thing as Window 10<p>ouch. but to be fair you can configure carddav/caldav manually on linux (but well I didn't liked evolution so much, mutt is okish but only for text. well mac mail.app is worse since it can't send csv files correctly (it adds unnecessary lines into it depending on the encoding)) (and well gnome only supports 3 email providers with cal/contact sync in their boxes which is microsoft, google and exchange (you can also add generic smtp/imap of course but it's about caldav/carddav), and one can prolly use nextcloud for carddav/caldav sync which is supported in the box aswell)
After spending a rather long time without Windows and Outlook I've recently been using the current version of the desktop and web client. It's quite functional and the workflow and features work intuitively and it actually looks nice but the font sizes and layout really bother me. Having used a Mac for very long the font rendering of Outlook on Windows makes it even worse for me. I find it more work to read and identify what to read. I have noticed a certain number of individuals at my previous workplace often missed some e-mails and thinking about it made me remember that they Windows Outlook users and where I work now a lot of people simply don't seem to read their e-mails and everyone is using Outlook on Windows.
This is their junky Windows Store mail app, right? I'm an Outlook jockey, so it's been a while since I've tried to use that - primarily because it wasn't all that usable.<p>I've been guilty of it in the past, but you gotta love some good armchair programming (from the OP):<p>> In my estimate Microsoft, it’s just a matter of changing about six variables in the code and adding some text strings!
This blog post uses a work around featured in another blog post on the net. I filed a bug for this a while ago (after discovering said post) on their Feedback app, several times. I'd really love to believe in Microsoft and their push for UWP and a better ecosystem but their priorities aren't on functioning and featureful software but instead only appearing they are building functioning and featureful software.
It took a long time, but this is one of the things that Apple seems to have finally gotten the hang of.<p>iCloud sync of to-do lists, notes, contacts, calendar, and Handoff between 6 computers and iDevices is a big thing that keeps me in the Mac ecosystem.<p>It wasn't always reliable, and the first few years were particularly rough, but it's been working flawlessly for me for the last couple of years.<p>Naturally, there are other people for whom things are not so smooth.
One thing that I actually hate on Windows 10 compared to Windows 8 is the native apps - it is a huge step backwards.<p>I have a Microsoft Account on my work (Office 365) email address.<p>Windows 8 worked perfectly - if you signed in to Windows with a MS account, it would ask you "do you want to use your personal or organisation account" and then you could add your email account with the same message.<p>Windows 10 on the other hand just errors out...<p><a href="https://superuser.com/q/1267281/4386" rel="nofollow">https://superuser.com/q/1267281/4386</a><p>This is most annoying because Outlook does update the "system" calendar or the home screen, you get none of the rich integrations. Cortana just errors out whenever you try to interact with the calendar.<p>What's funny is, I can use my Office 365 account on my Mac without problems and use Siri to make appointments, get notifications when to leave etc.
I tried using the Mail app for my work Office 365 email account because the web UI is so awful. Turned out the app is pretty much exactly the same. Bulk operations, except deleting (the one bulk operation I never wanted), are pretty much impossible to do; simple UI features, like copy/paste are broken in several ways; search is close to useless; annoying extra "features" I have to turn off ("@" replies, chat). Any benefit OS integration provides is completely negated, and then some, by all the other inconveniences of the app.
The article says:<p>"Sniggering Linux users who believe in open code and open standards can take a hike. The Online Accounts systems in GNOME, Ubuntu Unity, Plasma, and MATE do the exact same thing as Window 10. There are underlying CalDAV and CardDAV sync engines (Evolution Data Server, Akonadi) that power them but the user interface only expose two–three providers like Google and Yahoo! with no option to auto-discover or manually configure any other providers."<p>I think this takes a needlessly limited view by casting the limits imposed on users of nonfree software onto free software (which is odd because elsewhere the author says they love free software). Here's the overlooked difference: with a free software program, one can improve the code to add the desired functionality and interoperability. Users can even get together and collectively fund a programmer to help them out. By contrast, Microsoft Windows 10 Email app is nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating). Even technically capable and willing users are prohibited from reading the relevant source code, modifying it, and distributing it to help others. Even if Microsoft alters their code to add missing functionality, users likely gain no software freedom in the process. Users aren't allowed to inspect and rebuild the software. Software freedom leads to trusting that software and proprietary software is often malware (<a href="https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html</a> for pointers to how Microsoft's software is often malware). Software freedom is the key to understanding the difference.<p>This limitation has nothing to do with GNU/Linux systems (unfairly referred to as "Linux" in the article; see <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Linux" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Linux</a> for more on this) per se; software can be ported to other OSes and the desired features could be available there too.<p>Standards that allow interoperability are a good unto themselves, just like software freedom, and we should push for both, use both, and improve both to meet our needs, not "take a hike" as the author suggests.<p>With software freedom users don't have to beg a software proprietor (who is also a known NSA collaborator and multinational antitrust violator) to make the software more interoperable. They can help themselves, they can hire someone to help, they can ask the community (perhaps in more kind words than the article) to help. These are potent options that render the software trustworthy (regardless of who wrote it) and with sufficient improvement even cross-platform.
Don't want Windows near my mails / contacts / cal anyway.<p>Windows serves three purposes for me:<p>1) Launch browser<p>2) Launch VLC<p>3) Launch Steam