Nevertheless, the weaknesses of both terminal-based and early web-based email user interfaces dictated that downloading email to your local client machine provided a superior experience. As the locus of the internet experience moved to the web, almost immediately people started developing web-based email systems, such as Hotmail, that attempted to build upon the inherent convenience of the server-side email system.

The first email app I used was VMS Mail, which I later replaced with the much more user-friendly PINE. When I first started using the internet in 1993, I first used a server-side email application, that I accessed over a text-only shell account.

The revenue stream from an email app isn’t quite as clear.īut back to my “steady decline” comment. By all accounts, the Mozilla foundation makes over $50 million per year from Google searches alone, and Safari’s similar deal with Google brings in at least a few million per year more than enough to justify the effort to develop and distribute a Windows version. Secondly, due to affiliate relationship with Google and other search services, the makers of web browsers can generate substantial revenue by promoting the use of those search tools to their users. There’s a very simple reason for this prediction: the desktop email client has begun what I believe will be a long and steady decline into the sidelines of personal computing. But to answer your question, I think it’s highly unlikely. It would be pretty easy for Apple to get a Windows version of its email client, Apple Mail or Mail.app, as it’s called, into the hands of a great many users. The culmination of this phenomenon has been Apple’s attempt to promulgate the Windows version of the Safari web browser by taking advantage of the Apple Software Update utility that all iTunes users have installed now. There are a lot more Windows machines out there running Apple software like iTunes and Quicktime than there are Macs. With the success of the iPod and iPhone, Apple has converted a lot of Windows users into Apple software users. I would have a very different answer to this question if you were asking it a few years ago. In our latest “Ask OSNews” installment, a reader asks: “Do you think Apple will ever have a standalone Windows version of their email app so that us Window users can download and use it? My family and I currently use Incredimail and occasionally Thunderbird.” OSNews Responds:

Emulator for mac mail