shashi's world

Thursday, July 28, 2005

unwarranted

It is because I keep coming across stories like this, that I don’t think I will ever be able to embrace Apple. I just don’t understand – here you have a nice email app (or so I’ve heard) and email is one of the few things that has been standardized to death on the Internet due to the simple fact that people like to read their email anywhere, everywhere, all the time.
So why, oh why does Apple have to go around inventing proprietary formats for storing local mail? Why can’t they use the excellent Maildir format, when almost every other email client in the world does it? The excuse that this format is optimised for Spotlight is bullshit. They brag so much about their API for enabling Spotlight support in applications, then why couldn’t they just write a backend for Maildir files (the way Beagle does!)
Also, apparently this change is new to Tiger, and so old Mac OSX users are affected too. Even if they decided to change the format, is it too much to ask that the software confirms with the user before doing the upgrade, or atleast informs the user that something drastic is happening to his/her files? So much for desiging good user interfaces. chhahh! Why don’t these people ever learn?