Microsoft's new Outlook client moves your email to the cloud (2023)
xda-developers.com
xda-developers.com
The new cloud thing is worse in every way. It confusingly copies your email over from your email provider's servers onto Microsoft's servers, and then shows an ad that looks exactly like an email in the middle of all the emails. In other words, it injects spam, but the spam is special because you can't delete it. Also, it needs to run in a browser for no apparent reason. For anybody currently using Windows Mail, it's a pure downgrade.
I understand that a company running a cloud service needs to finance this service, eg with ads, but this doesn't need to be a cloud service at all. It's so extremely backward that I simply can't comprehend how it made it through all the management layers at Microsoft. If all builtin software that comes with Windows turns into a bad, ad-ridden cloud apps then that's just one more reason for people to switch to Chromebooks, right? What's next, ads in Solitaire?¹
I miss the time when Microsoft wanted to make useful software.
¹) At the risk of ruining the joke by explaining it: Microsoft already did this. They removed Solitaire from Windows and replaced it with a terrible Windows Store app which indeed is loaded to the rim with screamy animated banner ads. I assume that the PM responsible for that got promoted to the email team or something.
Plenty of people still in there that do.
But it's never been a general policicy of Microsoft that turned into actual culture and actions.
Because that would require a general vision in that direction, which would imply we would never have one version out of two of Windows (Me, Vista, 8, 11...) that looks like a prototype.
We would not have the mess of UI with thousands of toolkits, the infamous env var windows staying unusable for decades, the right click "more option" in W11 that changes theme mid-flight.
We wouldn't have had the awful windows media player that couldn't read anything without a pack of spyware installed in the 90'. Or IE6 being frozen into obsolescence. Or ads in the start menu.
Teams file sharing and chat would not suck. Word would not destroy your layout because you move an image on pixel on the left. Access wouldn't produce the most corruptible db ever. The File explorer would not start in 7 seconds randomly in some machines (see last twitter trend), and its search would actually be useful.
The wizard to fix your internet issues would have solved a problem at least once. MS would not allow tons of crapware to be installed by 3rd party. Python in the windows store would not have been made non standard.
We wouldn't have to wait 2020 to have an upgrade to the terminal. The registry would be self documenting. Skype wouldn't have been destroyed after being bought. You would be able to get to your user directory easily out of the box. Cortana would be useful. Surface wouldn't run to crawl because they would be optimized for their hardware.
I can continue like that for hours.
Because those are not subtle issues. There are other teams at Microsoft that would never let that happen.
The priority of MS is to conquer the market. At some points it meant being a bully. Now it's to pretend to be FOSS BFF. It's always been about getting devs on the platforms, and business on the hook.
But at no point in MS history has been ever been, when you at the actual results, making good software.
Good software like .Net, AoE 2 or Excel were made by the few of their accidentally amazing team.
I swear every time someone tells me that LibreOfficie is simply not up to standard, I think of how much more sane its handling of floating tables and images is. Also,
>AoE 2
A company they killed to make the next monthly report of Xbox look nicer.
> We wouldn't have had the awful windows media player that couldn't read anything without a pack of spyware installed in the 90'. Or IE6 being frozen into obsolescence. Or ads in the start menu.
> Teams file sharing and chat would not suck. Word would not destroy your layout because you move an image on pixel on the left. Access wouldn't produce the most corruptible db ever. The File explorer would not start in 7 seconds randomly in some machines (see last twitter trend), and its search would actually be useful.
> The wizard to fix your internet issues would have solved a problem at least once. MS would not allow tons of crapware to be installed by 3rd party. Python in the windows store would not have been made non standard.
> We wouldn't have to wait 2020 to have an upgrade to the terminal. The registry would be self documenting. Skype wouldn't have been destroyed after being bought. You would be able to get to your user directory easily out of the box. Cortana would be useful. Surface wouldn't run to crawl because they would be optimized for their hardware.
♪ we didn't start the fire ♪
In Microsoft, all product managers care about is shipping more features, because that's the only way they can move their career in the company forward. Do yourself a favor and just don't use Outlook for personal stuff. Microsoft has never aimed to make a good impression on the consumer market. They only care for enterprise and that's how they build all of their software.
Wasn't this office OLE from the 90s? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding
They have no regard for the outcome of this approach when it comes to software UX because most of their customers don't get to choose the software they use (enterprise). The apps just need to be good enough to sell to company management.
It's a very good business model and only surprising if you consider MS to be a software company more than they are a money making company.
They are definitely heading that way, I've been saying I expect them to for some time, and they are slowly proving my guess right.
It used to be that their cash cows were Windows (Desktop & Server), Office, SQL Server, and to a lesser extent Exchange (even earlier in time it was just DOS, Windows (desktop), and Office). Everything else, including Visual Studio despite charging a pile for it, was to funnel and capture people into using those, or to inconvenience startups in other areas that might later try to compete in one of those arenas.
Now their cash cows are Azure, Office subscriptions, and to a lesser extent SQL Server, Exchange, and advertising. They don't care what OS you use and what apps & services you run, but they want you to run it on Azure (unless you are a huge concern in which case the money from on-prem SQL and other licences are still worth talking about) and pay them subscriptions for storage & processing.
They can't just abandon Windows, that would look bad, but they don't want their own stuff to be keeping it alive any longer than needs be. If everyone shuffled over to Linux, Android, MacOS/iOS, etc. but still used online office and apps running in Azure, that would be ideal for them – the hassle of maintaining desktop Windows with all the hardware compatibility issues and such isn't something they would get into today if they were not already there.
Giving up on controlling their own browser engine was a big sign they were moving this way: let someone else deal with all that client UI gubbings, there is no practical MS-scale money in it, and concentrate on selling the subscription services to office users and devs. I think the failure of their attempt at mobile market-share was when this ball really got rolling internally: the thought at high levels in the business being “hang on, if we can walk away from that because it isn't worth the effort to keep pushing, could that be true of other end-user OS stuff too?”
It'll take time to move everything either properly cross-platform or at least browser-based, SQL Server was a big step in that direction, but that is relatively easy as it is effectively a micro-OS sitting atop something else, the likes of Visual Studio will be harder, but it will happen, and then Desktop Windows will be allowed to slowly die. Server Windows already is in cloud: devs are being pulled away from caring about the base OS to running everything in OS-agnostic functions and light container-based services instead.
This is why they don't care that people like me won't ever be buying into Windows 11 at all, even where we did hold our noses and let Windows 10 happen.
Even if I personally use Thunderbird, I'm very much inclined to agree! It's a very usable!
That said, I'm kind of partial to the idea of just running something like Roundcube and figuring out a way to have a desktop wrapper around it, e.g. the same way how an app like Mattermost/Slack/Discord can work either in the web or locally. While the resource usage would be like the typical Electron app's, at the same time I like having a consistent UI experience wherever I am more and more, especially with self-hosted software when possible.
Edit: actually wasn't too hard to do this with Electron, however might need to find a webmail that has good support for multiple mailboxes. RainLoop seems to support multiple accounts, but has a dropdown for switching users, not sure how I feel about using the Nextcloud Mail app which has the UI I'd like (a list of accounts to the side, alongside the folders for each), but would couple things to Nextcloud.
This move seems to be in line with the Microsoft I know. They have always done it - ruin good things. There have been many MS products over the years and they have all turned to shit. As soon as Microsoft did something good, they always come out with a new version that is terrible. It's the most Microsoft thing ever, in my opinion.
Why pay for an email client when you have Outlook? Why pay for Slack when you have Teams? Why pay for cloud storage when you have OneDrive?
Could make the same argument for any giant corporation really: they don't need to innovate to survive, they don't need to do better to survive, they just have to keep using their muscle and their size to stay ahead.
During this week, I had a client approached me to build him a Spam Reporter Outlook add-in. He wanted the add-in to be cross-platform (Windows, macOS and Web). I started working on the project by creating a new project in Visual Studio 2022 and choosing Outlook Web Add-in as a template. Once the new project was created and ready, I pressed F5 to run the boilerplate, "Outlook.com" was launched in the browser (Edge) and it took forever to load! The loading spinner keeps turning.. then I realized, there was an error in the code and the execution was held until I choose 'Step Forward'. I was really puzzled why a fresh project could crash in the first attempt, then I quickly noticed the error was not in the project's code but in another .js file that was loading in Outook.com tab, checked the js URL just to find the domain it belongs to is unusual (at least for me),it reads something like "https://www.taboola.com/loader.js". To add insult to injury, this file was reloaded every time I clicked on a different email, it drove me crazy when I realized this "loader.js" was actually an ad injector, there was plenty of spammy ads on the right side of each email opened. Somehow, I was able to block this whole garbage by simply accessing the "Network" tab, find this .js devil then blocked it. Only then, I could continue to work on this project peacefully!
They did this with backup. Want to backup to local media? Why would you do that when we will back it up in one drive which you must pay for.
Let's be fair first, it works most of time (I know it's a low bar). And I actually prefer its aesthetics than the Outlook (classic) and Mail app.
Now, back to its bugs/issues:
1. Open an email in a search folder will not mark it as read. This is the biggest gripe I have. Since Outlook (new) does not provide any native way to add a label of "unread" on the sidebar, I created a search folder with "select a type = Unread mail" and added it to my favorite. However, it's almost unusable due to the bug mentioned above.
2. You CANNOT search non-ASCII (i.e. Chinese, Japanese, etc.) category (tag). You can add them, (and if you use a, say, Chinese client, the default color categories are literally in Chinese!) but searching these categories (or just click from a tagged email) returns nothing. This fucked me so badly when I categorized 1000+ emails before realizing.
3. The state of the client at various places are often not in sync. For example you may have cleared your unread email already but the icon on taskbar still shows unread dot. Or you opened multiple windows and some say you have 0, some say you have 5. Or within the same window, the inbox sidebar label says 0 but a search folder label for certain condition (say, from certain email address) says otherwise when it's impossible. And there is no refresh button -- so if that happens you have to re-open manually or click a random label and then go back and wish it fixes itself.
I'm sure there are lots of others, but these are more than bad enough.
I'm genuinely concerned how they can ship a software at this stage, particularly issue 1 and 2 are very easily reproducible and I've reported them multiple times through feedback with only canned reply, and they're still not fixed after months.
Yes, your safety and security from Microsoft.
It is so easy to instantiate and use old outlook that I really fail to understand what is their endgame with this killing of a top and well respected product.
This of course only works with exchange afaik, but why else would I use outlook.
The most annoying part is the times outlook automatically updated to new outlook, of which I was not notified and could not decline. I guess it vacuumed up all my email data those times, even though I “reverted” to legacy outlook
It is no accident that WPF has been reborn at BUILD 2024, as the 2nd official way to do Windows apps.
And in the end it hardly matters, as the business apps unit is now full of people that only understand Web, probably started using Windows when they joined Microsoft, and keep shipping stuff stuck into Web widgets.
Maybe this is to prepare us for slower new Outlook?
Try that checkbox: https://www.howtogeek.com/742678/how-to-turn-off-animations-...
Didn't know it moved from Office settings to Windows settings! Although now my Start menu animation is lost... I hate these tradeoffs.
About start menu animations, I actually prefer the UX without them. I press the Win key and the menu appears, no need to wait.
it seems to be the least bad version I've encountered for an exchange client that seems compatible with modern exchange
if I had super modern exchange and had to use the latest desktop client, I'd probably just use the webclient at this point as it's probably better
ultimately, I'd take gmail over any incarnation of MS mail apps these days (including outlook 2010)
And the "Block sender" button was missing for about a year until it was reintroduced (and now it is still missing from the mobile outlook app!). I always block sender instead of move to spam. Which MS wants to avoid people using because many spammers are their Office 365 customers too :(
I haven't used Office in over a decade. Just not a thing in startups. But teams seems to be a necessary evil to be able to talk with our customers who insist on using it. So I get exposed to that quite a bit. Horrible bit of software.
This whole "cloud" lingo serves to hide technological realities and privacy implications with the only goal to improve business.
ah bugger it, add to intune - required uninstall.
Also the cloud service now have the capability to save then retrieve the credentials in plain text making them a rich target for being compromised.
Why do businesses tolerate the spying and data collection? Is there no industrial espionage? A German university advised researchers not to use Skype due to the possibility of research theft.
It's a pretty dangerous game that MSFT is playing here. What goes up can come down.
Now there is really no way of verifying what kind of access they do with your personal email data.
Basically trying to push you to paid Exchange/Office365 subscriptions.
The more aggro these big tech cos are trying to move you from buying great products to paying for overpriced subscriptions, the closer we get to them trading at their historical PEs (down ~50% from today)
An example being cable companies. They should have no capability to own TV stations, media creators, news companies, the list goes on. Backbone is backbone, be it an internet connection, or a TV/video feed.
Back to Microsoft you can make an OS, or you can make apps, but not both. An OS being a 'backbone'.
Applies to Google. "Search" vs "Ads". Backbone versus 'stuff on top'.
Really, sadly, there are cases where co-mingled stuff makes perfect sense. But bad actors are why we can't have nice things.
I wonder, there have always been jokes about how the world would be a paradise without lawyers, but would that be more MBAs in the 21st? Whether cars, or computers, or even the ladder I recently bought that is junk, it really all comes down to MBAs.
Engineers input "that's not acceptable quality", and MBAs just tromp all over that.
MBAs, the "we can't have nice things" people.
Does Google search become a paid subscription product in your vision of separation of search vs ads?
I have no detail on what precisely need be done, typically that's where experts chime in. And no, that does not invalidate my opinion.
If for example, I get food poisoning regularly from the food I buy at a supermarket, then something must be done. The problem must be fixed. The food must be rendered safe. Which means "food producers must provide safe food" is a sensible response, and then food experts enact.
So back to Apple and Google? They're broken, as all synergistic orgs are. And yes this needs to be dealt with.
But you're missing something more important. I did not specify only them, but just general division for all corporate entities. This is much larger than Google or Apple or cable companies.
Playing devils advocate, the real problem is that such solutions enacted solely on the US stage only won't work. Instead it will simply shift power to externals. You'd need to get most countries on the planet to comply, else a competitive edge would be lost in the US.
Saying this as a European who has no say in the US system but definitely feels it’s international influence
You can choose to leave your mail on the server with all mail providers.
The only difference is that now Microsoft keeps a second copy of all your mails so they can do more AI on your data
Steady market share decline trend for the past 10+ years. Lovely stuff ;)
I hope more and more people vote with their wallets and go to other platforms and tools.
For non-techies, it is not immediate obvious what the downsides even are, or why they should matter.
but... if you want co-pilot... you have to have it.
All my exec's and their PA's want it. but.. they also want Offline access to their mail.
For some reason its MY FAULT they cant have both.
so very very shit.
The chatbot interface where you can ask basic questions is still missing in the old Outlook though. But you can use the web interface at https://copilot.microsoft.com to access your emails too.
Other than that I agree, the new outlook is terrible, and it's ridiculous that it doesn't support offline email. It's really nothing more but a wrapper for the web interface.
I'm not a huge fan of copilot either. It's not nearly as capable as they try to make it look. Unfortunately all the top dogs in our company are riding the AI hype train so they must all have it.
> ... Co-pilot ...
Make that three. And beware:
> The offloading ... removes the ability for security engineers or researchers to easily inspect what the client is doing
I don’t understand why people are still using their products, I am using Linux since many years and see no problem at all with that. Plus Apple for phone, but not sure about their privacy promises…
Everyone will hate this but whatever, internal company email is dead. It causes more issues than solutions. Phishing, spam, malware, etc. It's legacy tech.
The new outlook client is linking it with more modern medium specific communication such as loop, teams, sharepoint online, one drive etc.
Yeah I know, our Microsoft consultants are constantly spamming this "Use Teams not mail" BS. And the "Why are you not using edge yet?" stuff. I really hate the Microsoft approach where every technical person must also push all the marketing drivel.
However Teams has a major problem: Discoverability. In Outlook when you communicate a lot you can move your emails to custom folders to find them back easily. In Teams you can't. Every ad-hoc chat opens up some Sharepoint site somewhere and after using Teams for a couple years it means you have thousands of locations where your information could be. It's a huge mess and there is no way to manually categorise this to find back important stuff like you could with email.