Take for instance, MacPorts – a fantastic way of running some F/OSS on OS X.  Doesn’t work.  Experimental support is built in to nightlies… which I guess is getting there.  Little Snitch simply disappeared.  Programs with ktexts – kernel extensions – like SoundFlower and SteerMouse are also dead in the water.

Other more commonly used programs die as well.  MS Office can’t update.  The Aptna IDE is a non-starter.  In fact, you’ll find that a large percentage of your software works in a large percentage of the way you expect but… wait… what’s that?  Why does this particular function no longer work?

Granted, Snow Leopard won’t be out until September probably, so there’s plenty of time for programmers to get their code up to date.  As one of those programmers, I can tell you that it’s going to be a bit of a battle.  I’m running into major roadblocks with Twistori Desktop and the ScreenSaver.framework package that differs a lot from Leopard->Snow Leopard.

In fact, none of your screensavers on Leopard will run in Snow Leopard.  Just an FYI.

Anyway, that’s enough of a rant.  I keep going back and forth between downgrading or not.  I need to start developing heavily in Snow Leopard to make sure that Multiplex and Twistori Desktop are ready.  However, I also need to push solid releases sooner than Snow Leopard will be released to our Leopard install base.

Hmm… what to do…

With the totality with which people rely on Gmail’s threaded messaging interface, it’s incredible to me that there are a total of ZERO email clients – Windows or Mac – that include the same functionality.  It’s high time for a new email client.  But who will build it??

Well, not me obviously.  Not yet anyway – and that’s not necessarily a good thing.  I really shouldn’t be throwing stones at the development community for not doing a hard task that I’m not willing to take on myself.  Still, there is a gaping hole in the market.

Unfortunately, writing an email client program is no easy feat.  It’s incredibly difficult, actually, which is why Outlook is so heavily relied upon, Entourage is warned away from, and Apple’s Mail.app is universally love-hated – but the alternatives are almost non-existant.  The simple problem of handling massive gigabytes of data – and doing it in a fast, intelligent way – is something that would need to be solved even before one could start thinking of writing a client app.  Want to know why Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft do it so well?  Massive servers that crunch data all day, every day.  So imagine taking your outdated computer and asking it to crunch the same data.  Those are some difficult algorithms.

Still, there is a glaring omission in email clients.  Threaded conversations in Gmail have all but proven that much email – that we care about anyway – is conversational.  It doesn’t make sense to not have the entire conversation at your fingertips.  Some clients attempt to thread incoming emails, but they leave out your outgoing emails – that’s insane!  Conversations are rarely held on your email client without your voice – it’s so massively important that it be part of the thread!

The client that I currently have the most hope for is Postbox. It’s threaded conversations are almost impossible to get at, but once you do – YES! – there they are.  Postbox has done a fantastic job of indexing email, and obviously has the ability to understand a conversation thread.  Why is the thread not managed immediately?  Why does it take twelve clicks to get to it?  Why is it only available when I search!?

One of the beautiful things of threaded conversations is that I may have a single line item with a (12) next to it.  12 new emails – all contextually related – in a single thread.  It unclutters my inbox!  It makes things readable!  And best of all, it allows me to read – all at once – all responses to a single thought.

Postbox – if you’re listening – THREAD ME PLEASE!  Until then, I’ll continue to use Mailplane – a great app, but a fake desktop client.

Man, it’s time for a new email client.