Letters is a Mac email client that we hope to see one day

Filed under: Macintosh, E-mail, Apple

For some people, the built-in Mail.app on the Mac is all they need in an email client. For others, it is frustratingly close to being what they need, but lacking in some key areas.

The problem is that because Mail.app comes with every copy of OS X, and it's not a bad email client, the perception among the Mac development community is that there is no money to be made making a better Mac mail client. This is a case where "good enough" seems to be standing in the way of "great".

This scenario frustrated Brent Simmons (of NetNewWire fame) greatly. So greatly, in fact, that he was driven to write a blog post titled Email init begging the Mac development community to get together and collectively write a new, better email client. That post went up on Saturday, January 16, and a little over a week later, quite a bit has happened.

As part of the post, Brent created a mailing list for the yet-to-be-named app, which subsequently has been named Letters. A vote was also held to determine who would act as the President of the project. The role of president will be held by various people, and each president's job will be to marshall the project to the next major version release. The inaugural president for Letters will be John Gruber, who will hold that position until Letters 1.0 is released.

If you're interested in the philosophy behind Letters, check out the Letters vision document that first appeared on the mailing list. You can also follow Letters.app on Twitter.

Letters is a Mac email client that we hope to see one day originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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