MicrosoftEven if New Outlook had full feature parity with Outlook 365 native client application it is still too much like Outlook for web access (OWA).
I don’t like web interfaces for nearly anything. I tolerate them to the degree that’s necessary. Do I need a full desktop application for my ISP or my bank, on my desktop? No. So I deal with the website. Like all websites, it’s a means to an end. But all websites are websites.
All webmail applications are websites. They have web interfaces, web padding, web based ways of handling files and uploads and inline media and content. All webmail is inferior to a full featured email client.
New Outlook is webmail bundled into a React Native wrapper. It doesn’t even try that hard to fool the end user into believing that it’s a real desktop email client. All email accounts are processed through Microsoft’s servers to be passed through and displayed on the web based program instead of having mail pulled down directly from the providers server and displayed by the client. It’s the laziest thing from a Trillion dollar company that charges licensing fees per user in the corporate environment and in the consumer environment. The web code version has a cheaper, faster, shorter deployment for Microsoft and they get to host all of your third party data, so they get to touch all of your stuff. But do you get a discount for web flavored, child applications? Nope. No discount. Full price for half-assed so called application. Just like Microsoft couldn’t be bothered to create an instant messaging application as a native desktop client. They had to go web code and give us Teams. Anyone remember that you could have media rich messaging on the desktop from the 90s through 2000s with native desktop applications that weren’t nearly half as horrendous?
I don’t know how long it will be before all of Microsoft office applications are replaced with crap built on JavaScript, web code, and some framework (wrapper) that floats around pretending to be a desktop application.
I would literally rather take three lashes with a cane, in public, than to be subjected to New Outlook as a replacement for Outlook 365.
