@jjoelson @matthewstoller I agree. One of the ways Mail very consequentially sucks, for example, is that searches visually appear complete when they are still in progress or when some error has occurred. So I tell a person, no, I’ve searched, I did not receive an e-mail from you, when in fact I have but Mail fooled me into thinking I hadn’t. You might argue this is just prioritizing simplicity—error messages are ugly, they confuse and upset lay users, but BAD SIMPLICITY IS JUST CHEAPING OUT. 1/

@jjoelson @matthewstoller Apple, when it cares to, is the master of developing ways to reconcile simplicity with function — LIKE MAKING ACTIVE KEY SHORTCUTS BLACK, INACTIVE ONES GRAY. 1980s Apple invested a great deal, tried lots of variations, before settling on that UI convention they’ve now abandoned and destroyed. Apple could develop ways of communicating the actual status of mail searches to users without just spitting scary log messages at them. BUT IT WOULD MEAN WORK, FOCUS, EXPENSE. 2/

@jjoelson @matthewstoller With Mail, Apple (1) eliminated the ability to decide what columns you wish to appear in the layout; and (2) eliminated the ability to search for what doesn’t appear. Very often, I want to search mails only with attachments, to find some file that was sent to me or I sent. It used to be easy in Apple Mail. Now it is impossible. I have to go to my mail provider’s web app. 3/

@jjoelson @matthewstoller You can no longer straightforwardly toggle to flag messages by clicking where the flag appears. On the Mac there’s a key shortcut, I think, but otherwise and on the phone you have to go through a menu then explicitly choose a color. Mail clients have done flagging since the mid 90s and defaulted to red. Apple just eliminated that, defying decades of habit. Flagging is now far less “simple”. 4/

@jjoelson @matthewstoller These are choices they make because iPhone became their flagship product, they embarked on a project to unify apps on the Mac to better resemble iPhone apps, regardless of what it does to functionality on the desktop. iPhoto was a much more capable app than iPhone-ported Photos, but “consistency” wins out. 5/

@jjoelson @matthewstoller They could invest to make apps consistent at limited functionality on the desktop but include more for serious work, but they just don’t, because in a very narrow sense, it doesn’t pencil. I am mad that Apple destroyed years of organizational work in iPhoto and Aperture and replaced it all with lobotomized Photos, but I’m still stuck on the ecosystem and unifying the codebase was cheap and consistent, so financially wasn’t it the right choice for them? 6/

@jjoelson @matthewstoller But if DoJ does its work, next time they pull shit like that I won’t stick. Then all of a sudden it will pencil for them to give a fuck again. /fin