> Why not just remove the newsreader entirely, instead of just making it less
> useful than before?
Be careful what you wish for...
As a former developer of a commercial software package that integrated
(among other things) both a mail client and a news client, allow me to say
the following...
The vast majority of the people who pay for your software don't care about
the news client.
In fact, the people who decide which software the people who use your
software will use are oftentimes out and out opposed about the software
having a news client.
While, to a very large degree, a news client "falls out" of a proper
IMAP/MIME client, there is still work required to make it work properly.
The incremental revenue associated with a news client is nearly zero. The
incremental cost is not. This means that the margin of return for investing
time, energy, and resources in a news client is nearly zero.
And every bit of time, energy, and resources that goes into the news client
doesn't go into something else...that almost certainly has a higher
potential rate of returned.
Absent Microsoft managing to get someone like Simon Fraser to join their
staff (and since last I looked he'd gone to Netscape...so what are the
odds...), I suspect that we're more likely to see the news client eventually
go away rather than become the standard by which all other news clients are
judged. Which I personally find disappointing because I'd much rather have
a single application for all of my messaging needs.
So anyway...I wouldn't be too cavalier about "Why not just remove the
newsreader entirely"...
mikel
--
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To search the archives:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
