"IMAP is just not a very rich protocol," Steve Conn, Exchange Server product manager, told ZDNet Australia during the company's Tech Ed conference.
Well, that one sentence may be right, but there's a long jump from "not very rich" to "not good" or even "not good enough". Good is an amalgam of many qualities, of which richness is only one. Others include ease of implementation (which rather conflicts with richness), interoperability and wide availability (both in terms of software and in terms of people's skills).
IMHO, IMAP has numerous failings, but all in all I think it's a remarkably good compromise.
--Arnt
