They don't need to add new fluff to improve it, there is plenty there already that desperately needs to be improved. Just a couple of examples that immediately come to mind:

- Message tags have potential to be extremely useful, in their current implementation they don't do much other than color code your message. The dialog for managing the tags themselves was an afterthought, there is no way to re-order without directly editing the config, no way to assign hotkeys, no way to customize font styles other than choosing from a tiny fixed color palette.

- Rich text (html) editing is painful. You are always one keystroke away from changing your entire paragraph to the style of an adjacent paragraph. You can't define custom formats, or even edit the default formats. Even the "use last-picked color" convenience option in the color picker requires the same number of clicks as picking a new color.

- Editing the message source directly is another poorly designed dialog, it shouldn't be a dialog at all.

- The address book and contact management is another embarrassing afterthought, one area where you'd expect an email client to excel.

- Getting a consistent folder view is tedious, the "apply columns to..." tool doesn't work well and ignores saved searches altogether.

- Bugs in the account configuration have persisted for years.

- Some things open in tabs, others open in a new window.

I guess now that they've officially given up, I can start looking for alternatives instead of thinking they will ever fix these things.

They don't clarify what "modern apps" we are supposed to switch to other than pointing at the Chrome store, or even what exactly a "modern app" is. Some would say a "modern app" could mean something like GMail or iGoogle... oh I guess that's not it. I guess it was only a matter of time until this ongoing slaughter of google products got to one I cared about, fuck em.

They are doing a pretty good job of training millions of people not to get too attached to anything they make, because it will likely disappear someday with no justification (along with your data).

I didn't earn a living wage working at Burger King in 1994 either. So what has changed exactly?

A quick google shows fast food starting pay is right around $8/hour, retail at $9/hour, so I'm having trouble generating any outrage over Apple paying $12/hour.

Even for the non-genius bar employees, is $11.91/hour starting pay for retail supposed to be shocking or what? I worked many jobs just out of high school in the 90's for $5/hour, it's been a long time since I was paid hourly but am I really that disconnected that I think 12 bucks an hour seems fair?

The internet exposes people to a disproportionate number of loud, partisan hacks. The reality is, anyone with any bit of independent thinking condemns the Obama administration as harshly (or more harshly, since we thought he would know better) as GWB. Or maybe it's just the people I keep company with. Either way, I'm done playing this game, "none of the above" will be getting my vote this fall. Electing the least bad of two terrible choices just slows our downward spiral, we're still going the wrong direction and we may be better off hitting rock bottom as soon as possible so the oblivious masses take notice, until then nothing will change.

One of the "does" may be Walt Disney, you know, for inciting nuclear war...

Also:

Ah, I see. That comes out of your pocket though, right? Or perhaps to be one of "the ones you buy from" I need to eat the cost of supporting obsolete software myself, you know because I care about the users?

As a developer, I really don't give a rats ass if IE is lightweight or fast. All I care is that I don't have to dedicate extra time on layout or code that works flawlessly in 4 other browsers. IE9 is damn near at that point already, with IE10 we will have finally arrived.

After looking through the list I am surprised at how few of them caught my eye. At $185k a pop I thought, wrongly, that the list would be of a bit higher quality than your typical domain name goldrush when a new tld is released, but I'm not sure there are really any on that list that I would consider registering a domain with. The only ones I wouldn't mind are .web and .tech, but I'm rather indifferent when we've always had a tld (.net) that encompasses both of those.

Many just don't sound right, like .dog, the only domain names I can come up with that don't sound ridiculous followed by "dot dog" are generic types of dogs, like sheep.dog or hunting.dog, and even then the singular doesn't make any sense, hunting.dogs sounds much better. .sport is another WTF, whoever ends up with blood.sport may be content, but there's nothing after that. And .website is great for those times when you don't know if the website you're on is a website.

.sex and .porn were entirely predictable, and I have no doubt that .rocks and .sucks sites will soon plague us all, but I think .inc and .llc are maybe the biggest winners so far, as a .com alternative they should rake in big bucks, but it makes me wonder why we didn't have these 20 years ago.

I wish they whould have restricted it to 4 chars max, maybe even 3, the majority of this is more .travel and .museum tlds that will be about as successful.

My biggest surprise is that the two things I most expected to happen did not, at least not yet. I thought for sure that the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL at a minimum would be the first in line. It seems like a natural fit to have yankees.mlb, patriots.nfl, etc, it looks like .MLS is the only one so far. And that there would be some common file extensions registered like .txt, .exe, .ttf, .pdf, .zip, and seriously no .mp3 ?

And still no indication of a clownpenis.fart any time soon...

"Calment smoked from the age of 21 (1896) until the age of 117, only five years before her death."

WTF?

A better question is, how do so many of these projects have budgets in the several hundred million dollar range? And we're not even talking about the feds, this is at the city level, ONE CITY! And it seems this article is giving them more credit than they deserve, other articles claim they are $1 billion over budget, not the total cost mind you but that is the overrun, and another 7 to 10 years to go on top of that.

About 2 years ago I read NYC was something like $600m over budget on some timekeeping software called "City Time" (or something similar). I'm not clear if this is the same project, but it looks like this is something else, seriously WTF?

I would have to work full time for 10 years to finish a $1 million software project myself. Looking at what I produce, or any developer can produce, in a single year makes it hard to comprehend how even the most complex software ever conceived of would take someone over 10,000 years working full time to complete.

A fucking billion dollars? And then we get to listen to these same beaurocrats lecture about how critical the deficit is and responsible spending that, as they order another hundred $350 million dollar jets that will never see combat. It just makes me sick to my stomach. This is the shit we sacrifice 1/3rd of our income for.