Item — HN Reader

I pay for Fastmail and I'm using the Fastmail desktop app right now.

It's much faster than Thunderbird so far for me, and more convenient than a browser tab for me, and I'm especially liking the interconnections among mail, contacts, and calendar. The best feature for me is being able to click an email link anywhere on any web page, and have it lead to the Fastmail app.

I do have two questions. The app on my macOS system is using 700MB RAM; is that for Electron? The majority of RAM is showing as GPU rendering; is that for font smoothing?

1 comments

It is Electron. Sadly this is usual for Electron applications, the company saves developers and you pay with hardware. Software scales well, so investing in development would be much more efficient.

It is not strictly necessary to waste so much resources with Electron. But usually it is, because optimization also requires developer time. Even rather good Electron applications like Signal require much more resources than a native application (Gtk, Qt, Cocoa).

The right choice would be by Fastmail to cooperate directly with Evolution, Thunderbird, K-Mail, Apple Mail and help them were needed.

> The right choice would be by Fastmail to cooperate directly with Evolution, Thunderbird, K-Mail, Apple Mail and help them were needed.

Funny, I've actually been sitting literally right next to the Apple Mail developers when Fastmail developers (who were sitting on my other side and across from me) helped them make Apple Mail work better with Fastmail and other modern mail servers, in various ways.

Fastmail is very active in the IETF, creating new RFCs that standardize modern email protocols [1] and adapting existing protocols to user needs [2].

Unlike Gmail and Outlook/Exchange cough cough, who I cannot even reach for serious bugs.

> native application (Gtk, Qt, Cocoa)

Do you know a cross-platform app (Windows, Mac, and Linux) that has many millions of users and is implemented natively on each of these platforms (Gtk, Qt, Cocoa, Win32 etc., respectively), not with JavaScript? I can't think of any.

There are limits in the real world. Software teams don't scale well. Corporate agendas are set 5 management levels above the developers. Most of the apps you mention have very serious technical dept that would require a complete rewrite to get out of. I speak from first hand experience of 25 years working on 3+ different mail clients, most of them with millions of users. Seasoned developers usually made their decision after much deliberation. The "right choice" (your words above) is often far more complex than an observer can possibly know.

Please don't throw peanuts at the developers from the peanut gallery [3][4].

[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8621.html [2] Many like https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8474.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_gallery [4] https://tenor.com/de/search/muppets-peanut-gallery-gifs

> Do you know a cross-platform app (Windows, Mac, and Linux) that has many millions of users and is implemented natively on each of these platforms (Gtk, Qt, Cocoa, Win32 etc., respectively), not with JavaScript? I can't think of any.

If you consider Mac and Windows sufficiently cross-platform, any of the major Adobe apps.

> If you consider Mac and Windows sufficiently cross-platform

No, that would make using the Linux desktop impossible, if you need that app.

Gimp. Inkscape. Wireshark. Just to name Gtk and Qt examples of relevant applications.

I listed native apps for all of these platforms. That’s the solution.

A less efficient alternative would be using one of these toolkits on the others platforms. Lets say Gtk? Common well known Gtk apps like Gimp or Inkscape excel well on all of these. And are better on macOS and Windows than any kind of Electron.

Back when Chrome wasn’t considered a memory hog it used native toolkits of each platform! Yes. Gtk, Coca and Win32. That was a an effort. And yes. It was fast and convenient.

Put back to begin. Nobody asked for a fat Electron build. They searched and found a bad solution for a problem which doesn’t exist. You gave the very best example for the way to go.

PS: And ** Apple for turning off the APIs for Push Mail Notification on iOS. Now mail providers need to consider own apps for iOS. APPLE! Just turn on Push Mail for all other than iCloud!

We’re living in a world with hacks for problems that never should have existed.

The right choice would be by Fastmail to cooperate directly with Evolution, Thunderbird, K-Mail, Apple Mail and help them were needed.

Most of those don't handle (catch-all) aliases correctly such as letting you compose with any aliases you're allowed to send from (without creating individual identities) or responding with the correct alias for the From address.

They also have subpar search.

What makes you think they don't?