Thunderbird is definitely not "great"; the reason why it could appear to be so, is that it's a historical product in a stagnant market (the fact that its user base is growing doesn't necessarily imply that the market is growing as well).
I actually think it's a pretty good example of poor development strategy, specifically, they develop new features without polishing what is a very unpolished product - how on the earth they've spent resources on integrating a useless IM client, when there are tons of things that need work? Who knows. In the meanwhile:
1. using new windows when writing emails, especially in the context of a tabbed application, is a pain in the back. like this wasn't enough, a second window opens with the progress tracker, when transmitting. This means that every time one writes and sends an email, TB uses for a few seconds three separate windows.
2. the address book is buggy, and overall terrible, and it's been clearly untouched for a long time.
2a. it also uses as backend the single most braindamaged file format that JWZ has ever seen in his nineteen year career. as long as it works it wouldn't matter, but it actually does if somebody would like some interoperability.
3. when they updated the look and feel on a "major" release, they made the recipient email search much slower. since that release, I have to deliberately slow down my typing, otherwise TB doesn't find the recipients.
4. with another major release, they broke the shortcut for attaching a file.
All of these are basic functionalities.
Besides, the reason behind #1 is that the code is terrible to work with - some developer offered to work it out, but resigned after some weeks of code-diving.
I surely don't say that it's a terrible product (every product has snags), but I would say that, given the lack of resources, the poor planning, and the landscape of the market, TB is a product that does the job, but nothing more.
I actually think it's a pretty good example of poor development strategy, specifically, they develop new features without polishing what is a very unpolished product - how on the earth they've spent resources on integrating a useless IM client, when there are tons of things that need work? Who knows. In the meanwhile:
1. using new windows when writing emails, especially in the context of a tabbed application, is a pain in the back. like this wasn't enough, a second window opens with the progress tracker, when transmitting. This means that every time one writes and sends an email, TB uses for a few seconds three separate windows. 2. the address book is buggy, and overall terrible, and it's been clearly untouched for a long time. 2a. it also uses as backend the single most braindamaged file format that JWZ has ever seen in his nineteen year career. as long as it works it wouldn't matter, but it actually does if somebody would like some interoperability. 3. when they updated the look and feel on a "major" release, they made the recipient email search much slower. since that release, I have to deliberately slow down my typing, otherwise TB doesn't find the recipients. 4. with another major release, they broke the shortcut for attaching a file.
All of these are basic functionalities.
Besides, the reason behind #1 is that the code is terrible to work with - some developer offered to work it out, but resigned after some weeks of code-diving.
I surely don't say that it's a terrible product (every product has snags), but I would say that, given the lack of resources, the poor planning, and the landscape of the market, TB is a product that does the job, but nothing more.