MailForge and the Future

[bengi3]

In case this site disappears I remind you that we have a Facebook page where I am listing all sources, mailing lists, forums etc... so that we can keep in touch.

Ben

https://www.facebook.com/WeWantEudora

[mbierly]

Hi everyone!

I'd like to introduce myself to the group. My name is Mike Bierly. My business partner is Rob Burdine and we are the "new guys" that Matt has asked you to take it easy on! Rob is the business and customer relations expert. I have always been a developer and will be running that side of the business.

I do apologize that there has been a longer gap in making the transition than everyone would have liked - myself included. To be upfront with all of you, here's what has been going on. From the point at which we officially took possession of MailForge from Matt (the signing over of the rights to the MailForge code and receiving all of the code itself) it has simply taken us longer to go thru the process of getting a new company formed and getting all of the paperwork filed with the government than we expected.

The company that we established for MailForge is Macsimize Software (http://www.macsimizesoftware.com). We are in the process of getting the site ready right now. Our expectation is that we will have something up and running early to mid next week. The first priority will be to get the basics set up - email setup for support, questions, all of those things. To me, the basics are getting forums and an issue/enhancement reporting system available.

We have some ideas of where we want to take MailForge but most importantly we need to hear from you about issues you may be having, new features that are needed, etc. Matt has been gracious enough to let us communicate with you through his forums. I ask that you don't overload this forum with suggestions for us but please wait until you can submit them through the new site. Also with the new site, we will be looking for your input about things such as release cycles, which platforms to support, etc.

I would like to hear opinions about the best way to communicate with the community as a developer. As a user of numerous development tools, I have experienced companies who publish a roadmap, fail to hit the dates/features on the roadmap and the release comes out waaaayyy past the advertised date. I have also been part of communities where updates (no specific features and/or fixes) are specified but a new release is put out every 'x' days. Lastly, the type of company that puts out a couple of fixes in the first six months of the year and spends the last six working on a new version so that the users have the opportunity to upgrade about every 12 months.

Basically, I'm trying to say 'been there, done that' as a user of a tool. Recognizing that no company executes perfectly, what are the most important things you look for? We want to build a great relationship with our community, so we need feedback from you about the things we do well and the things we need to improve on.

The last thing I would like to address is the lifetime license. We haven't made up our minds about whether we will offer new lifetime licenses going forward. We WILL honor the lifetime licenses that are already in existence. We want to earn your trust that MailForge will continue to be around for a long time and that it will be an excellent product. The first step in earning that trust is to make sure that those who committed to MailForge by investing in the lifetime license know that we remain committed to them as well. To everyone else, we hope to earn that trust by responding to feedback you provide to us and correcting issues you may find in a timely manner.

I hope that the next thing to report is that the new website is ready!

Take care and we'll be speaking again soon.

-Mike

[ltking@hawaii.rr.com]

Aloha Mike:

WELCOME!!

I for one am VERY GLAD to see your posting on these forums.

Regarding the "timeliness:" No matter how you think its going to turn out to be, it will turn out to be different!

We look forward to working with you on the further polishing of MailForge. There are still some rough edges that are keeping me from using it exclusively and, in particular, one (for me) very significant conflict with another piece of Macintosh software (regarding which, to be brutally honest, I have not heard a word from that programming group either!).

May I make a suggestion regarding communicating with "us." Pick an interval (unless some earth shattering development has occurred) - every two weeks or every month perhaps - and give "us" an update. As I've mentioned on these forums several times previously, the model I speak of is that adopted by a small group called QSA Toolworks who are bringing a somewhat obscure but amazingly beautiful relational database program called Helix into a fully functional form under Mac OS X. You can see their basic communication modus operendi at http://www.qsatoolworks.com/3everything ... aug10.html.

Again, WELCOME; I for one am very, very glad to see your post.

Sincerely,
Lonnie King

[t-rex2020]

Hi Mike

And hello from Ireland. I would like to echo Lonnie's message. Thank you for introducing yourselves and saying hello. I wish you the best.

I'm still clinging on for dear life to Eudora on 10.6.8 - MailForge is just too buggy to use at all for me.

Regards
Billy

[AptDoc]

Hi Mike, it's nice to meet you.

My name is Todd Fiegel and I, like many here, have been on the forum for many years. From the first few versions of Mailforge, I've never had it work reliably. I bought a license early on in an effort to support development but in recent years my Mailforge interaction has been in reading all forum messages and replying here and there.

I gave up waiting about six months after Lion roared and converted everything to Mail. I'd still love to see a Eudora replacement and will use it as my primary client at the point that it usable for that purpose. Mail really isn't bad but it's no Eudora, and also like many in this amazingly stalwart and loyal community that still participates here, I have 20 years of archives in Eudora and miss its power features.

For me, there are 2 paramount requisites. The first is that for those of us who have gone to Mail, easy import of all data will be available soon and into the future. This was a feature that had been planned but not yet included. I suspect that for a majority—Mail being by far the most used client for Mac users—Mailforge won't even be an option without this facility. I've learned to work with Mail and will simply continue to use it if easy conversion/integration isn't available.

The second is the elimination of the sometimes-months-long lack of communication between developers and this community (all of whom are here because we WANTED Mailforge to succeed). Missed launch dates are par for software development. But request after request for information were often made from many of us, only to be ignored completely, and pledges of more information to come at future dates more often than not were (seemingly) casually disregarded. This, of course, left many of us feeling completely abandoned (many times over these 5 years) and resulted in understandable resentment from what should be considered the greatest resource IDS had: hungry, involved, and loyal users who wanted nothing more than for the project to proceed and were willing to repeatedly install/uninstall/re-install new versions of what really never made it past beta software.

This isn't a requisite for me, but I have one more suggestion. Get the Mac version running reliably and with enough Eudora-like features included that it becomes compelling without trying to maintain parity with our Windows brethren. There really aren't good Mail alternatives for us...and, again, we are here because we want something like Eudora. Eudora 7 for Windows was much more usable than Mac v. 6, plus there are Outlook and other client in use on the Windows side. The more delays, the more you will lose the Macheads who have any optimism that success is reachable. It won't be too long before there will be very much Mac market left for you to penetrate if, indeed, your intention is to develop for the platform.

You're here now and I'm ecstatic to see that. I wish you the very best success and am confident that most of us who are still here after all this time feel the same. If you will respect the commitment this community has made for all these years, I'm sure you will enjoy in return an ardent core of early adopters who are more than willing to help in any way we can.

I am hoping for your greatest success—and I look forward to it!

Todd

[OdyX]

Hi Mike, thanks for the feedback. That sounds great.

Essential productivity features of Eudora:

-Classic interface (multi-windows).
-"Special - Find" window features.
-"Windows - Personalities" window features.
-"Mailbox" menu/submenus features.

Updates: once a year can be a good approach. Just keep people informed of the progress the day 1 of each month.

Now, if experience teaches something, please hire the best possible programmers to do it right. Probably this is the last opportunity; it is now or never. If I may say so, Software MacKiev are serious and efficient Mac-programming professionals, having extensive experience producing great Mac applications and have been hired by top companies to release Mac applications: Britannica, IBM-SPSS, GraphPad Prism, GraphPad InStat, WorldBook, KidPix, etc.
http://www.mackiev.com

Looking forward to it.
Best luck.

[edsora]

Excellent news! Greetings from 20 miles south of the London 2012 Olympic Stadium.

I heartily endorse all comments made above; particularly Todd's about concentrating on the Mac version. I'm keeping Eudora going on 10.6.8. I have been hoping to upgrade to Mountain Lion about 10.8.2. By the time Apple gets to 10.8.4 I will be getting nervous if MailForge (?) is not ready.

MailForge 3 is a heck of an improvement on 1 and 2 but still not ready to be used as my mail application. For example, it cannot sort properly in date order and all new mail has zero size. I sorely miss a customisable toolbar so that i can drag mail around.

Functionality: I would have thought it best to concentrate on de-bugging it as it stands without adding to the functionality. Once it functions correctly as is, then add to the functionality.

Communication: regular posts will be essential if those of us who have been hanging around loyally for 4 years plus are not going to become incurably cynical very quickly. E-mailing is simple and guarantees we will all read your news. Twitter would be ideal for simply and regularly convincing us that there is life at your end. 140 characters a week would not be a burden for you and would reassure your loyal Eudorans that progress really is being made.

[bengi3]

... and put ASAP something different, at least a blank page, in your welcome url, pet food is not really consitent with software development

Bem

[Ithaca]

Mike, thanks for the taking over this task.
What you have not told us is how familiar you are with the original Eudora.

Basil

[Simpsomatt]

What you have not told us is how familiar you are with the original Eudora.

That's a good question, which leads to another question: Is it still the intent of MailForge to provide an email client which provides as much of Eudora's functionality as possible, to satisfy those of us who haven't found any other email client that we can love, even if Lion may have forced us to grudgingly accept one? Or will it just be yet another email client?

When Infinity first announced Odysseus, they promoted it as "a Eudora replacement" or similar words. At some point in its lifespan, maybe when the name changed to MailForge, that phrase disappeared from the website, and MailForge was just advertised as "an email client". Also, I think I remember some discussion in the forum from the developers that maybe providing all of Eudora's functionality was no longer a goal.

If MailForge is going to be successful, it needs to have something that differentiates it from all those other mail clients that are not quite Eudora (or nowhere close to it).