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Apple Mail Engineering Manager Terry Blanchard Joins Readdle to Work on Popular Email Client 'Spark'

Defthand said:
It’s curious when significant contributors leave Apple to explore emerging ideas elsewhere. One would think that Apple is encouraging its product managers to copy useful features or improve on them.
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A helpful decoder ring when reading about Apple:

1) "Product managers" are marketing employees who sit in on some high level design meetings and liaise with the marketing management chain. No engineers report to them. They do not own the features. They do not run the show. It is a fluff title.
2) "Engineering managers" are engineering managers who are on the hook for everything related to the feature. The engineers report to them. And they frequently do at least bits of engineering themselves.

Any time you see anything attributed to a product manager, feel free to roll your eyes and move on.
 
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You can't blame the guy for leaving. Working on Apple Mail for the past several years has got to be one of the most boring jobs someone could have. What have they really done besides adding filtering and mail drop? The only reason most people use it is because it's the default app used on iOS and Apple has locked down being able to change defaults. And even when I've tried to use a different email app, it usually get swallowed up by a bigger company and then shut down. I wish Apple would just make mail good. I wish I could better prioritize corrspondence with reminders.
 
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mave1969 said:
Mail had engineering? And management?? Who knew???
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Someone had to update it every time Google effed with their IMAP authentication protocol ;)

I think the default mail apps (Mac and iOS) are decent, and I use them happily, but it shouldn't be hard for Apple to add more features. What did they have, just this guy and a small team working on it? I'd leave too if I were him. His new job sounds exciting.
 
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Finally, I'm tired of how Spark read emails isn't synchronised across devices most of the time and hopefully they'll fix some other annoying things with Spark
 
Mail in the corporate world using Exchange is lousy. I also have random problems with opening/accessing attachments, annoying text formatting issues with indented reply text, text expanders not doing their thing right in a Mail compose window vs any other text input windows, new mail badging...
If Apple get anybody else to take over Mail then I'm good with that.
 
DrumApple said:
Don't let the door hit ya - the Mail app SUCKS, time for someone new.
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Yeah....cause it's the blokes fault if apple does not invest or prioritise Mail development .....maybe that is why he is leaving ?
 
dogslobber said:
Outlook on the Mac sucks terribly but Exchange seems to have bitten deep into the buttocks of corporate America so you can't escape it. Apple Mail support for Exchange is lukewarm at best.
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I honestly don't understand why Apple ignores this fact. Full functionality with Microsoft Exchange servers is mandatory for so many Apple Mail users and has been for so long that the absence is galling.
 
After they jacked my iCloud password, I've stayed with the stock email app. But honestly, the stock email app has been abysmal... for over a year, Push didn't work for me. Now that it's finally fixed, I still have no colour code for which account messages came in on. This means my work and personal email are not distinguished without going into their respective inboxes... usability fail.
 
sudo1996 said:
I don't think you've been looking carefully enough. A lot has changed, particularly involving account setup, calendar and notes integration, macOS Server, and iCloud stuff. I also feel like it's gotten more stable on Mac.
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sorry, my comment was ill conceived but I do not feel like the mail app has evolved enough in the nearly 17 years I have been using it. Yes, under the hood it has gone thru a lot... and lately it seems more stable, but I'm still not using gmail with it. Search has gotten worse, and rebuilding the index does not seem to help. Search used to be great... shame. My iMac broke back in Dec and been using my PC since with Outlook and I'm much happier. Its much more feature rich and built for business.
 
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Michaelgtrusa said:
Why did he leave Apple? Readdle is on fire.
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He probably finally got bored sitting in his office with nothing to do but play Sudoku all day. Apple Mail hasn't really improved much over the years. I still have to fish out good emails from the Spam folder and my mailbox rules only sometimes work and then randomly stop working all together.
 
Hi guys,

First of all, thank you for the comments and curiosity.
As a partner and a VP of Marketing at Readdle I feel that I should clarify a few things.

1. We have a very clear vision what Spark should be and how we can build the future of email with it.
2. Terry has a phenomenal engineering experience which is highly needed for us as we scale (I guess Apple Mail app is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide and it's one of the most reliable pieces of software out there).
3. Apple is one of the best companies when it comes to security and privacy - we will be ramping up our own security because email is very personal - Terry brings great expertise to that area too.

Thank you once again! I cannot wait to show you all the cool stuff that we are doing here.
 
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