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From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: Desktop Mail in the University Environment
Message-ID: <1991Feb12.224313.4901@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 91 22:43:13 GMT
References: <3391@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <1991Feb11.180742.10056@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <3452@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
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In article <3452@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> jln@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John Norstad) writes:
>Someone wrote me a note today and asked how I thought Apple's plans to 
>support some kind of desktop mail as a built-in system feature affected 
>this whole discussion.  God, I don't know!  But it should be interesting.

Before I wrote Eudora, the director of my department asked Apple to give
us an idea of what their plans were in this direction.  Apple sent some
people who listened to what we had to say, and told us they were going
to release MacTCP.  Can you say "big help"?

Anytime I suggest enhancements to Apple software (eg, TCP Tool or SLIP)
someone from Apple protests loudly that Apple doesn't want to cut into
"third-party markets".

So my *guess* is that Apple may write a mail protocol for AppleTalk,
or an inter-application communication specification for sending mail, but
that they won't come out with their own mail application.

Of course, there's always the possibility that the people I've talked to
at Apple are mistaken or lying about Apple's reluctance to compete with
third parties.
--
Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu  UUCP: uunet!uiucuxc!uiuc.edu!s-dorner