Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / September 2007

I think calling it an "arrival" is overly optimistic.  Having been
vastly disappointed by Penelope, I would certainly be happy to see a
better alternative, and I hope "Infinity Data Systems" succeeds with the
development of Odysseus.  But I certainly wouldn't bet on it.

Their website gives a distinct feeling that there's not much behind it.  
And I don't think they have a solid business plan trying to develop a
new email client from the ground up at a time when there's a solid trend
away from desktop email clients towards web-based systems like Gmail.
Personally, I hate browser-based email, so I'm not saying the trend is a
good one, but it's where the market is going.

If there was any chance of profitability, Qualcomm would have figured
out a way to spin off the Eudora business and keep it going.

Not really.

Anyone can write a paragraph on a web page, and that's all Odysseus is
at this point. Penelope is at least a real (albeit broken) piece of
software.

I find it amusing that they call out HTML rendering as something that
needs fixing. I would put that at the very bottom of my list of problems
in Eudora for the modern net. Making a MUA do complex rendering on mail
is a very bad thing, and modifying Eudora's current approach wouldn't
even be on my list of things that need repair and/or updating in Mac
Eudora.

It does to me too, despite what others have said in here. I don't know why
the pessimism...

Let's hope they can indeed create a better alternative to Penelope.

Paolo

"Martin S." <nosp@m.net> wrote in news:nosp-
719CF0.17384305092007@news.simnet.is:

Odysseus was Penelope's husband, according to Homer at least :-)
She waited for his arrival for many many long years...

It does, I do hope they'll put up first the beta by Christmas.

I think such a project can indeed be profitable, but not for the large
corporations, rather for a smaller entrepreneurial teams, small companies.
In those corporations you have to support layers, marketing people, CEO's,
accountants and so forth; that all ads up to the product price so
developers receive very small percent of it. (The irony is, most of them
think in terms of a paycheck, and are really grateful for the cubical...)

Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd try to answer a couple of questions regarding Odysseus.

1. The Odysseus project is being funded internally by our company.
Having been in the custom software development market for nearly a
decade, we believe we have the experience and resources to properly
develop this application.

Unfortunately, most of our work having been done in the custom software
market, we can't wave a list of the companies we've worked for due to
NDAs. However, suffice it to say that we have worked for all types of
companies, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies and major
universities.

2. Although there has been a major shift toward web-based email, and
web-based services in general, there's still a significant portion of
the market that relies on email applications for their business. One day
that may change... but we're not betting on it. And even if we're wrong,
that day is still a ways down the road.

3. One thing Qualcomm made very clear when they announced the decision
to discontinue Eudora was that it had nothing to do with profitability.
They said that Eudora was a profitable division.... just not one that
fit in with the rest of their business.... something everyone else has
realized for years. :-)

4. The reason we used HTML as one example of something that we would
like to improve has nothing to do with how high or low we rate that
feature. Its simply one feature that we've commonly heard as a
complaint, and a reason many Apple Mail users list for their switch to
Mail from Eudora. Personally, there's a number of other limitations that
I find much more annoying than the HTML rendering.

We are encouraging individuals to visit our forums to make
recommendations/requests for features they'd like to see improved and/or
added.

I hope this answers a few questions. If anyone has anymore, I'll be
happy to answer them to the best of my ability. In the meantime, we'll
be posting information on our forums, as well as to our mailing list as
we achieve significant milestones.