QuickMail
QuickMail is a mail system (server and client) from the US manufacturer Outspring.
QuickMail was developed by CE-Software as an e-mail system for company networks at the end of the 1980s (i.e. before the spread of the Internet ) . It was originally only intended for the Apple Macintosh , later Windows clients and even later Windows servers were developed.
It offered the full scope of services of a mail system from the “pre-Internet era”, i.e. its own dial-in options to access mail via modem while on the move ( i.e. mailbox functionality), enabled the networking of several company locations via telephone lines and the integration of faxes and online services that were common at the time like Connect or AppleLink .
The communication between mail server and client took place using a separate protocol that was based on AppleTalk and LocalTalk .
With the advent of the Internet, gateways also made it possible to send to Internet mail servers based on the SMTP protocol , later QuickMail was completely reprogrammed, and thus itself became an Internet mail server based on SMTP.
QuickMail thus came into direct competition with programs such as Eudora and the AIMS or EIMS mail servers, which were available free of charge or as cheap shareware . Since QuickMail was quite expensive but did not offer enough advantages compared to free solutions in direct comparison and also had to struggle with database inconsistencies with high user numbers , the sales figures collapsed. CE software continued to shut down development until it was completely discontinued around 2002.
Nevertheless, there was a significant installed base of the mail system, the users of which were urgently waiting for updates.
In 2004, CE-Software sold the rights and source texts for QuickMail to the newly founded company Outspring, which assessed the market potential positively and is developing QuickMail further. At first, the vulnerable database concept of QuickMail was changed, whereby the product achieved a stability that was barely achieved in CE times. In 2006 Outspring offered various anti- spam solutions for QuickMail , some of which offered daily updates for a fee, in order to secure additional income.
However, in mid-2008 Outspring announced that it would no longer be able to develop the code base any further, as it is based on CodeWarrior and CodeWarrior cannot generate any Intel code that current Apple computers require. A continuation would have to change z. B. on Xcode , which would practically be equivalent to rewriting.
Outspring left it open as to whether a new version of the Quickmail server would be programmed from scratch at a later date. As a mail client, Outspring recommended its own product Outspring Mail, which was first introduced in 2007 and offered extensive import functions from QuickMail. However, the mail client was not accepted by previous Quickmail users and only sold moderately, so the further development was discontinued at the end of 2009.
Outspring develops Apple iOS applications today .
The last versions of Quickmail (both client and server) can still run on Snow Leopard Mac OS X , but require Rosetta . The end of Quickmail's service life is therefore in sight, since Mac OS X Lion OS X no longer contains Rosetta.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Outspring: QuickMail Discontinued July 25, 2008 , July 25, 2008, English