Outspring puts the final nail in QuickMail's coffin

Back in the summer of 1989, as an eager, green college intern for a major publishing company, I arrived on my first day of work to find that my office wasn't so much an office as it was a storage room. Sure, it had ample space and ventilation, but it was a glorified closet all the same -- home to my desk, shelves and boxes, and a few critical pieces of gear. Along with the network hubs for the floor, we had a rather sexy test system (a NeXT Cube, complete with 400dpi laser printer!) and an SE/30 running an unfamiliar email server. One of my tasks for the summer was to administer this server, which (considering the speed of delivery) bore the unlikely moniker "QuickMail."

With the ability to connect to other QM servers over intermittent dial-up links, offering gateways to public systems like AppleLink & CompuServe, and UUCP capability for Internet mail servers (yeah, old school), QuickMail Server and its companion client app made managing email for a small Mac LAN straightforward and easy. Future versions of the system expanded to offer webmail and POP compatibility, allowing for a heterogeneous mix of clients, but the original QM never lost its vintage UI or no-frills attitude.

Nearly 20 years later, Outspring, the inheritor of the QuickMail product line from original developer CE Software, has made it official: QuickMail is dead. Support for the product has ended, and users are encouraged to pony up the $39 to upgrade to Outspring Mail, the successor client -- as for the server, good luck (I'd recommend Kerio, Zimbra, EIMS or OS X Server, and Emailchemy to handle moving the user data). Farewell, QM; you and your sweetheart/nemesis Eudora enjoy your well-deserved retirement.

Written by Michael Rose.

[via Macintouch]
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