Dear Microsoft,

I’ll admit that, as a Mac user who develops software for Linux at an open-source shop, I’m not exactly predisposed to being your biggest fan. But I think you’re mostly okay. You’re like Scott Brown — I wouldn’t vote for you, but I’m surprisingly okay with you.

There’s just one little thing… Outlook Web Access 2003. What happened there?

Did you ever realize that you’d leave people finding this as their best option for searching their email?

$ irb
>> require 'net/imap'
=> true

>> imap = Net::IMAP.new('mail.example.com')
> # snipped...

>> imap.login('user', 'password')
=> #<struct Net::IMAP::TaggedResponse tag="RUBY0003", name="OK", data=#, raw_data="RUBY0003 OK LOGIN completed.rn">

>> imap.select('INBOX')
=> #<struct Net::IMAP::TaggedResponse tag="RUBY0004", name="OK", data=#<struct Net::IMAP::ResponseText code=#, text=" SELECT completed.">, raw_data="RUBY0004 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed.rn">

>> imap.search('SUBJECT "top 25"')
=> [1160, 1161, 2755, 2834, 2857]

>> imap.fetch(1160, "BODY[HEADER]")
...

Yeah. That really wasn’t cool. And the thing is, search is a server capability (that Exchange supports!), so it’s not like it was something that webmail couldn’t support. (In your defense, though, Outlook Web Access 2003, every IMAP mail client I’ve ever tried wants to index gigs and gigs of email in that mailbox before I can use it, so you’re only a part of the problem. The fact that no one has ever made a good email client isn’t your fault.)