I'm mad about Outlook replacing my Mail app, and here's why

Microsoft is apparently doing away with Mail in the name of Al, and it's wholly unnecessary.

- MARK HACHMAN

It comes down to this: Microsoft is killing off its superior Mail and Calendar apps because it believes its brain is smarter than yours. One of my few stressful moments during an otherwise peaceful Hawaii vacation was when I learned Microsoft is doing away with the Mail and Calendar apps (fave.co/ 3D9fxqs). I've been an unabashed fan (fave.co/3pQmadX) of Mail for years because it does what I want it to do, and nothing else. Mail has a simple, clean, pure interface.

But now Microsoft plans to replace Mail and Calendar with the unified Outlook app interface, beginning next year. Current Mail and Calendar users can test-run the new interface by toggling the "try the new Outlook" toggle in Outlook's upper-right corner, which flips the interface to the new look. You can then flip back within Outlook by returning the toggle to its previous state. In my tests, the app crashed a couple of times, without losing any data, but then became stable.

So why is Microsoft force-feeding us Outlook? The reasons for Microsoft's decision are pretty much spelled out in Microsoft's Outlook announcement post (fave.co/3PSm6VU). First, by funneling everyone into a single email application for all our accounts (yes, even Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and more), Microsoft will learn more about what we're talking about. This matters because Outlook (and many other components within Windows) will eventually become inputs for Microsoft's Copilot Al engine (fave.co/ 3N0trzG). The more you feed it information about who you're talking to, what is being discussed, and so on, the better Copilot should theoretically operate.