Have you noticed that New Outlook doesn’t feel quite like the other native Windows apps you’ve grown accustomed to over the years? I poked around it briefly and could tell something was off. Context menus look different, changing settings feels more like submitting a form than a local toggle, and just the way it loads up diverges from the norm.
That’s because New Outlook is built differently than Microsoft’s traditional desktop applications. It’s essentially an application wrapped around a website. Microsoft has been quietly making a transition to web-wrapped applications, marking a fundamental shift in the way they develop software for Windows, and many users are unhappy about it.
Microsoft is busy encouraging adoption of New Outlook, even though it lacks a lot of the features of the older Outlook application it was built to replace. Pushing New Outlook before it even seems ready only signals that this isn’t just a one-off experiment, but a new direction for software development in Redmond.
I’m uninstalling Outlook for good, here’s what I’m using to manage Gmail and other inboxes
Outlook couldn’t keep up
The downside of web-based apps in Windows
User feedback on New Outlook isn’t good
New Outlook is a web-based application built on Microsoft’s WebView2 runtime, which itself uses Edge’s Chromium-based rendering engine. What this means is that launching New Outlook involves spinning up a browser engine in the background. It will work, but for a simple task like checking your email inbox, it’s overkill. Web-based apps come with additional overhead, with New Outlook’s RAM usage being measurably elevated compared to the old Outlook, built on a native Windows framework.
Not only does performance suffer on web-based apps, but the user experience on web-rendered apps is also lacking compared to their native counterparts. Native Windows apps have the benefit of deep integration with the OS. System-wide settings will carry over to these apps, accessibility features carry over, and the UI responds in a consistent way. Web-based apps often break that immersion in favor of a generic and platform-agnostic website thinly veiled in a wrapper.
The complaints aren’t just about cosmetics. New Outlook is also missing important functions that users have grown to expect from their longtime email client. A prime example is how Classic Outlook stores cached mailbox data in OST files for offline access and supports PST files for local archives and backups. New Outlook dropped support for these formats, switching to a more cloud-based approach that only has limited functionality offline and gives us less control over our data.
Why Microsoft is doing this
Hint: not to benefit the customer
I think Microsoft’s primary motivation behind the shift to web-based apps is pretty obvious: it slashes development costs. Developing full native applications for various platforms like Windows, macOS, and mobile is expensive and time-consuming. Utilizing web technology allows them to write the code once and deploy it anywhere. It also means they can make everyone’s experience far more consistent, since they don’t need to maintain separate apps for each environment.
Web-based applications are platform-agnostic by default. Microsoft can develop the website, wrap it in a shell for each platform they want to serve, and ship it. This is why using New Outlook basically feels like using a website — because you are. At this point, it’s not much different from logging into the Outlook site with your browser and managing email from there. To be fair, the WebView2 backend does allow for a few capabilities that a website doesn’t, but the experience feels virtually the same to an end user.
The problem with the advantages of web-based apps is that they primarily benefit Microsoft rather than the end user. I’m sure it comes as a net positive to Microsoft’s bottom line, but it also feels like they haven’t taken the impact to their customers into full consideration. The user is paying the price in performance impact and lost features for an application that feels detached from the rest of the OS.
What this means for the future
Which app will be transformed next?
New Outlook is the latest example, but I’m sure there are other apps on Microsoft’s roadmap. If Microsoft were willing to replace one of their most longstanding and embedded productivity applications with a web-based equivalent, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other flagship software receive the web-wrapped treatment. Teams also relies on web rendering, and the Microsoft Store and Xbox app are utilizing the WebView2 engine to display portions of their user interfaces.
It’s important to remember that web-based apps themselves aren’t the enemy. Visual Studio Code is built on Electron (another web engine which embeds Chromium and Node.js) and is one of the most popular developer tools on the planet. People even love using it as a simple text editor. The problem is when a mature, feature-rich desktop application like Outlook gets replaced with a thin shell around its web counterpart, and users are expected to embrace the change as progress.
The bigger picture
New Outlook isn’t ideal, but it’s not a disaster. It’s still a functional email client. The more disturbing implication is that it signals an overall shift to a web-rendered, cloud-based, and platform-agnostic philosophy, with many users left pining for the old way of doing things. Fortunately, there are a lot of third-party developers ready to fill the void if you’re looking for a new email client.
