Microsoft, Please Bring Outlook Mobile to Windows 10 (Premium)

Some eagle-eyed readers have noticed that I’ve moved to Microsoft Outlook on my smartphones, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s the best email client I’ve ever used. It’s so good, in fact, that I am curious why we can’t take advantage of its superior user experience on Microsoft’s core client platform, Windows 10.

Microsoft, please. Bring Outlook Mobile to Windows 10.

For those unfamiliar, Microsoft’s new mobile strategy is very much like its strategy with Xbox: The firm has lost the battle, and so it is focusing on the next war instead. With Xbox, that means making lemonade in the wake of its defeat in consoles and delivering the very best gamer-centric set of services anywhere while positioning itself for the cloud-based gaming services of the future.

In mobile, this means retreating from its first-party Windows phone platform and meeting customers where they are: Android and iOS. And in doing so, building the very best mobile clients imaginable.

The net result in both cases is a win for customers.

I’ve already written a lot about the awesomeness of Xbox as its expanded past the console, but today I’d like to focus on mobile. And for two reasons: It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. And this week, Microsoft just announced major updates to Outlook on Apple’s mobile platforms that support new features in the latest versions of those platforms (iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS).

The language Microsoft uses in its new Outlook post is telling. It knows that users have choices, in both devices and apps. For the former, this means supporting the devices that its customers actually use---again, Android handsets and iPhones and iPads---and in the latter, it means offering choices that must beat whatever apps come pre-installed on those devices. For Outlook, that means competing with some solid choices: Gmail and Google Calendar on Android and Mail and Calendar on iOS/iPadOS.

I’ve sort of ping-ponged between different mobile apps over the years, and between different strategies. This year, as I’ve purchased and reviewed several expensive smartphone flagships, for example, I worked to use the apps and services that came on each, where possible, for example. That means I used Samsung Internet on the Note 10+ and Safari on the iPhone, instead of my usual choice(s) (Chrome or Edge).

For email and calendar, I’ve always been pretty comfortable with Gmail (and before that, Inbox) and Google Calendar, and on both Android and iPhone. (I’ve never liked Apple’s built-in apps for whatever reason.) But I have used Outlook Mobile a lot over the years, sometimes just for my Microsoft accounts, and sometimes in a secondary role.

I feel very strongly that we should all use the best solutions, regardless of our personal affiliation with whatever brand, company, or product. For Apple fans, my advice is to look very closely at third party alternatives in all cases---mail, calendar, music, w...

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