Huh.
So, here's an interesting factoid about the new mobile IMAP interface to Yahoo! Mail.
You can access it from more than just your IMAP supported mobile phone. You can, say, use a mail program like Thunderbird.
You know, if you wanted to do something like that.
Remember: their first reaction if this gets too popular is to shut it down.
Bummer.
Awesome! Every passing day my computer develops more cellphone-like features! First, an address book, then an MP3 player, universal connectivity, after that the ability to call out, just lately a camera, and now the ability to IMAP mail.
Ah, my little SLVR, your days are indeed numbered.
IMAP doesn't work with "check for new mail" the same as POP does (excepting those cases of absolutely brain-dead software that ignore the nice features IMAP gives you).
IMAP is *way* cheaper, performance-wise, than POP3. With POP3, every time you log into the server — that is, every five or ten minutes you have it set to check for new mail — the server has to stat every message, calculate the UIDL, and return that information on the off-chance that some of those messages may be new.
With IMAP, and its persistent connection, the client can request to be notified "when a new message arrives", at which point *only then* does any sort of file I/O take place.
True, but then, IMAP requires a persistent connection (unless the client times it out), meaning that a machine can only support a limited number of customers. POP, while admittedly more CPU intensive, doesn't have that restriction, allowing machines to be able to service more end customers doing simple requests. In some respects, if you use IMAP to connect up to a service where you don't happen to get a lot of mail, you're wasting the connection.
Since those connections are in some respects more expensive than the CPU processing, (too many customers means that service is denied) that's what I meant by it being more costly right now than POP.
Don't forget that Y!Mail is still pretty damn popular, meaning that if everyone did this, you'd have to be able to support hundreds of thousands of low CPU persistent connections, rather than a limited number of polled connections. Offering the service for a limited set of cellphones for a limited set of providers is one way to guarantee that demand will not be excessive.
I freely admit I'm cheating here.
lets not forget the other part of imap being "expensive"…if everyone switched to using thunderbird instead of y!mail, then yahoo! could not make any money on advertisements. that would be a big loss of revenue.
i am hoping that yahoo! will roll out imap access in the same fashion that they rolled out pop3 access: as a premium service! that way, those who choose to pay for the luxury of imap access can have it. otherwise, the yahoo! mail beta interface is still damned good.
They've turned off IMAP access to Yahoo! Mail, looks like it probably got too popular too quick.
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