Keep it simple, Microsoft

My experiment with the Surface Pro 3 — Microsoft's new laplet — continues and, I have to admit, I am finding things I really like about it. But it's always the little things that trip me up and get me shaking my head.

One is email. Although I have long wished for some of the functionality of Outlook in other mail clients, I can't understand why a program so full-featured doesn't have the most basic thing: a consolidated inbox. 

It's fine if you have one email account, but I have five to check. And that requires scrolling through the list to see each inbox individually. 

So I went trolling around to see if I could find a workaround (you just gotta love workarounds) and I did. This one looked promising until I dug into it. Create your own self certificate, write VBA script, edit registry entries, etc. 

It reinforces for me the major difference between Apple and Microsoft: Apple is for gizmos and Microsoft is for geeks. I want to make things work for me to their ultimate extent in the way I want them to work. But I want to do that by learning the app and finding all the cool things it can do. With Microsoft, you have greater capability to dig in (also, greater opportunity to really screw things up) but you have to really love "code". Not me. 

I guess I will live with the multiple inboxes, but that will keep me happier with Apple Mail than Outlook. 

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Stay tuned for more Surface-to-Air posts.