We need to talk about email clients. I’ve been joking for years that I’m going to write an email client and charge $500 for it — an email client that actually meets the needs of developers and professionals who rely on email, folks who type for a living. But I’m not going to, and I don’t know anybody who is. The economics of it make it kind of tough, given that Apple ships a good email client with OS X. Nevertheless, we need that email client.

Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire, launched the idea yesterday that the time is ripe for an open source group to develop a new, lean Cocoa-based email application for the Mac.

The working name for the project is Letters or Letters.app.

There’s already some interesting discussion on the project mailing list, and he’s set up a Twitter account to follow the project as well.

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