Then you watch someone use Hey.com for 10 seconds and realize that it's kinda embarrassing to have a worse web mail client in 2025 than Gmail was in 2005. And you probably actually do want a JavaScript SPA if you want to match Gmail's interactivity.

That's an interesting take. What do you think is embarrassing compared to Gmail? Hey works differently to Gmail but it seems pretty good to me.

I any differences in workflow I see seem to be down to opinion rather than some difficiency in the technology.