That sounds promising to me but I may be engaged in wishful thinking. 
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Looks like there’s reason for optimism
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I just hope existing plugin features can be replicated fully with this API.
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I watched the Session on this. Initially the plugins look pretty basic. They did mention though that Plugins were deprecated and that Devs could make Extensions without fear of OS updates and new Mail versions. Guessing they’ll roll out mobile support next year after this first run on Monterey.
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That would really be great. I just hope Mailbutler and similar solutions keep working; I hope someone at Apple has thought about not breaking the plugins of the precious few devs who have actually been building and maintaining software on Mail.
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Suuuure, but that only works on Mac and means I cannot use the Preview pane. Mimestream on Mac and Spark on all platforms do not place that constraint on me.
I purchased m1 macbook, one of my wishes is the instant open time for Mail.app. Oh boy, the app still takes >10 seconds like in Intel macs.
I really wish for Apple to optimize Mail.app startup time.
I’m seen some clients that are faster than others, but I can’t recall any instant open email client. Wouldn’t the amount of new mail, the size and number of any attachments, whether I use a preview pane, the response time of my email server, and the speed of my internet connection, etc. determine how quickly I could use my email client regardless of how quickly it opened?
In any event if I wanted to try to speed things up I would hide my preview pane and disable any extensions I had installed. If that didn’t help I would try removing my extensions. Keep in mind that the amount of mail you keep in your Inbox can slow things down depending on your email server. That folder is constantly being checked and updated.
I’ve reached an age where waiting on Apple to do something isn’t a great strategy. So I pick the best hardware available which is, IMO, the iPhone and iPad. Then I pick the best services available regardless of the provider.
I hope you find something that works for you.
Bad luck here. After a cursory reading of Apple Mailkit documentation it seems that the new framework only allows for very specific hooks for the plugin to intervene.
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That’s my fear. And it would be supremely dumb on Apple’s part to antagonize the three software developers who ever tried to maintain plugins come hell or high water on Mail.app throughout the years. But they might very well do it. And I’d be very sad because Mailbutler works amazingly well.
Do you know if this new feature will enable developers to create features like “share to…”, create PDF, send later, etc?
It does not seem like the new API covers those kinds of use cases. To be honest, I don’t really see how useful the new API is (but I have not dug into the nitty gritty beyond the three facets that were presented). Wanting to have a more robust plugin ecosystem is great, but not at the expense of capabilities.
I was afraid you would say that. 
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Canary Mail opens instantly in my case. I don’t know why, but I suspect it doesn’t store the mail in standard format (like eml/mbox). Canary is/was a great mail client with PGP support built-in, but —like 2Do— the slow development irks me.
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A tangent, but: 2Do is currently being completely rewritten, according to Twitter. Which takes (in the developer’s own admittance) far too long.
MailKit looks promising but its only a first step in the right direction. I think deprecating the current plugin system at this state means Apple is playing hardball with the developers that are currently building mail plugins. Of curse, it’s a small demographic: Mailbutler, Mail Act-On, MsgFiler… are there anyone else?
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SpamSieve?
Not a lot of them indeed. I hope MailKit is only the beginning, and that the old capabilities will be kept as the systems transition.
Still? To paraphrase someone or other - facere longa vita brevis
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I am aware of that too, it’s been 6 month 
I also know that the single developer is now the owner of BusyCal & BusyContact. 2Do, BusyCal and BusyContact are already slow in update, I hope the best for them.
also GPGSuite to enable PGP encryption…
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Let’s not forget that Apple usually starts with something quite basic and integrates over a (sometimes long) period. It means we can look forward to some nice future features, but we may have to spend some time in the wilderness before we get them
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