Microsoft Outlook doesn't launch in space, and on Earth, the email app takes more than 15 seconds just to get started

Microsoft Windows apps are often categorized as what many would call bloatware. They are slow, sluggish, eat your resources in the background, and they seem to exist purely so you can download a different browser (yes, I am looking at you, Edge). Some people do give these apps a fair chance, but the results rarely reward that patience. And it seems these issues don't stop on Earth either, as Microsoft apps appear to cause problems even in space.

A recent Microsoft Outlook anomaly has been making the rounds online, and it comes straight from NASA's Artemis II Orion spacecraft livestream. A clipped portion of the stream shows a puzzled astronaut asking Mission Control for help because they "have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working."

Similarly, for the everyday user, the experience isn't much different. A clip shared by Zac Bowden on X shows Microsoft's Outlook app taking more than 15 seconds to display an email after selecting it from a notification. Bowden notes that this is not related to a recent Windows update or a broader system performance issue, but rather appears to be an Outlook-specific problem.

The harder pill to swallow is that Microsoft ships Outlook as the built-in OS email client, yet the broader consensus is that Samsung Email, Gmail, and Apple Mail are all better options. So why is Microsoft falling behind?

The thing is, apps like Samsung Email are built using native UI frameworks that deeply integrate with the operating systems they run on. That alone gives them a significant performance advantage. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been wrapping slow websites in an app's skin for years and calling it a day.

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The company is beginning to address this by forming a new team dedicated to replacing web apps with fully native apps on Windows 11, which could finally free users from web wrappers. If Microsoft does this right, it could help win back users, especially gamers who are increasingly switching to Linux. For now, users on Earth and space will have to live with these performance drawbacks.