Just saw the JMAP protocol idea the other day, then heard about it again on the Talk Show.

JMAP is not a conversion of IMAP to JSON; it is a new protocol. It was designed to make much more efficient use of network resources, to be easier for developers to work with, and hopefully to make the best protocol for email an open standard once more. 

Apparently IMAP doesn’t even allow for the editing of a message, so it’s not exactly a super modern API approach.

I’ve been on Mimestream the past few weeks and it’s interesting to me they totally stayed away from the IMAP approach and went for straight Gmail APIs. If you’re a Gmail user, that’s almost certainly a good thing as it makes it behave using the features of Gmail you probably already care about.