You could design a VR environment that lets you walk around your virtual house, open your virtual front door, walk down your virtual driveway to your virtual mailbox, pull out virtual envelopes and open your virtual mail, but you'd just be replicating all the old real world cruft that doesn't matter to achieve your goal. What you really want is just to read some text in an email.

I had an older professor in college who still read and replied to all of his email via terminal, and he was multiples faster than those of use that used Gmail, but I remember thinking I'd never devote the time to learn to do things this way when the way I'm used to works just fine.

Apple has done a tremendous amount to make technology more approachable, and in doing so has brought millions into the digital age, but I do think the pendulum has swung a bit too far - a monitor isn't a desk, it's a monitor. Too much value is placed on "intuitiveness" these days, and while those real-world parallels might feel nice to interact with, there's a time to disavow ourselves of them to take full-advantage of what the technology can be.