I guess you both right - Heck, by far I find sysops prefer to use POP
BEFORE SMTP as the easiest - no instructions, less support required
method to give their users instant auto-temporary-access to SMTP relay.
works great except for
a) message stores that support POP with cleartext passwords
b) message stores that support IMAP rather than POP (there are a number
of cases where supporting POP makes no sense)
c) users who submit their mail via another submission agent than the one
that handles their incoming mail.
etc.
in other words, it's not very general at all.
Keith