Opinion: Apple Mail
All Macs ship with an impressive array of pre installed software. On every computer they ship Apple shows off its programing savvy with photo management in iPhoto, the slick multimedia management/world domination of iTunes, or an amazingly feature rich free home recording studio with Garageband. Why, then, is their Mail application such a disappointment?
Even though users probably use this program every day, Mail seems to suffer from neglect. Perhaps it’s because there is nothing terribly interesting the programmers in Cupertino can bring to the party. It is, after all, simply an email client. While iPhoto can recognize faces, iTunes can tailor custom Genius playlists, and Garageband will let you buy personal music lessons from Ben Folds, Mail simply lets you send and receive email. Oh, and read RSS feeds. There’s no pizzazz in email.
But there is utility, and this is where Mail falls short for us. There are several features other email clients possess that Mail ignores. Scheduling email should be a no-brainer. Mail works with iCal to send email reminders at a specific date and time based on upcoming appointments. Should you want to schedule a specific time to send an email, Mail can not do this. Mail has templates for sending email, what they refer to as Stationery. Unfortunately you must use their rather limited and somewhat cheesy set of templates. It is possible to save your own, but not with any attachments other than images – a shame if you are spending a lot of time sending out job applications with attached resumes, for example. And even though the saved templates are HTML, there is no easy way to make and save your own html stationery.
There are several things Mail gets right: new account set up is a snap, Quick Look is integrated for attachments, and it plays well with other Mac applications like iCal and iPhoto. Certainly there are work arounds for nearly every situation in which the application falls short, but for many people, “working around” means learning scripting or HTML programming. While other email clients allow for plug-ins to enhance function, Mail is left out in the cold, even though many Mac applications also accept plug-ins and extensions.
Apple has positioned itself, and mostly makes good, on its reputation as the no fuss, no muss platform. Just turn it on, and it works. Mail, in our opinion, works – but not well enough. In the coming weeks we will be reviewing several third party email clients in an effort to find the best of the bunch. We will be looking at ease of set up, customization, integration with other applications, and if it does anything really cool and unexpected. Hopefully we will find the nearly perfect email client for the nearly perfect personal computer.
Dude, why don’t you take Thunderbird and enjoy? I am still try to find out what is the point of this article, but without success…
I think it’s good and healthy to criticize apple’s apps, almost every mac blog out there does nothing but praise them. This being said, I think you should’ve developed the “what mail doesn’t get right” part of the post: Program mail to send at a certain time? templates?… dunno… but I can’t think of one single use I could realisticaly give to those features, maybe you should have written about some more things that mail lacks… because, after reading thins, what I’m thinking is: and what’s the thing I should be missing in mail.app?.
Looking forward to the posts about other email clients, maybe then I realize that there are lots of features missing in apple’s mail.
Bye, and pardon my english XD
i don’t really like ical for reminders. I perfer to use an online service called MyEmailReminders.com. They have much better scheduling and they do text message reminders also. Check it out http://www.myemailreminders.com
I have to agree with tralari. You seem to be griping about features that in my 20 years of IT have seen exactly two people use, and have never used myself. If you have a custom, special requirement, then learn a little shell and get the on-board GNU utilities to do your dirty work for you with some text and an “at” job.
Just don’t sandbag the whole application because you have some goofy requirements.
I agree that Apple Mail is very “vanilla”
I would switch to something more eye-appealing, but I have yet to find another email app that combines the address book functionality.
Really, I would love the ability to customize the color of Apple Mail, such as backgrounds and borders. Would also love to have better tagging.
Apple is long overdue to make a significant facelift to this application.
I love the vanilla approach of Mail…I like that it is fast to use, stable and just does the job…I’ll be looking forward to the test as I am not certain I am missing anything…
However one thing you have wrong already in the article
Mail does support plugins and extensions. I’ve been using MailTags for two years now…Love it for the organisation and control it provides…
One feature not mentioned here – full exchange support. There are 2 options on the Mac – Entourage and Mail. Mail is the clear winner, IMHO.
I dropped some coin for the MailTags and Mail Act-on plugins that were developed by http://www.indev.ca/. Combine those plugins with Smart Mailboxes and my day-to-day email organization/management is a breeze.
check it out this site
http://www.hawkwings.net/
I stand very much corrected on the plug-ins issue. I will definitely check out MailTags.
Mail plugins are great way of enhancing Mail. Indev makes some really great ones http://www.indev.ca and I also have my own plugin that adds better search called Rocketbox. You can find my plugin at http://www.getrocketbox.com
Now it would be awesome if Apple had an official plugin API, but that’s wishful thinking at this point
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Matt
I personally love Mail….
Everything I’ve ever tried, Outlook, TBird etc… Fail…
Mail is almost perfect for me, I’d say it’s the app I use most and say, ‘hey, I’d like this to be added’ least…
It’s fast, looks nice, it just works!
“But there is utility, and this is where Mail falls short for us.”
Please don’t presume to speak for me.
Mail is fine. It’s simple, it works, and it looks great.
I use mail daily in my work. It could be better only if it had reading receipts.
A part from that it is great!
I actually like the mail app quite a bit. It is crisp, clean and does not get in my way. I do most of my Exchange-based work emailing in it because mail is fast, stabile, and features a search function that actually locates the emails I’m looking for as opposed to Outlook’s “random” search. That said, I agree fully with the points Chris makes. Mail is a bit TOO lean. With how feature rich the other stock apps are mail comes up a little short. It kind of feels like a 3rd party application. Maybe Apple just needs to spend some time adding a little gloss to it.
Yeah, I would have to disagree with this. I love the Mail application. Like Rob said, it’s crisp, clean and elegant. I use this at work with my MobileMe and Gmail push email boxes and it works wonders for me. No problem with it at all. Falls in line with the Apple philosophy of things: Simple, clean, and just works.
I have to say I can’t agree with anything here.
I use Mail all the time and if it wasn’t for the fact work is still on Exchange 2003 I would be using it for work email as well.
Smart Folders, RSS reading, data detectors, all things I use and find better than anything anyone else has come up with.
I like simple and Mail does that real well.
Thanks for the post. I understand that by using a lot an application you can come across its limit. However, at this time I am using a Windows type machine and I think Apple is, despite the problems you found in Apple Mail, a real competitor to Microsoft. If I keep on visiting this site, who knows if I will not see Apple as the best hands down.
I have to say, I agree with everything Chris says. Lack of customizable templates is on the main reasons I don’t use mail. I used Eudora until I couldn’t take the crashing anymore and now I use Thunderbird but the address book ui is awful, and it frequently drops addresses from lists. I look forward to the reviews – I’ve looked at Mailforge, Postbox and the Eudora version of Thunderbird and none of them really fit my needs.
@cjmoore; if you know html and css you can create any template you like in mail, make it as complex or simple as you want. If you google for it there are numerous tutorials online on how to do it. Besides how do think companies like equinux do their bundles, or the dozens who provide custom services to do that…Unless I am misunderstanding what interpretation is of a template, it is definitely something you can do
I like it the way it is. I don’t like Thunderbird tough. Even from an aesthetic point of view the Apple Mail is better. On PC Thunderbird has no competitor, but here is just another one..