OK, I’ll say it: I hate Apple’s Mail
Ever since I got my hands on it and was able to compare it to Eudora, I’ve wondered what the fuss was about Apple’s Mail program.
Besides having a really non-intuitive way of showing your various mailboxes (can anyone explain the meaningful difference between “On my Mac” and the “In” mailboxes? Aren’t they both in some way on your Mac, even if they’re IMAP?), and bizarre limits on rules (why can’t you both redirect and reply to a message with a single rule?), and perplexing Applescript support (especially compared to Eudora, even though that program has what could generously be called scripting quirks), its principal failing is the simple one: it’s dog-slow. Especially in comparison to Eudora, which zips through things. I can live without pretty dissolves when I move from message to message; what I want to do is move fast between those messages.
The frustration is only made bigger when it starts automatically indexing large messages or attachments, a process that one appears powerless to stop and which leads to the Spinning Pizza Of Death which won’t go away until it’s done. The Junk feature is nice, but personally I use Post Armor which is Java and highly tunable to kill spam before you even have to download it off the server. If Mail looked at mail for spamminess before getting them from the mail server, that would be one thing, but it pulls it all down first, which is just dumb. (In POP language, it could do a TOP x 100 to find out the spam-indicating stuff like who it’s from, who it’s to, and what the beginning of the message looks like, and leave it on the server or delete it. Now *that* would be smart.)
Plus it is the very worst sort of processor hog, sucking up CPU even when it’s not frontmost. So why am I using it? To have something separate of Eudora for various bits of mail I’m trying to integrate from all over. (I’ve just tried another search for a message, which has sent it off into a frenzy of indexing that includes a 1.3MB files. That’s a cue for me to take lunch.)
Unless this program becomes radically faster in Tiger then I’ll be giving it a wide berth. Life really is too short.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
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December 9th, 2004 at 4:38 pm
Why don’t you look at Mozilla Thunderbird? Runs on Mac…
December 9th, 2004 at 4:50 pm
I quite like the fact that it uses Apple’s linguistic stuff to learn what’s spam.
But I do find it annoying that:
a) when it’s in learning mode, you can’t automatically send stuff marked as spam, whether by yourself or Mail, to the trash
b) when you take it out of learning mode, to allow the automatic stuff, it stops learning. So, in a couple of weeks, when I’m getting some differently worded spam, I’m basically back to square one.
I do really, really, really like the Address Book integration though. And I like Address Book in itself (probably because it integrates with iChat and my phone), so it’s quite a big draw. Thunderbird’s lack of proper Address Book integration is what’s keeping me on Mail.
Roll on Panther. If Apple wants any hope of any enterprise sales ever, it needs Mail to be good. It also needs a word processor, but that’s another story.
December 9th, 2004 at 5:04 pm
I agree. I also hate Apple’s mail. I just use Mozilla.
December 9th, 2004 at 5:34 pm
I can help you with the first question. On my mac indicates that you have downloaded the entire message. On the server would indicate that only the header has been downloaded and if you wanted to read the message you would have to be connected to the net to receive it. I personally find the mail box setup really nice for dealing with multiple accounts.
I can’t explain the redirect and reply issue but you obviously figured out how to get around it by simply making two rules.
As for the indexing, I think this depends on who the application was designed for. I receive 20-50 valid emails a day and right now (many of which I do delete) and have a folder of some 8000 saved emails. I can search the text of those emails in a few seconds on a 4 year old computer. For me, it is worth the occasional indexing, which appears to happen in the background for me, to have fast accurate search ability in my mail. Now if you receive hundreds off emails and keep 10s of thousands, maybe this app would slow down? It is possible it was geared to home users (apples market) and not huge traffic volume users?
Lastly, I don’t know what you have your Mail program doing but mine sits here at zero CPU utilization unless it is doing something. I look forward to the next update to mail (even faster search and index smart mail boxes etc.) but you couldn’t pry this app off my mac without a fight.
December 9th, 2004 at 5:58 pm
I actually like using Mail, but it’s tortuous to search my mail archives in Mail. Yet Eudora has trouble with secure IMAP and is generally out of step with the times. I use Mail for daily use, but when it comes time to do a quick mail search, I go to my Eudora archive where searches are easy and instant. Eudora’s mailbox files are easier to open in a text editor too. Maybe I’ll try Thunderbird and hope it’s not too geeky like Eudora’s default appearance is.
December 9th, 2004 at 6:22 pm
I’m not sure why I’ve stayed with Apple’s Mail for as long as I have. Other than it being a CPU hog, and slow, and feature-poor, and non-intuitive, and the Rules are screwy. . . it’s a great mail client. Except for the fact that it crashes all too frequently. When it does, my main complaint is that I have to throw away my Mail prefs and re-enter all my account information in Preferences. . . which I can never remember quite correctly. Nothing else (but a couple of insignificant checkbox in the Signatures panel and the Font sizes) seems to be affected. Why, oh WHY?!? couldn’t they bulletproof my account information as well as everything else?
Since I just finished doing all the above not 20 minutes ago, I’m on a tear. And why don’t I just keep a clean copy of my P-LIST file in a safe place. Because, then, I’d have to remember where the damn thing was or what I called it. Besides, that would be entirely too logical.
How about if Apple were to go back to the drawing board and come up with something that REALLY works. To my way of thinking, if they can do something as well as Final Cut Pro, Mail should be a piece o’ cake. Am I wrong on this?
December 9th, 2004 at 6:22 pm
I don’t see the point in moving to Thunderbird, since I tend to use lots of small Applescripts, which are then triggered by keystrokes via a program such as Keyboard Maestro to the programs I use (flag stories in NetNewswire, sign emails in Eudora, copy/move files in Finder, etc). I doubt Thunderbird does that.
Also it’s big - twice the size (11MB download) of Eudora 6.x download. And I haev Eudora already. It’s just it would be nice if Mail was better, given that it’s free and has all this Address Book integration.
Yes, I do get a lot of email - tyypically around 100 per day. And I do like to store it. Why not?
Then again, I find Palm Desktop much faster for searching than Address Book or iCal, and Safari isn’t really the fastest browser on this platrform. It’s just that Mail is where you’d expect the good stuff to start..
December 9th, 2004 at 6:53 pm
I’ve been using Mail.app for abot 10 years now. First on NeXTSTEP, then on Mac OS X. I find it to be the best email app on the planet. Use whatever you want. I’ll stick with Mail.
December 9th, 2004 at 6:55 pm
Charles,
I can understand your frustration with Mail. It’s certainly not up to the usual Apple GUI standard. However, I have found it’s ability to search through 600MB of mail pretty decent on my 667Mhz powerbook, if that’s any comfort. And it does do a reasonable job for me with spam, multiple accounts, and allowing me to not open html emails for instance. It doesn’t hog the processor in normal operation either. I moved to this from Entourage which was just hopeless (a global search could take 15 minutes!). I suspect newer Entourage is better, but given your love of Eudora and your spam handling, you’re probably best staying with the old faithful!
Ian
December 9th, 2004 at 7:25 pm
I love Mail and hate Eudora. The spell checking ease is alone worth my Mail praise and my hatred of Eudora. Crashes are so rare I can’t recall one and I don’t see spinning beach balls. I really enjoy the integration with other aspect of Mac OS X.
December 9th, 2004 at 7:37 pm
I love Mail. It’s a little slow sometimes, but it’s integrated, see. That’s worth its weight in gold. I’ve never once had a crash (what are you guys talking about ???).
Apple all the way, screw the 3rd party crap.
December 9th, 2004 at 8:49 pm
I love the threading in Mail. I have not used Eudora, so i don’t know if it supports threading. I have heard that threading in some email apps are not done right. I have my email sorted by date received, and Mail moves the entire thread to the bottom when a new email arrives in that thread. I wonder how I managed without it in the past!
December 9th, 2004 at 8:50 pm
I also dislike the way Mail handles spam. My ISP flags spam for me (and it’s reasonably accurate), so I can set a rule to send it to the Junk mail folder. However, it’s still marked as an unread message. Also, if an item turns out not to be spam (esp. when put in the Junk folder by Mail itself), marking it as “not junk” doesn’t return it to the In box, just leaves it sitting where it is.
On the feature front, Mail is short on things like setting outgoing message priority (I had to install an add-on to get that). Many of the areas of basic message-handling that I find deficient in Mail are basic SMTP stuff, not some whiz-bang add-on (a la Outlook’s calendar integration, etc.), and having come from a UNIXish origins, there’s no excuse for this. Importing messsages from my old iBook to my new PowerBook was a royal pain (this was prior to the availability of Apple’s system migration package, which I have not used).
However, I continue to use Mail because it’s good enough (just) that I’m reluctant to deal with changing.
December 9th, 2004 at 8:54 pm
I’m a former Eudora user, but since OS X I’ve become a Eudora hater. The early versions ran very badly in OS X and window handling has always been extremely annoying. Furthermore, Eudora’s IMAP support is horrible and it can be painfully slow opening an IMAP mailbox. I find that Mail works better than anything else, plus I like its integration with Address Book and other applications.
December 9th, 2004 at 10:11 pm
What version of Mail are we all talking about here?
With 10.3.6’s Mail…
a) Mail still learns about new Junk rules when out of Training mode.
b) Mail does go away sometimes (but not always) when downloading messages. I think it just doesn’t deal well when a connection breaks or cannot be established.
c) I find content indexing to be reasonably fast, except when it’s taking on a whole new mailbox. (I keep copies of all of my IMAP mail locally; I don’t know if that makes a difference.)
d) Mail’s rules can perform two or more actions to matching messages. (Just click on the “+” button.)
e) “On My Mac” is definitely poorly named, but it is very different from the concept of “Inbox”. Most people (excluding myself BTW) traditionally read their incoming mail from INBOX, and then file it away to folders. Those folders can be on an IMAP server, or local to your Mac. The Inbox has a very different function from mail folders, just as Trash, Outbox, Sent and Junk do.
I find that with Mail’s quick searching abilities, I have little need for separate folders. I use them for mailing lists; for everything else, there’s searching.
f) I don’t have any difficulty switching from one message to the next. “Dissolving” is certainly not standing in my way.
I could never move to another client now that I’m used to Mail. What can replace the ability for me to create an ad-hoc view of multiple mailboxes’ contents with only a few command-clicks and some simple text entry in a search bubble?
December 9th, 2004 at 10:17 pm
#13: What do you mean by “outgoing message priority”? Do you mean those “urgent” flags in the header? I suppose that may be useful, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that pretty much ignores these anyway. (Actually, my first reaction is to assume that mail flagged as “urgent” is actually SPAM until I have determined otherwise.)
Also, importing folders from one Mac to another is dead simple: just copy the folders from inside ~/Library/Mail on one machine to the other. It’s basically the same as you’d do on any UNIX system, except that there is an extra level or two of folder indirection to work with.
December 9th, 2004 at 10:48 pm
Mail.app rules. Eudora?!? The thing still looks like it’s built for OS 9 with OS X as an afterthought (dear Qualcomm, please note that interface design has evolved just a wee bit in the last 5 years, thanks), has a gajillion confusing Preferences options, looks like crap, and oh, did I mention it looks like crap?
Don’t like the filtering? It’s all about server-side filtering these days. I want my filters to work regardless of whether I read mail from my work Mac, my home PowerBook, or via a Web browser half-way across the world. Putting filters into local e-mail clients is dumb. Let your mail server filter things into your IMAP sub-folders (or to the Trash) as it comes in, not as it’s read.
The *only* things I don’t like about Mail.app are
(1) Doesn’t show new mails in sub-folders unless you do a Synchronize (this is, apparently, fixed in the Tiger Mail.app already, which also has Smart Folders!). I tried using Thunderbird for awhile (0.8) because it does have this capability, and it drove me crazy - I went back to Mail.app. I’ll take one thing that aggravates me over 5 new things that aggravate me that Mail.app doesn’t do.
(2) Sometimes it keeps synching a sub-folder over and over even if it’s not been updated (I have one very large IMAP folder that it insists on re-synching every time, grrrr). That’s about the only time when I get the Gay Rainbow Spinning Pizza Wheel Ov Deth™.
(3) If it picks some name for an address book entry (e.g. “Some Luser”), you can’t edit out the tag - if I remove “Some Luser”, it’ll get put back in if I remove it and click outside the recipients’ box
I think that’s pretty good
December 9th, 2004 at 11:36 pm
Sure, I’d like to have server-side filtering, but liek the vast majority of the world, I don’t. (That’s why I use Post Armor to pre-filter what’s on the server; the rules I have work very well.)
True, Eudora has LOTS of preferences, but many of them are hidden. There are so many more that you can only uncover through the X-Eudora-Setting settings. (And please, can someone explain the still mysterious question of what X-Eudora-Setting 140 actually DOES?)
It’s that combination of hidden and yet available that makes Eudora powerful, for the power user, but simple, for the simple user. Yes, it’s been around a long time, but sometimes old things are great because they’ve remained true to themselves. I’d adore Mail if it were *fast*. That’s what using a computer is about, isn’t it? Eudora doesn’t do background indexing; it searches its text when you ask it, from the ground up. It doesn’t sit there stunned if the internet connection drops; it just lets you carry on reading your mail, moving your mail, and so on, and tells you when stuff fails. Nicely.
I’ve not used IMAP much (at least with Eudora) - maybe I’ll try it on my mac.com address. That’s IMAP, right? We’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and I’m sure you can twiddle some settings to make Eudora do all sorts of SSL stuff. Search for the “Supersleek” plugin by Kilimanjaro software: though written for OS7 (honest), it still works in OSX. Now that’s compatibility.
December 10th, 2004 at 1:27 am
Give PowerMail a try. It’s integrated with AddressBook and spell check has a wicked fast search a clean interface. Has extensive AppleScriptibiilty and in combination with SpamSieve makes a great solution.
BTW, I currently have..
36037 Messages
42 Message folders
38 Message Filters
5 Text Clippings
6 Signatures
December 10th, 2004 at 4:15 am
I really like Mail and haven’t had Beachball issues or problems with Rules.. altho I don’t understand why it is in preferences.
I detest Eudora with a passion.. where to begin.. impossibilty to move folders, lack of directory, address book integration (admittedly on v5 + on Win) and have been hanging out to try Thunderbird as a replacement.
December 10th, 2004 at 6:45 am
I completely disagree. I say, I hate Eudora. I was an Eudora user for many years. Mail’s interface is WAY better. Also, IMHO, Mail is faster than Eudora. Yes, faster. Try searching. Mail has a few quirks, but also a LOT of nice touches. It will evolve well, I predict.
December 10th, 2004 at 3:58 pm
I hate ‘em both.
December 10th, 2004 at 7:12 pm
Another happy Mail user here.
There is a difference between On my Mac and Inbox if you use a .mac account. The Inbox messages are available on the server while the On My Mac messages are only available on your mac. Assuming that is you’ve deleted them from the server.
But why won’t it do html email?
December 13th, 2004 at 9:13 am
Heh. If your audience is techy, and you want to stir up some debate, don’t bother with religion, politics or sport. Just question someone’s choice of email application :)