“Mail in Mac OS X has progressively grown from the simple mail client Apple included with the first builds of Mac OS X into one of the best email solutions for the Mac, and certainly the most popular. As the default app for email on the Mac, Mail gets lots of feature requests and lots of complaints when things don’t work as expected. For example, Mail 2.0 in Tiger drew gasps from its use of nonstandard toolbar icons that grouped functions together in bubbles. Apple has significantly updated Mail for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, introducing support for Notes, To Do reminders, RSS feeds, Data Detectors, and HTML Statonery,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider.
McLean covers:
• Mail’s Origins
• The Macintosh Office
• Steve Jobs’ NeXTMail
• Microsoft’s Exchange and Lotus Notes
• Apple’s PowerTalk and CyberDog
• NeXTMail at Apple
• Mail in Mac OS X
• Tiger Mail 2.0
• Leopard’s New Mail
• To Do Reminders
• Apple Data Detectors
• Take Notes
• RSS Feed Reader
• New Mail Source List
Full extensive article, with screenshots, here.
yeh my it department won’t enable IMAP access, they don’t even give a reason, they just say they won’t do it…
Remind me again what year we’re in?
Thanks Jim TIV!
can you tell I got rained out today?…..
i have used Mail since OSX.3. Before that I used Entourage. Mail is great, and I am looking forward to 3.0.
I do have a web based email for backup (not one of the big names – something called “HowAmazing” which I signed on to years ago). My ISP also has a web based service. Good when I use someone else’s computer. Its drawback is I can receive attachments but I can’t send them.
I know the well known webmail services do allow you to send attachments, but my question is this, if anyone can help me.
I regularly send attachments of between 5-15mb (provided the person at the other end can download them).
I have always distrusted webmail for attachments – the service can’t take them, or it fails to send them, or they somehow seem to corrupt when they get to their destination.
Am I paranoid, out of touch, or just old fashioned? But that is why I stick to pop3. Someone let me know and perhaps give me a recommendation. Thanks
Cubert
I think you can upgrade to Yahoo Premium for $20.00 and use its forwarding.
I think.
Remember, Apple has replicated the desktop Mail experience with the new .Mac mail.
Web mail? Are you kidding? It’s a toy! Not at all suitable for real work. Maybe as a backup.
With Mail.app, you can collect mail from multiple servers, and also send identified as any of those accounts. it works offline. Your storage is only limited by your hard disk (OK, so it may conflict with all your iTunes stuff). Spotlight searches mail, as does the search in Mail.
My employer uses a web mail as their primary mail for most people. It SUCKS BIG TIME. Fortuneately Mail.app works, so does Thunderbird. We have a typical IT dept. though – they know nothing, and act like they know everything.
People, Mail.app DOES give you the best of both worlds – especially if you have a laptop. I LOVE having ALL my mail accessible INSTANTLY (no waiting for a page to refresh) and being able to search through 1 or more (or all) mailboxes in a FLASH. Try that on a web based mail client (I’ve found it takes FOREVER)!
However, for those times my laptop is not with me, I can ALWAYS use web-based email with all my current accounts. What’s the problem?
For me, the speed, elegance and flexibility of always having all my emails with me all the time FAR outweighs the occassional need to read my mail when I’m without my MacBook Pro (for those times, I have my iPhone- so really I never need to use anyone else’s computer).
Just my $0.02 worth…
@MacGuy
Couldn’t you just forward it? Why the need to keep a copy outside the mail client?
Mail is my preferred mail app and I look forward to the upgrade. Of course, I have a .Mac account and address – therefore, I also have web mail. Most ISP’s provide IMAP and Web Access, so Mail is still very relevant when used with IMAP/Web access accounts like .Mac and many, many other ISPs.
Most POP email can be accessed from multiple locations. When I’m on the road, I set my laptop to check my POP accounts, but leave the messages on the server. They’re still there when I get home, at which point they are downloaded to my desktop client and deleted from the server. This scheme works out of the box with Mail, Entourage, Thunderbird, or any recent client, and virtually any POP account. You just have to change your account preferences to make it work.
Why do people like web based mail? There’s no drag and drop, sending attachments is a 3-step process instead of 1… Every page has to load as a webpage… I just don’t get it. But all my friends are obsessed with Gmail.
to Ryan:
There is a simple solution that will do exactly what you need.
In Mail, open settings to any of your accounts. On the ‘Account Information’ tab, under ‘E-mail address’, type as many e-mail addresses as you wish, separated by commas. Now, when you want to send a message, there will be a flip-down list from which you can choose how you want the sender to be identified. You don’t need to create a bunch of dummy POP3 mailboxes for that. This feature has been there for years; I’m surprised you couldn’t find it, as it is documented in Help, as well as online, on Apple’s site. It may not be competely intuitive, but it’s easily findable in the documentation.
and, to MacGuy:
You must be confused; I don’t know what ‘native’ format you’re talking about; I’m assuming you are implying that there exist some universal, standard file format for individual e-mail messages. This is in fact not true. Microsoft seems to be rather popular with its .msg format (well, duh…Outlook/Outlook Express); there are dozens of others (Eudora has its own; Lotus Notes, Novel Groupware, etc., each ts own). What specific proprierary format would you wish Apple’s Mail used for saving messages into a file? My wild guess would be Microsoft’s, as it is probably somewhat more common than the others.
Apple is probably doing the best possible thing here, as none of those other formats can be opened by any application other than originator. Meanwhile, Apple Mail’s RTF can be read by anyone.
@Romeodawg: Irony of ironies: MailPlane is a Gmail thin-client that let’s you drag and drop files into Gmail as an attachment. (The irony being that you need a desktop app for the web mail.)
@ qka:
* Gmail can collect mail from other servers.
* Gmail can make it appear to SEND mail from other servers.
* Gmail has this really cool search function: Google. Have you heard of it? (Sorry, I can’t help myself from miming Fake Steve Jobs.)
Gmail is not for people who insist on sorting mail into mailboxes. It has labels, which are a pretty much the same thing. Personally, I never understand people who sort mail. Why not let the computer do what it does best — search through large databases?
Nothing beats Mail.app’s integrated inbox for me. I have four accounts — .Mac, two IMAPs and gmail, and I love having them all come in and letting Mail.app color them via filters and automatically setting the appropriate response account.
When I’m away, .Mac and gmail are easily accessible via the Web (I rarely need the other two online, but they have squirrelmail interfaces if necessary. Blech) When I’m home, gmail gets downloaded and automatically archived on its servers and .Mac is obviously an IMAP account, so it’s all good, too.
Also, which no one has mentioned, with a bit of set-up, you can get secure email certificates that is super-simple to use. MUCH better end-user experience than GPG or PGP. Secure email through Web-based interfaces are damn near impossible.
Since I’m here at my work I use Microsoft’s Office for Mac– Entourage instead, but at home, I use Apple’s Mail. It’s nothing very fancy, just a simple basic e-mail program, but it does everything that I need to do at home. I’ve never been able to get the smart folders to work like they should, but other than that, I’ve been happy with Mail.
The fact that this program will be updated with the new Leopard upgrade too is great news.
NIce,
but as I wrote a yaer ago to Apple Suggestion site and to Mac OSX Hints here in Europe we’d like to see the same Finder option that is Secure Empty Trash!!!!
Privacy, privacy guys, that’s what we need!!