[Macpilot]

What is the best alternative to using Apple's Mail?

I am getting sick of the constant errors that me and my friends and family all get using Mail. Specifically, the "server was unable to send the message" and the "password was rejected" errors. I have never had these issues with ANY other email clients.

What do you guys think of Powermail? Is it worth the money?

I am bummed about losing the integration with Address Book and iCal, but this is getting ridiculous.

Thanks for any info and suggestions!

[Awimoway]

Problem 1: I think the problem is with your ISP/email server, not Mail.app

Problem 2: Ditto. Also, that annoying password prompt is often caused by keychain problems. I find that if I open Mail.app too soon after log in, the keychain isn't accessible yet. If I give a few more seconds after login to open Mail, then there aren't any password problems.


Anyway, I know there's a lot of Apple homers out there, and I don't think I'm one of them. I'm not trying to blindly defend Mail.app. All I know is that I don't have these problems (except when I open Mail too soon).

[Macpilot]

Well that is an interesting possibility with the keychain. I shall look into that.

As far as the ISP thing....I don't know how it could be a problem as we are talking about 3 different ISPs....Time Warner Roadrunner, Sprint/Earthlink, and SBC Global/Yahoo.

Thanks for the info!

[Adam Betts]

You want alternative to Mail.app?


In other word, there's no better alternative to Mail.app. The newer version in Panther is a HUGE improvement so you might look into that.

p.s. I'm no Mail.app fanboy. I've looked into all other Mail software and most of them just plainly sucks. The reason for me looking for alternatives was that Mail.app was too slow and gave too much errors but Panther's Mail.app fixed everything so I'm glad.

[::maroma::]

Try Apple Keychain First Aid. It fixed my annoying Keychain problems.

[nobitacu]

yea, this might be your ISP at fault, but I guess you won't know unless you look into it. For my personal .mac account, I am using the mail app, works fine with me so far anyways, no problems. But for my work and college, I am using Entourage, you could give that a try and see if it works for you...

Of course... the post office is always the best way to mail people letters since it has a very high change that it will get to that address safely, just takes a lot longer time.

[kennedy]

The best alternative to Mail.app is Eudora. I have found it to be a bit more reliable. However, I continue to use Mail.app because I am expecting big things from Panther. And I slightly prefer Mail.app's interface over Eudora's. But if Mail is frustrating you, I recommend Eudora. And you can move back and forth between the two... Eudora can read standard Mbox format which Mail uses... and Eudora Mailbox Cleaner can convert Eudora format back to standard Mbox. Which reminds me... I need to go send that guy some money (its donation-ware).

HTH.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by kennedy:
The best alternative to Mail.app is Eudora. I have found it to be a bit more reliable. However, I continue to use Mail.app because I am expecting big things from Panther. And I slightly prefer Mail.app's interface over Eudora's. But if Mail is frustrating you, I recommend Eudora. And you can move back and forth between the two... Eudora can read standard Mbox format which Mail uses... and Eudora Mailbox Cleaner can convert Eudora format back to standard Mbox. Which reminds me... I need to go send that guy some money (its donation-ware).

Eudora is an ancient piece of software. It doesn't use any of the latest technologies.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Eudora is an ancient piece of software. It doesn't use any of the latest technologies.

Such as?

HTML? Eudora handles as well as anyone.
SPAM filtering? Some claim Eudora v6 is even better than Mail.app.

What "latest technology" are you referring to?

Lotus Notes Mail... now that's the dark ages... but Eudora has always provided the latest and greatest technology, typically leading the way for others, throughout its entire (very long) history.

[NeXTLoop]

Kennedy is right. Eudora does NOT use ancient technology. True, it is one of the oldest email apps still on the market. And its interface has not been brought fully up to speed with X. But the guts of it are as good as any email app, and better than most.

When it comes to performance, you won't find a better client. Nearly every major reviewer agrees that Eudora is a power user's email client due to its performance. It has the most powerful searching. I'm one of those who is currently having better luck with Eudora's junk mail filtering than Mail's. Mail is getting maybe 1 in 5. Eudora is missing maybe 1 in 10. As for protocols, Eudora is hard to beat. It supports more protocols than virtually any other email app. It has better attachment handling, allowing an email to be encoded in every major format. Its the only email app to also support scheduled sending. So you can type an email, and have it scheduled to send in the morning, next week, next year, whenever.

The only major things Eudora is missing is Address Book sync, better HTML support (for those that care about it) and a more X-compliant interface. Version 6 went a long way toward addressing the latter issue, among other things. But there's still a ways to go. In everything else though, Eudora can hold its own against any other client, and beat most.

[philm]

Originally posted by Macpilot:
... and the "password was rejected" errors. I have never had these issues with ANY other email clients.

I solve my Mail.app password problems with Apple's Keychain First Aid. See:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107234

[Arkham_c]

Other mail clients:

1) Entourage
2) GNU Mail.app
3) MailSmith
4) Eudora

There are others too, I'm sure, but those are the major choices. I'm sticking with Mail.app for now. I hope Panther fixes the issues I have with it.

[DigitalEl]

Has anyone made the Rules in Apple Mail work just like they do in Entourage... Perfectly and every time?

I like to keep about 6 Inbox folders and about 6 Sent mail folders... "Friends, Family, Work, Job Search, etc..." In Entourage, I set rules to send incoming mail to the appropriate folder and do the same with mail I send. It works flawlessly.

I would love to switch to the Mail/iCal model, but no matter how much dickin' around I do with Mail's rules, they just don't work. I still have to manually drag some messages to their appropriate folders. A step I don't need! Not to mention, iCal is still a mess.

[Macpilot]

Originally posted by philm:
I solve my Mail.app password problems with Apple's Keychain First Aid. See:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107234

Thanks for the tip....I shall try it!

I wonder if going into the Keychain and just deleting the passwords, and re-entering them would do the same thing as this First Aid?

[fireside]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
Mail is getting maybe 1 in 5. Eudora is missing maybe 1 in 10.

are you still in "training mode" for mail.app?

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by DigitalEl:
Has anyone made the Rules in Apple Mail work just like they do in Entourage... Perfectly and every time?

I sort incoming mail into at least a dozen different folders and never have any issues. I get about 180 messages a day (about 150 of which are spam).

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by fireside:
are you still in "training mode" for mail.app?

Nope. I had trained Mail ages ago, when I upgraded to Jag. At first, it was catching just about everything. But in the last couple of months, its continued to deteriorate. Even in Automatic mode, Mail will continue "learning." But no amount of flagging stuff as junk seems to improve it. At least, not by much.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
Nope. I had trained Mail ages ago, when I upgraded to Jag. At first, it was catching just about everything. But in the last couple of months, its continued to deteriorate. Even in Automatic mode, Mail will continue "learning." But no amount of flagging stuff as junk seems to improve it. At least, not by much.

Maybe what it learned "ages ago" is now way off base and confusing it. Mail's junk mail filtering has been my savior recently. It maybe misses 1 in 10... probably closer to 1 in 20. My email has become a very pleasant place again.

Perhaps you should dump the old learning and re-start the learning? Then again, given you've moved to Eudora, it doesn't really matter as you're in a very good email client... and if its working for you...

[NeXTLoop]

Actually, I haven't moved entirely. I'm basically using Eudora as a backup solution. Recently, when I was still on my iBook, I started having tremendous problems with Mail's "Writing changes to disk" bug. It would completely freeze my iBook till it was done. So I started migrating to Eudora in case it kept getting worse. Now I have a 17" PB, and the added processor power has negated the bug for now, but it seems to be returning. So I'm still using Mail, waiting to see if the Panther version solves the problem. But I keep firing up Eudora every now and then to download my mail in case it doesn't. If the Panther version isn't a dramatic improvement, its back to Eudora full-time.

[Targon]

gyazmail is MUCH better than mail.crap
i have never had a problem with it oh yeah import/export of .mbox actually works unlike mail.crap

i love this app its about the only app i think that is perfect.

http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/

[maxintosh]

Originally posted by Targon:
gyazmail is MUCH better than mail.crap
i have never had a problem with it oh yeah import/export of .mbox actually works unlike mail.crap

i love this app its about the only app i think that is perfect.

http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/

GyazMail looks cool. But the lack of IMAP support is a dealbreaker for me.

[IronPen]

Same here. No IMAP, no GyazMail. I've wanted to try it, but I have nothing but IMAP accounts.

Mail.app is supposedly improved in Panther. And with Exchange support (LDAP, integration with the calendar and contacts) I think I'll stick with Mail.app.

[Macpilot]

Originally posted by Targon:
gyazmail is MUCH better than mail.crap
i have never had a problem with it oh yeah import/export of .mbox actually works unlike mail.crap

i love this app its about the only app i think that is perfect.

http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/

Wow....that is nice. I am trying out to see how reliable it is.

Thanks for the tip!

[smeger]

I too have had the issue with "Writing
changes to disk" sucking performance out of all apps and freezing the entire computer for minutes on end. I fixed it by dumping most of my messages into different folders so that my inboxes only have a few hundred messages at any given time.

[Targon]

Originally posted by IronPen:
Same here. No IMAP, no GyazMail. I've wanted to try it, but I have nothing but IMAP accounts.

Mail.app is supposedly improved in Panther. And with Exchange support (LDAP, integration with the calendar and contacts) I think I'll stick with Mail.app.

what is IMAP and what is it useful for?

[maxintosh]

Originally posted by Targon:
what is IMAP and what is it useful for?

IMAP is a mail protocol that differs from POP3 because messages and folders are stored on the server even after the message is downloaded. It's commonly used in insitutions, business, and education, because it allows greater portability.

.Mac is IMAP, although you can retrieve new mail using POP3.

[Macpilot]

Originally posted by maxintosh:
IMAP is a mail protocol that differs from POP3 because messages and folders are stored on the server even after the message is downloaded. It's commonly used in insitutions, business, and education, because it allows greater portability.

.Mac is IMAP, although you can retrieve new mail using POP3.

Huh? My email is POP and I can leave my mail on the server too.

[maxintosh]

Originally posted by Macpilot:
Huh? My email is POP and I can leave my mail on the server too.

Yes, you can elect to not delete it from the server. But, you cannot organize it and store it in different folders and have this retained when you switch to another computer.

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by smeger:
I too have had the issue with "Writing
changes to disk" sucking performance out of all apps and freezing the entire computer for minutes on end. I fixed it by dumping most of my messages into different folders so that my inboxes only have a few hundred messages at any given time.

Actually, you will probably have the problem some more, given your solution. Over at the Apple Discussion Boards, there are countless people who have spent time trying to figure out the cause. The big common denominator seems to be large volumes of mail. The other factor seems to be moving it around.

For example, if you have an account where you get a lot of mail, that in turn gets filtered to other folders, more than likely you'll have problems when working in that Inbox, or the folders its mail got filtered to. Given how much email you moved to fix the problem, it will probably start creeping back up within a short time.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
Over at the Apple Discussion Boards, there are countless people who have spent time trying to figure out the cause. The big common denominator seems to be large volumes of mail. The other factor seems to be moving it around.

Yikes! Got any pointers to these threads?

I get large volumes of email, and I spread them through out lotsa folders. (Currently have about 3.5GB in about 325,000 messages organized into 320 mailboxes.)

With Eudora there was always the periodic 15 minutes of compressing folders... but that happened when I asked for it... or sometimes automatically when quitting. It could be annoying, but it would pop up and do it just anytime.

With Apple Mail, so far I've been very pleased with the speed. However, it did twice do the "Writing changes to disk" thing... once it was fairly short... once it was annoyingly long. And in the latter case, it did bring my whole system to a crawl. [as if speaking to a naughty dog: Bad OS! ]

To hear that this is going to be a growing problem is terrifying ... maybe I should switch back to Eudora... when is Panther coming out?

Anyway, pointers to more information on this would be appreciated... and has Apple gotten good feedback on it... I'd hate for them to fail to fix it in Panther.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
The only major things Eudora is missing is Address Book sync, better HTML support (for those that care about it) and a more X-compliant interface. Version 6 went a long way toward addressing the latter issue, among other things. But there's still a ways to go. In everything else though, Eudora can hold its own against any other client, and beat most.

I'd love to go back to Eudora from Entourage.X, but so far the UI has kept me from it. Is there any chance Eudora might, in a future version, implement things like

• quartz text antialiasing and
• three-paned, 1 window interface (as Eudora for Windows has been sporting for a very long time)?

Or is it going to be stuck permanently in some sort of mid-90s time tunnel, changing icons into XP style every now and then?

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by kennedy:
Yikes! Got any pointers to these threads?

That's why I said I have many times regretted switching to Mail. Anyway, here's the links...

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Possible Solution

Another Possible Solution

The above are just a few of the links. As the last two links indicate, there are some proposed solutions. But there's two problems with them....

1. They don't work for everyone, and when they do work, they don't always provide a permanent fix. The problems can reappear.

2. Its absolutely ridiculous that you have to do this kind of maintenance to prevent an email app from freezing up your computer.

Like I've said elsewhere, I'm waiting to see the Panther version of Mail. If I have a single instance of it freezing my PB while "Writing changes to disk", then I'm switching back to Eudora for good.

**Edit**
I just noticed how much email you said you have. Right now, I only have around 500MB of mail. Even with that, on my iBook 600 the "Writing changes to disk" became unbearable. With my new 17" its much better, which I credit to the faster processor, but its getting worse. I can't even imagine the problems you'll have in about 2 or 3 months.

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by workerbee:
I'd love to go back to Eudora from Entourage.X, but so far the UI has kept me from it. Is there any chance Eudora might, in a future version, implement things like

• quartz text antialiasing and
• three-paned, 1 window interface (as Eudora for Windows has been sporting for a very long time)?

Or is it going to be stuck permanently in some sort of mid-90s time tunnel, changing icons into XP style every now and then?

Eudora 6 doesn't yet have Quartz AA, but it does have a one window interface now. Its somewhat similar to Mail. Not quite as pretty, but a drastic improvement over Eudora 5.

[Mojo-ike]

eudora has timezone, imap formatting, and SSL issues.

if you are using pop3, then eudora is fantastic.

but you may want to consider using imap if you want to be able to access your mail from several machines. it can store your in, out, trash, and any other mailbox on the server. so if you work from home you can see ALL your mail that you can see at work.

despite my best efforts i cant get work eudora and home mail.app to display the same mail dates. eudora does something screwy with the headers so that mail.app thinks it was sent at some other time (im sure it has to do with the way it labels the offset of GMT).

then there is the way that eudora chooses to format sent and quoted mail that is not compatible with mail.app and other mail applications (like outlook express for windows). looking in the sent mail using mail.app at a message sent form eudora is going to give you a bunch of muck.

the other big problem with eudora (at least in version 5) is the SSL compatibility. it CAN work, but you need to specify the SSL port by hand or with the esoteric settings plugin. not as cool as one would like in the setup.

i stopped using eudora because it wasnt as pretty as mail.app, and because it too has more than its fair share of issues. like the fact that it is not REALLY threaded. it can download mail in the background, so long as you arent typing. but to filter mail it requires full control of the application (ie, you cant work). the list goes on and on. eudora is a quirky application, but i think it is most definitely better than the outlooks.

but i think that mail.app is the best mail reader i have ever used.

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by Mojo-ike:
eudora has timezone... issues.

With Eudora, you can specify which time format to use. It can either use your time zone, or it will show mail based on the time zone of the person who sent it. Its just one simple selection in the preferences. I've never had an issue with it.

I will give you that it doesn't do IMAP as good as Mail. Most email programs don't.

As for SSL, I think much of that is fixed in 6.0. It definitely could be better threaded. But when it comes to raw performance, especially for people with tens, or hundreds of thousands of saves emails, nothing can touch it.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by NeXTLoop:
It definitely could be better threaded. But when it comes to raw performance, especially for people with tens, or hundreds of thousands of saves emails, nothing can touch it.

Except maybe Mail. I've been very impressed with Mail's performance so far vs. Eudora. Now, to be fair, I am on a somewhat faster machine (PB12 vs. Toshiba Tecra 8100), but I'd judge Mail to be a bit snappier than Eudora. I guess also to be fair, Mail is running its fancy junk filters vs. Eudora which was having to run my list of about 60 user-specified filters... and those definitely slow up Eudora a bit on getting mail.

To Eudora's defense though, it has never taken my machine to a crawl in anything it does (even on Windows NT/2000). Mail cannot say the same (though its only sinned once, so far).

FWIW.