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PHYMAC · May 4, 2005, 01:42 PM

I just set up some smart mailboxes. I figured that any new email that was under the smart mailbox would go there and not be in the regular inbox. Is that the case or not? If not, then what is exactly the point of the MSart Mailbox, to have all of the mail together? Or if you delete the mail from the inbox does it stay in the smart mailbox?

I guess I am just wondering what the exact function of them is.

Thanks!

Judge_Fire · May 4, 2005, 02:13 PM

The Smart Folders just mirror messages that exist elsewhere, like ones in your Inbox. They don't actually 'contain' a copy of a post.

Likewise, if you delete a message, it will be gone and can not be seen in any Smart Folder anymore.

J

TETENAL · May 4, 2005, 02:30 PM

Smart mailbox, smart folder and smart iTunes playlist are search results for objects existing elsewhere.

PHYMAC · May 4, 2005, 02:36 PM

Ok so it more like an extension of spotlight than anything else. Thanks for explaining!

DigitalEl · May 4, 2005, 02:57 PM

Call me stupid, but I misunderstood the concept of Smart Mailboxes and got burned badly. I created Smart Mailboxes and used them like Rules, with folders for "Family" or "Work," and so on...

After creating these, I deleted the original "dumb" folders which contained those messages originally. And, of course, I lost them. As stated above, the Smart Mailboxes simply mirror what's in other folders in Mail.

<thinking aloud> If I thought about it beforehand, this is just like Smart Playlists in iTunes. I certainly wouldn't try to delete music from my Library just b/c I created a couple of Smart Playlists. Makes sense now!

PHYMAC · May 4, 2005, 03:23 PM

I think it would have been great thought if it was the way me and DigitalEl thought it was, even though it would probably take up more room in your mailbox. Still a nice little feature, but then again nothing too crazy great.

King Bob On The Cob · May 4, 2005, 03:25 PM

Why not just write rules if you're trying to organize the mailbox?

DigitalEl · May 4, 2005, 03:49 PM

Why not just write rules if you're trying to organize the mailbox?

b/c for me, Rules are pretty hit or miss with Mail. I used rules extensively back in my Entourage days. Since switching to mail, I spend a good part of my time in the application, dragging messages into folders.

As I stated above, Rules do seem to work better in Mail 2.0, but still not as well as I'd expect. And, to the best of my knowledge, they don't work at all for outgoing (sent) messages... Although I'll admit I probably need to play around a bit more to verify the latter.

Thorin · May 4, 2005, 05:27 PM

Smart-playlists/folders/albums first showed up in iTunes didn't they? In iTunes, iPhoto, Address Book etc. if you put objects into a standard non-smart album/group/playlist, and then delete the playlist you don't loose anything, and this is the same for their smart cousins.

In Mail and Finder if you delete a smart-folder/mailbox you don't loose anything, but if you delete their non-smart cousins then you do. This seems to be a bit of a behavioural inconsistency to me, and I can understand how some users (especially new users or switchers) could become confused by this issue. Not really sure how it could be overcome, but I can see how it can cause confusion

Big Mac · 12:45 AM

It may be slightly confusing, but it is not inconsistent. iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums are different from Mail and Finder folders. Folders hold actual files, while lists and albums do not. And smart playlists and smart folders function the same way across the applications. It may have been wiser for Apple to call smart folders in Mail "Smart Mail Lists" and smart folders in the Finder "Smart File Lists," however.

Thorin · May 5, 2005, 05:29 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

It may be slightly confusing, but it is not inconsistent. iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums are different from Mail and Finder folders. Folders hold actual files, while lists and albums do not. And smart playlists and smart folders function the same way across the applications. It may have been wiser for Apple to call smart folders in Mail "Smart Mail Lists" and smart folders in the Finder "Smart File Lists," however.

I suppose the problem is that smart-playlists/albums behave in the same way as playlists/albums, but smart-folders/mailboxes do not behave in the same way as folders/mailboxes.

As you say, they could maybe have gotten around this by giving them slightly different names

Big Mac · May 5, 2005, 06:03 AM

Right, as I stated, it's an issue of slightly confusing naming conventions.

Millennium · May 6, 2005, 05:46 AM

That's part of the problem: anything in an Apple product with "Smart" in its name probably isn't actually whatever else it claims to be. Smart Folders are not folders, Smart Playlists are not playlists, and Smart Mailboxes are not mailboxes. They are presented in ways such that they act mostly similar to these things, but if you're not aware of the differences then you can get burned pretty badly.

Actually, despite looking different, all of the "Smart" things work essentially the same way: they are just small snippets of SQL code (or something very like it) which perform a search that you define. Every time you access this, the search is performed again, and the results are presented in whatever manner is appropriate to the program (folders in the Finder, playlists in iTunes, and so on). Obviously, this only works well if your search engine is very fast, but that's where SQLite -the database technology at the core of Spotlight, iTunes, CoreData, and many other programs that aren't from Apple- comes into play. iTunes has been using SQLite for a long time, but Spotlight and CoreData are Apple's latest offerings to use it. You can actually get at the "raw" SQLite library in Tiger as well, and work with it at this low level. Can you tell they've fallen head over heels for this thing?