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Flash03 · Feb 22, 2007, 08:30 PM

I have tried out both macs mail app which is given and entourage but i was wondering if there are any better mail apps out there

cgc · Feb 22, 2007, 08:35 PM

What do you mean by "Better?" What are you looking for or what do you need to do specifically? "Better" is very subjective...

Flash03 · Feb 22, 2007, 09:38 PM

Im not looking for anything in particular actually, i was just using "better" broadly. Just seeing if there is anything else out there

larrinski · Feb 23, 2007, 12:13 AM

Thunderbird is an open source mail app. Give it a try! I prefer mail.app out of all of them.

doublep · Feb 23, 2007, 02:42 AM

Try Gyazmail

crazyjohnson · Feb 23, 2007, 09:35 AM

I would keep an eye on the Correo project (in the early stages of development). I would be all over this if I wasn't such a Gmail nut.

Introducing Correo, a new open-source mail client for Mac OS X. Correo blends technology from two popular Mozilla projects, Camino and Thunderbird, to create a polished native Macintosh application.

art_director · Feb 23, 2007, 11:09 AM

The only bummer about Thunderbird is the lack of GnuPGP support. Other than that it's dynamite. And free.

mitchell_pgh · Feb 23, 2007, 03:53 PM

I'm a mail.app fan, but use Entourage at work. Entourage has some cool features, but it's dog slow on my not so old Mac mini.

besson3c · Feb 23, 2007, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by art_director

The only bummer about Thunderbird is the lack of GnuPGP support. Other than that it's dynamite. And free.

The Enigmail plug works in Thunderbird to provide Gnupg support, I use it daily.

DigitalEl · Feb 24, 2007, 12:47 AM

I haven't touched Entourage in a couple of years. Are there any ways to sync it with .Mac for calendars and contacts? I've grown to like iCal, Address Book and Mail, but would prefer Entourage if syncing were seamless.

real · Feb 24, 2007, 05:34 PM

A vote for Apples mail app. Very powerful when you use the smart folders and rules.

besson3c · Feb 24, 2007, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by real

A vote for Apples mail app. Very powerful when you use the smart folders and rules.

Although completely and pathetically brain dead in some other areas.

art_director · Feb 24, 2007, 08:18 PM

With Apple Mail how the devil do you get it to delete messages from a POP server? I've only dabbled w the settings. no doubt it's in there, I just haven't seen it.

art_director · Feb 24, 2007, 08:19 PM

Never mind, just saw it.

besson3c · Feb 24, 2007, 08:21 PM

Originally Posted by art_director

With Apple Mail how the devil do you get it to delete messages from a POP server? I've only dabbled w the settings. no doubt it's in there, I just haven't seen it.

Do you mean messages that you say you want to save a copy on the server?

peeb · Feb 26, 2007, 02:40 PM

If you don't know why you want another one, use mail. It's great for many things, if you find yourself running up against something that it's brain dead for, ask about which mail program deals better with that thing.

philm · Feb 27, 2007, 09:53 PM

I find the Spotlight-powered searching of Mail.app to be great. Has saved me a couple of times.

besson3c · Feb 27, 2007, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by philm

I find the Spotlight-powered searching of Mail.app to be great. Has saved me a couple of times.

I kind of question its future though.

On one hand, it is nice being able to do a system wide search and have it include your email. On the other, downloading every piece of mail and storing it to local disk is slow and consuming.

Cyrus IMAP (the largest open source email server) includes server side searching capabilities they call "squatter". Squat/squatter/whatever it should be called, is much faster at searching mail. Being provided by the server, the server is able to automatically index your mail, so that when you are gone for a long time and come back, you can immediately conduct fast searches.

The downside of squatting is that it can be expensive for servers to run. However, I think we'll eventually reach a point where the prospect of email accounts larger than x gigabytes no longer thrill people, and hardware will become fast enough to be able to handle large numbers of large mailboxes with squatting enabled.

If these sorts of issues were not non-existent, squatting would be the way to go IMHO. It is a better design and makes more sense. Perhaps a future version of Safari could even recognize and work with database indexes and files not stored locally. As it stands, one of the weaknesses of how Spotlight is designed right now is that it cannot search remote volumes, AFAIK.

So, we'll see...

chrisdisregard · 06:08 PM

...

Ryknow215 · Feb 28, 2007, 07:03 AM

Over the past couple years I've gone Mail.app -> Thunderbird -> Entourage -> Mail.app. It does everything I need, but most importantly it does it all quickly.

Ditto. I used Mail for a while, then tried Entourage for about 2 days when I bought Office and I couldn't stand it, then Thunderbird for about a day, and I'm back full time with Mail. It does everything I need it to do quickly and has never given me any grief.

Although if Gmail didn't allow POP3 access, I wouldn't use Mail at all

besson3c · Feb 28, 2007, 09:46 AM

I use a combination of Thunderbird and Mail.

I would give my left nut of Mail supported folder subscriptions, multiple identities, and marking which folders you want to check for new messages. I'm surprised that Apple hasn't at least added support for multiple identities, since this is quite a useful feature.

Thunderbird handles these features, which is why I keep it around.

TETENAL · Feb 28, 2007, 10:38 AM

OS X supports multiple user accounts, Mail supports multiple mail accounts. I don't see the need for multiple mail "identities". If someone else wants to use their e-mail client, use fast user switching.

What is "folder subscription"?

besson3c · 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

OS X supports multiple user accounts, Mail supports multiple mail accounts. I don't see the need for multiple mail "identities". If someone else wants to use their e-mail client, use fast user switching.

What is "folder subscription"?

Multiple identities allow you to change the headers of your email (from, reply-to, etc.) on the fly within a particular email account. This is a vital feature if you use an email account for multiple functions, and is particularly handy in environments where you use shared mailboxes.

Folder subscriptions indicate which folders should be displayed in your email client. This would be immensely useful in Mail, since many organizations archive old mail and have dozens and dozens of folders you may not want Mail to bother checking and caching.

Another problem with Mail is that you can only cache messages on a per account basis, rather than a per folder basis. Mail is extremely slow and taxing in checking out every damn folder and caching it (if I have this feature enabled), it sometimes takes several moments before my computer becomes responsive again... It's a lot of work indexing thousands and thousands of messages, but also needless.

These are all vital features to any larger organization, and have been included as standard features within most email clients for years. I don't know why Apple decided to limit Mail by excluding these basic features. Even damn Outlook Express handles folder subscriptions for Christ's sake! Multiple identities I'm willing to bet was invented in the 90s!