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cwkmacuser · 05:32 PM

Hi everyone. I was just curious about what mail client you use.

29 days to poll close!

cgc · Apr 25, 2009, 06:10 PM

Aren't you going to answer your own poll? (I was first so I know you didn't answer it). DO IT!

cwkmacuser · 06:22 PM

I just did. You answered just as I did.

You saw it and voted like 10 seconds after I posted it! I didn't have time to vote.

cgc · Apr 25, 2009, 07:39 PM

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser

I just did. You answered just as I did.

You saw it and voted like 10 seconds after I posted it! I didn't have time to vote.

Ok...you're off the hook for now...but I'll be keeping my eye on you...

cwkmacuser · Apr 25, 2009, 10:33 PM

Apple Mail is winning so far!

cwkmacuser · Apr 25, 2009, 10:37 PM

How come apple programs are always in the majority?

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 12:29 AM

Apple Mail is still winning.

turtle777 · Apr 26, 2009, 01:01 AM

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser

30 days to pole close!

Which one ? North or South ?

-t

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 01:13 AM

Sorry, wrong spelling. 30 days to poll close.

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 01:15 AM

Update:

10:15 pm Pacific Time. Apple Mail in majority.

besson3c · Apr 26, 2009, 02:07 AM

Is that a surprise? OS X Mail is preinstalled and has a great interface for those with the most common, simple Mail needs. However, for others it is a massive epic failure and mail server admins hate it.

Hg2491 · Apr 26, 2009, 02:11 AM

Mail ftw!

ajprice · Apr 26, 2009, 07:31 AM

Apple Mail for me

JKT · Apr 26, 2009, 07:46 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Is that a surprise? OS X Mail is preinstalled and has a great interface for those with the most common, simple Mail needs. However, for others it is a massive epic failure and mail server admins hate it.

To add to that, the competitor apps in this space are all significantly worse too. There just isn't a viable alternative to use instead. The two biggest competitors, Thunderbird and Entourage, are non-Mac like UIs to such an extent that it makes them unbearable to use. Thunderbird is also horrendously buggy in my experience - moreso (and much more noticeably so too) than Mail, which is quite damning really.

besson3c · Apr 26, 2009, 11:07 AM

Thunderbird 2 or 3? TB 3 has been working quite well for me...

Cold Warrior · Apr 26, 2009, 11:18 AM

TB 3 works well for me. I have it configured for multiple IMAP accounts. The iLeopard Mail theme (3.0.9) helps with the appearance and the extension 'Change quote and reply format' (v0.6.2.0.1) gives me Outlook-style reply/fwd headers.

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 11:55 AM

Hmm...Apple mail is just too simple for me. I like to use something with a bit more power. When I switched from PC to mac, I was using PMMail. I liked it. But there's no mac version. I heard about Postbox of this forum and decided to give it a try. It's the closest thing I could find to PMMail.

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 01:28 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

To add to that, the competitor apps in this space are all significantly worse too. There just isn't a viable alternative to use instead. The two biggest competitors, Thunderbird and Entourage, are non-Mac like UIs to such an extent that it makes them unbearable to use. Thunderbird is also horrendously buggy in my experience - moreso (and much more noticeably so too) than Mail, which is quite damning really.

Postbox is easy to use, but very powerful.
I find it to be a great alternative.

Nassifer · Apr 26, 2009, 01:41 PM

I find that Apple makes a far superior product, so why mess witha good thing when it works why fix it right.

Abdulah

besson3c · Apr 26, 2009, 05:21 PM

Well, Mail is not a "far superior product", it just doesn't manifest its ugly side for everybody.

ghporter · Apr 26, 2009, 05:26 PM

I'm using Entourage (yeah, go ahead and squeal about it being Microsoft-I got it for cheap!) It works for what I want, and it's close enough to Outlook that I didn't have to learn anything new to be able to use it.

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 05:35 PM

I couldn't figure out how to use Enntourage. I opened it and it gave me a new message from "Microsoft Team" or something like that when I had not even set up an account yet. It's like it assumes I want a Microsoft Email address. MAIL is winning with 19 votes.

Cold Warrior · Apr 26, 2009, 05:47 PM

It just put it in there automatically. It didn't sign you up or email you anything. That's normal for a lot of email clients.

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 05:59 PM

Never seen it before.

ghporter · Apr 26, 2009, 09:20 PM

It's one of the things that was similar to Outlook. Outlook Express does it too. I figured it's planned as MS advertising, and I just went with it...

Hal Itosis · Apr 26, 2009, 11:15 PM

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser

Postbox is easy to use, but very powerful.
I find it to be a great alternative.

Must agree.

Anyone liking T-Bird/S-Monkey (or any Mozilla derivative, including Eudora 8 beta) should really take a close look at Postbox. It's basically the same as those others, only more advanced (search-wise and in terms of info about email content, etc.)

website: http://postbox-inc.com/
forum: http://getsatisfaction.com/postbox

Bearsfan34 · Apr 26, 2009, 11:19 PM

Another vote for Postbox here. I just started using it, due to Mail (which I still really, really like and had been using for 4+ years) not syncing via IMAP with my work's Exchange server...it just will NOT delete messages, move messages to folders I tell Mail to, and just overall wonkiness. Too bad too, since Mail is pretty awesome with MobileMe.

So far, since I've been using Postbox, there's only been one issue and it's on Postbox, I have a ticket in with them; everything syncs beautifully. I will admit I do miss the "elegance" of Mail, but its recent frustrations with syncing with Exchange no matter how I configure Mail's settings led me to try Postbox.

cwkmacuser · Apr 26, 2009, 11:34 PM

No one's voted for sea monkey, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it's just Thunderbird combined with Firefox. So, probably not many people use it, as it seems most use Safari as their Web Browser.

ghporter · Apr 27, 2009, 08:01 AM

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser

No one's voted for sea monkey, but (correct me if I'm wrong) it's just Thunderbird combined with Firefox. So, probably not many people use it, as it seems most use Safari as their Web Browser.

Originally Posted by Mozilla

Under the hood, SeaMonkey uses much of the same Mozilla source code which powers such successful siblings as Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, Sunbird and Miro.

Not exactly "combined with," more like "made with the same parts." Probably better integrated than Tbird is with FF too. I haven't tried it.

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 09:07 AM

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis

Must agree.

Anyone liking T-Bird/S-Monkey (or any Mozilla derivative, including Eudora 8 beta) should really take a close look at Postbox. It's basically the same as those others, only more advanced (search-wise and in terms of info about email content, etc.)

website: http://postbox-inc.com/
forum: http://getsatisfaction.com/postbox

And it will eventually cost money:

How much will Postbox cost?

Postbox is currently in the early BETA stage of development and pricing has not yet been announced.

I plan to give it a try anyways, I'm not suggesting that this in and of itself is a bad thing, but obviously some unique features will have to have grown on you to consider paying for it by the time they start charging for it.

angelmb · Apr 27, 2009, 10:45 AM

I have been playing with the Encrypt Mail trial version.

What I find nice: mail protection without the ugly of going thru over complicated set-ups, not everybody is a geek; interface is clear and the contact list comes handy.

What I don't like: stand alone app aimed to send e-mail, lacks inbox folder; protected mails are huge, a plain text e-mail saying 'OK' becomes a 900 KB attachment disk image. I haven't even tried with real attachments.

If only was it a Mail.app plug-in… :-/

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 11:30 AM

Okay, I've just been playing with Postbox.

I am impressed. You can't go wrong with the underpinnings of Thunderbird, which Postbox has. However, it betters Thunderbird in providing many more organizing features with a clean and well designed GUI, and provides some features I had to give up in switching away from OS X Mail such as to-do notes.

This app is definitely worth checking out if you have outgrown OS X Mail or have a large mailbox that OS X Mail chokes on, or if you want to play around with some neat new techniques for organizing email. The only downsides for now seem to be no add-on support (which means I have to give up Enigmail, my bounce mail plug, and right now I'm not able to get Growl to work with it, although it is listed as a native feature.

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 12:26 PM

I'm also having troubles with my RSS feeds in the Postbox beta. They aren't appearing, yet reimporting them gives me an error message about the feed already existing.

webraider · Apr 27, 2009, 05:39 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Is that a surprise? OS X Mail is preinstalled and has a great interface for those with the most common, simple Mail needs. However, for others it is a massive epic failure and mail server admins hate it.

How exactly is Mail an Epic Failure? How exactly is it that server admins hate it? in what setting? If you're referring to getting it to communicate with Outlook then I may agree with you.. but that will change in Snow Leopard. For a standard POP email client though I really don't see how it fails or exceeds better than any other client from a server stand point.

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 06:08 PM

Originally Posted by webraider

How exactly is Mail an Epic Failure? How exactly is it that server admins hate it? in what setting? If you're referring to getting it to communicate with Outlook then I may agree with you.. but that will change in Snow Leopard. For a standard POP email client though I really don't see how it fails or exceeds better than any other client from a server stand point.

Perhaps it would be fine as a POP client, but I don't use it as a POP client because I frankly find the whole POP design backwards and obsolete. I have no interest in POP.

As an IMAP client there are a number of things wrong with it... Where to begin?

Firstly, Mail opens way too many simultaneous IMAP connections that is counter to the IMAP RFC. IMAP server admins need to decide on limits as to how many simultaneous connections it supports, as more connections require more resources. This is completely skewed by OS X Mail. The only options are to ban the client, or try to accommodate it by accepting more connections - both are bad solutions.

Secondly, both OS X Mail and the iPhone insist on raping the IMAP servers with how they check for messages. In short, OS X Mail's ability to determine when there are new messages is retarded. I can't really explain what it is trying to do, but it is most definitely wrong. Once your mailboxes grow to a certain size you'll find it is constantly wasting CPU cycles "synchronizing mailboxes". Sane IMAP clients check the Inbox and give you the option to check other folders at mail check time, or else they support IDLE which can be used for push notifications. I'm convinced Mail's IDLE support is broken. I've used it with both Cyrus and Courier IMAP with IDLE support turned on and off and this behavior seems to persist either way.

Thirdly, OS X Mail does not scale. There are well over 100,000 messages in all of my accounts, and OS X Mail simply cannot keep up. If it weren't broken it wouldn't really matter how many messages existed in these accounts as it would not need to check these mailboxes as frequently as it does, but even if this wasn't the case if it supported folder subscriptions like any other sane IMAP client you could work around this by simply unsubscribing to archived mail folders.

This sounds like nit picking, but some companies are actually deciding to archive every single company email message and never deleting these emails, for legal and accounting reasons (disk is cheaper than legal fees). There is no way OS X Mail would play well in an environment like this.

OS X Mail also does not support multiple identities for some bizarre reason. I've seen web-based email solutions in beta with just a small smattering of features that do, because it is both important and useful! However, this obviously falls outside of my list of why OS X Mail is a bad IMAP client, so I'll leave this at that.

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 06:13 PM

What's really weird is that these issues I've described have existed for some time. As far as I'm concerned they are bugs and OS X Mail is literally a broken IMAP client. What baffles me is why these haven't been fixed by now?

64stang06 · Apr 27, 2009, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

What's really weird is that these issues I've described have existed for some time. As far as I'm concerned they are bugs and OS X Mail is literally a broken IMAP client. What baffles me is why these haven't been fixed by now?

How else will Apple come up with "300+ new features" for the next OS upgrade?

webraider · Apr 27, 2009, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Perhaps it would be fine as a POP client, but I don't use it as a POP client because I frankly find the whole POP design backwards and obsolete. I have no interest in POP.

As an IMAP client there are a number of things wrong with it... Where to begin?

Firstly, Mail opens way too many simultaneous IMAP connections that is counter to the IMAP RFC. IMAP server admins need to decide on limits as to how many simultaneous connections it supports, as more connections require more resources. This is completely skewed by OS X Mail. The only options are to ban the client, or try to accommodate it by accepting more connections - both are bad solutions.

Secondly, both OS X Mail and the iPhone insist on raping the IMAP servers with how they check for messages. In short, OS X Mail's ability to determine when there are new messages is retarded. I can't really explain what it is trying to do, but it is most definitely wrong. Once your mailboxes grow to a certain size you'll find it is constantly wasting CPU cycles "synchronizing mailboxes". Sane IMAP clients check the Inbox and give you the option to check other folders at mail check time, or else they support IDLE which can be used for push notifications. I'm convinced Mail's IDLE support is broken. I've used it with both Cyrus and Courier IMAP with IDLE support turned on and off and this behavior seems to persist either way.

Thirdly, OS X Mail does not scale. There are well over 100,000 messages in all of my accounts, and OS X Mail simply cannot keep up. If it weren't broken it wouldn't really matter how many messages existed in these accounts as it would not need to check these mailboxes as frequently as it does, but even if this wasn't the case if it supported folder subscriptions like any other sane IMAP client you could work around this by simply unsubscribing to archived mail folders.

This sounds like nit picking, but some companies are actually deciding to archive every single company email message and never deleting these emails, for legal and accounting reasons (disk is cheaper than legal fees). There is no way OS X Mail would play well in an environment like this.

OS X Mail also does not support multiple identities for some bizarre reason. I've seen web-based email solutions in beta with just a small smattering of features that do, because it is both important and useful! However, this obviously falls outside of my list of why OS X Mail is a bad IMAP client, so I'll leave this at that.

I think you would be better off configuring it for POP3 because it shines as a POP3 email program. This is because this is still the most standardized way that servers are configured to do residential email. Earthlink for example doesn't even off an IMAP process. Most will not because they don't want to dedicate space for your email messages. I guess I may be in the minority because the only real benefit I see to using IMAP over POP is the ability to leave your emails on another server, but you can configure MAIL to do that with a POP3 server anyways. It's also completely compatible with Gmail so I think it's pretty flexible.

Mail will handle multiple accounts, but the only way to switch identities is to switch Users from the log-in screen. That it will do and it does it well.

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 10:46 PM

You are not going to convince me to use POP, sorry

POP is an antiquated way of doing email, as far as I'm concerned.

Things POP won't do:

- server side rules
- server side backup
- shared mailboxes/folders
- shared accounts
- mail not tethered to single desktop machine (plus message flags)
- IMAP + SSL/TLS more common

Any mail provider that only offers POP as an option does so as a cost saving measure and is not really concerned about offering top quality email service. POP becomes a nightmare the second you need to access your mailbox remotely, or your hard drive fails and your backup is incomplete or non-existent.

Sorry to be brash, but switching OS X accounts to switch email identities is a retarded, non-solution. I realize that you're trying to be helpful in pointing this out, I don't mean to put you on the defensive, but this is really the furthest thing from a solution I can think of. Every other email client on the face of this Earth seems to support multiple identities. That OS X Mail doesn't speaks to Apple's inability to conceive of well-designed IMAP clients...

OS X Mail has a nice interface and nice integration with the rest of OS X, but you take that away and Mail is an absolute POS. Sorry to say, but it really is true.

cwkmacuser · Apr 27, 2009, 11:10 PM

Yeah, uh. OK. I disagree. It does everything I need.

And postbox has built in HTML!

YAY!

cwkmacuser · Apr 27, 2009, 11:14 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

I'm also having troubles with my RSS feeds in the Postbox beta. They aren't appearing, yet reimporting them gives me an error message about the feed already existing.

Well, it's a BETA. You can expect it to have some bugs.

besson3c · Apr 27, 2009, 11:24 PM

I realize that. It worked on another machine of mine, for whatever reason.

Whatever works for you - OS X Mail, Postbox, Thunderbird, Entourage, whatever... I simply have a hard time with labeling OS X Mail as a "good" IMAP client in terms of its aforementioned difficulties.

Hal Itosis · Apr 28, 2009, 12:04 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

And it will eventually cost money

Wouldn't surprise me.

I was a paying Eudora customer for years... despite the fact it was also offered as a "free" version (which included a tiny window on the screen running non-stop advertisements). I suspect that --if/when Postbox does start costing money -- they might do something similar (have both a fully paid version and a "free" one with ads). Depending on the price, i'll probably fork over some green... i just hope it's not an unreasonable amount.

besson3c · Apr 28, 2009, 12:59 AM

Yeah... Postbox looks killer, but when the sentiment of so many is that their free email client is "good enough" (witness this thread), I really have a hard time seeing how this app will be a big financial success? Short of that, why not just open source it and try to find a commercial company that wants to redistribute it or something and is willing to fork over the dough, or let it thrive as a labor of love in the OSS community? As it stands it also has to compete with Thunderbird and its add-ons.

I wonder if the money making possibilities are not really a primary motivator here? It's not like email clients have a history of being really successful at making money. Ditto for web browsers...

cwkmacuser · Apr 28, 2009, 01:03 AM

I predict it will remain free.

besson3c · Apr 28, 2009, 01:05 AM

Another thing to add to my POP vs. IMAP list...

Many email providers provide their own spam checking and insert spam X-headers into messages. Many use server-side filters to deliver your spam straight to your Junk folder. Without IMAP, you are left without this first line of defense. If you are using an email client (web or standalone) with little or no spam filtering you are going to get a lot more spam hitting your Inbox.

Server side spam milters learn and adapt to spam with volumes of mail much greater than what you get in your individual account. Your server side milters (providing they aren't configured to discard spammy messages) are going to identify a lot of messages that your desktop client will not.

cwkmacuser · Apr 28, 2009, 01:06 AM

I rarely ever get spam.

Big Mac · Apr 28, 2009, 01:52 AM

Mail as primary, Thunderbird as backup.

JKT · Apr 28, 2009, 04:13 AM

besson3c is correct - there are many, many things wrong with Mail, but most people just don't get to experience them (or don't notice them even when they do) and therefore think that all is great in Mail-land. However, I bet there are many of you who have had drafts or deleted messages that have the persistence of a cockroach, or mails that continue to stay in your Drafts mailbox even though they are also now in your Sent mailbox because, you know, you sent them. Then there are the UI annoyances like not being able to select headers when trying to copy and paste from Mail to another source, the utterly useless error messages you get when a server isn't available or is down, "Smart" mailboxes that don't update their message counts until you view them thus making them "Dumb", the inability to assign a delay to the message read status in split pane view so you can't take a quick peek without getting the message marked as read, etc., etc.

There is a lot to like about Mail in terms of UI as well, but that doesn't detract from the issues it also has.

Btw besson3c, it was TBird 2 that I experienced many bugs with, mostly with the UI. I gave up on it back then and haven't bothered trying version 3 because of the bad experience it gave me. That, and I just can't stand the lack of a proper Mac UI in the Mozilla apps. They eventually drive me up the wall as much as using MS Office does.

Btw, anyone recommending using POP over IMAP... no thank you. Not when you use e-mail from multiple sources (that is, more than one machine or even more than one account on the same machine) and for multiple accounts.

thevelourfog · Apr 28, 2009, 07:19 AM

Unfortunately Mac's webmail service doesn't yet feature a secure portal. Until then, I'll continue to use GMail as you can stay connected securely, indefinitely -- at least to their servers. But anyone using internet service outside of the US, its nice knowing that your mail can't be read by third-parties... well at least until it hits the states!