Now that I'm on Mail.app, I'm noticing things which aren't there (or which I haven't figured out how to do) or which don't work the way I want.
Mark outgoing mail as high priority
Compose a bulleted list
Integrate an HTML page (cut and paste almost works, but doesn't preserve tables. This never worked in Eudora at all, but I was hoping for more.)
More options to control what gets checked in spelling so it doesn't flag potential incorrect spelling in parts of URL's
Typing at the summary window doesn't auto-scroll to name of recipient
The spam filter is not what I had hoped. I'm leaving it in training mode and instructing it that many messages aren't being caught. I hope it gets better.
Despite trying to follow advice, I can't seem to get the summary window of my Sent messages to remember to display the recipient, as opposed to the sender. For now, I'm just showing both To: and From: in all windows.
While it's a nice feature to be able to merge display of several mailboxes by doing a multiple select on them in the drawer, it would be even nicer if there were back and forward buttons to be able to get back such a display as opposed to having to recreate it. I suppose I could keep multiple viewer windows open, but it wreaks havoc with my screen real estate.
Auto-completion of addresses should be adaptive and propose the most-recently selected match of a set first. If I'm sending mail to Esther Sun, and I've just sent mail to her at esther@osafoundation.org, and I'm now sending her another email, if I type "Esther" it should propose that address first, not all of the ones for Esther Dyson and for Esther Sun's other email addresses first (which it does I assume because that's the alphabetical order).
It would be nice to be able to add any address, even in the body of an email. to the Address Book.
I'm miss Eudora's ability to do a "Forward to...". Saves a step or two.
Posted by mitch@osafoundation.org at September 29, 2003 10:05 AMYou should rename the the blog to "Mitch Kapor's Support Issues". :-) Wish I knew enough (or rather anything) about Macs so that I could help.
Posted by: Mark at September 29, 2003 11:11 AM
Don't expect a lot out of Mail and you won't be disappointed. If you spend a lot of time in email, then there are better options out there...some free, some not. I personally prefer PowerMail. With SpamSieve, you won't miss the Mail spam filter.
Mail is nice, and it's certainly a decent value (free) but I found its limitations too numerous to overlook or work around.
Posted by: Judi at September 29, 2003 11:38 AM
Part of the reason I write this, besides all the free support, is to make a highly visible point. If I go through this, maybe everybody else who feels similarly frustrated will realize they're not alone and it's NOT THEIR FAULT.
Posted by: Mitch Kapor at September 29, 2003 12:11 PM
My biggest complaints about Mail.app have to do with HTML and attachments.
Complaint #1 -- I have image loading turned off, because the picture show I get when it is turned on is too unpleasant. Occaisionally I get a message where I would like to see the pictures, I wish there was a "show the pictures for just this message" command.
Complaint#2 -- In-line attachments. If someone sends me a message with an attachment that is just text, Mail.app displays the attachment in-line. This is fine. Sometimes though, I get mail with several such attachments, and I want to deal with each attachment seperately, and I haven't figured out how to do that, except to look at the raw source, which is not a good thing.
Spam filter -- In my experience, once it has seen enough messages to be "trained", the spam filter is OK but not excellent. There are 496 messages in my junk folder, that's 30 days of filtering, 421 were put there automatically, the rest were put there by me when I pressed the "junk" button on the toolbar. I check the spam pile about once a month, usually have to pull out a couple of "status of your order" messages from various e-transactions.
Sent showing "To:" -- This works for me, though I don't know how or why, so I am just as clueless as you.
I like Mail.App. It does what I need it to do, fairly quickly and robustly. There's a lot of attention to user experience detail under the hood that makes it feel simpler than it is, which I appreciate. It's not a power user app, but it isn't a toy either, in fact, of all the iApps, it is the one which is least likely to make you look for a more functional alternative.
Posted by: Michael Toy at September 29, 2003 12:57 PM
From above:
>Complaint#2 --I want to deal with each attachment seperately
Use File -> Save Attachments.
This should let you save attachments to your hard drive.
Posted by: pradeep at September 29, 2003 01:14 PM
RE your feature request for adaptive autocompletion
I think this is a bit of a baroque request, I hate computers second guessing me badly and would prefer if it just did the same thing every time so I can learn that, for example, Esther Sun is the third Esther in the list and will stay there at least until I add more Esthers.
I will note that it completes on first and second names as well as the email address itself so perhaps 'Dyson' and 'Sun' may be better choices if you know a lot of Esthers.
----
RE url mistaken for spelling mistakes
Cocoaspell is based on the open source aspell and plugs seamlessly into Mac OS X's global spelling framework.
It gives options to skip over urls, email addresses, html, quoted text in email etc. and a few other neat features.
http://www-ciir.cs.umass.edu/~leouski/cocoaspell/
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And finally I'll note that Mail is apparently generally much better in Panther which should be out in about a month.
Here's the related marketing bumf:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/mail.html
and a rumour site's take:
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/panthermail.html
Posted by: dave at September 29, 2003 02:04 PM
To set the mail priority you may check out 'MailPriority X 1.2b' this should do the trick. You can find it here:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8346
The Spam Filter should be nice after some training, I get around 300 spammails per week and maybe up to 5 false negatives and maximum 1 false positive, so I´m quite satisfied.
Posted by: Paso at September 29, 2003 03:17 PM
To try and get the Summary window to show To in Sent mailboxes and From in others I would try setting the Summary display back to just show From, then go to the Mail menu, select Preferences, select the relevant account, edit it, go to the Special Mailboxes tab, uncheck the Store sent messages on the server checkbox, click OK, close the Preferences, then go back in and select it. If that doesn't work or you've tried it already then I would suspect Mail.app has got very confused about the state that mailbox should be in and you'd probably need to start afresh.
Posted by: Matthew at September 29, 2003 08:22 PM
For Mail priority see:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030306183634312
Posted by: Grinorcol at September 30, 2003 02:19 PM
I have to ask… Mitch, now that you’re in a better position “go on dates” with other messaging clients, why haven’t you been exercising Entourage? I’m a huge believer in being able to demo/use/praise and critique my competitors’ products just as well as I can my own.
Posted by: daniel klaussen at October 2, 2003 07:22 PM
>why haven’t you been exercising Entourage?
Because I've had my hands full with Eudora and Mail.app. Next to bring up i Mozilla mail, then Entourage.
Posted by: Mitch Kapor at October 3, 2003 08:18 AM
Don't forget Mozilla Thunderbird-- it may be in pre-release quality, but I've been using it as my default mailer on Windows XP for a couple of months now without any headaches. I refresh it every week or two from the nightly build archives with whatever the latest is. So far I have yet to dl a build that breaks anything (same goes for Firebird).
Posted by: Matt at October 10, 2003 10:43 AM
"The spam filter is not what I had hoped."
It does seem to work better over a longer period of time. I don't think it worked as well quickly as Entourage. For me it was really about 6 weeks of "training" and adding a bunch of my own Rules to make the Junk filter work well.
Mercifully it looks like Panther's Mail will handle addresses better, including better Adress book integration.
Posted by: andrew at October 10, 2003 12:07 PM
Chop chop -- get with the program. GyazMail.
http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/index_ja.php
Posted by: hella at October 23, 2003 05:40 PM
I've noticed with Mail.app that it doesn't like showing the From email address in my messages. It decides that all I need to know is the persons name.. not the address. Unfortunate! Is there a way around this?
Posted by: justin at November 11, 2003 10:56 AM
..and there it is. Got rid of "Show Smart Addresses" under View.
Posted by: justin at November 11, 2003 10:57 AM
You should rename the the blog to "Mitch Kapor's Support Issues". :-) Wish I knew enough (or rather anything) about Macs so that I could help.
Posted by: Domai at July 9, 2004 05:01 AM