Road Mac OS X Leopard: Mail 3.0

[AppleInsider]

Mail in Mac OS X has progressively grown from the simple mail client Apple included with the first builds of Mac OS X into one of the best email solutions for the Mac, and certainly the most popular. As the default app for email on the Mac, Mail gets lots of feature requests and lots of complaints when things don't work as expected. For example, Mail 2.0 in Tiger drew gasps from its use of nonstandard toolbar icons that grouped functions together in bubbles. Apple has significantly updated Mail for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, introducing support for Notes, To Do reminders, RSS feeds, Data Detectors, and HTML Statonery. Here's a look at what's new.

This report goes to great lengths to follow the origins, history, and maturity of the Apple's Mail client. For those readers with limited time or who are only interested in what's due in Leopard, you can skip to page 3 of this report.

Mail's Origins

In the early 80s, Apple began work on outlining an office-centric system for file sharing, printing, and messaging called the Macintosh Office. Steve Jobs hoped to aggressively target the new Mac at businesses, staving off the advancement of the then very simplistic IBM DOS PC by offering a sophisticated, integrated system of networked workstation class machines.

Apple CEO John Sculley feared that Jobs' plans for the Mac might spread the company too thin and prematurely kill its current cash cow, the Apple II. Jobs lost the ensuing power struggle, and wound up departing from Apple and taking his vision for advanced, highly integrated business machines to NeXT.

Meanwhile, Sculley's Apple delayed the roll out of various elements of the Macintosh Office plan over a prolonged period. That delay left Apple without a cohesive product for businesses, ceded that market to the DOS PC unchallenged, and pigeonholed the Mac into a role as niche product for graphic designers.

The Macintosh Office

As originally conceived, Job's Macintosh Office would first deliver brain dead simple networking and file sharing, then migrate the Mac from its appliance origins into a "BigMac" workstation and server platform based upon Unix. Apple licensed commercial Unix from AT&T in order to move in that direction. A stronger operating system foundation would allow for further advances in messaging and collaboration.

The Mac shipped early support for AppleTalk networking, which enabled it to share files and expensive peripherals such as the 1985 LaserWriter without any complex configuration. Jobs promoted the evolving idea of the Macintosh Office in Lemmings, a 1985 SuperBowl ad which depicted blindfolded users marching over a cliff until one user decides to pull off his blindfold and look around.

Further elements of the plan were slow in coming, particularly after the departure of Jobs and his replacement by Jean Louis Gassée, who derided the plan as the "Macintosh Orifice." Gassée pulled Apple out of its partnership with workstation vendor Apollo, which the company had been working with in an effort to port the Mac desktop to its line of workstations running the Unix-like Domain/OS. That move left the blindsided Apollo scrambling for a new strategy, and it was subsequently bought up by HP.

Gassée also snubbed AT&T and other vendors which had expressed interest in licensing the Mac desktop for their Unix workstations. Four years after the arrival of the original Mac, Sculley's Apple released its own Unix distribution for the Mac called A/UX, but it wasn't integrated with the Mac System 7 desktop until version 3.0 in 1992.

Apple also finally released a standalone AppleShare file server in 1988, and announced plans to expand its server offerings into a messaging and collaboration system called the the Apple Open Collaboration Environment (AOCE) shortly afterward. However, by then Apple's over-architected plans had little chance of gaining much acceptance, and the company wasn't doing a very good job at actually developing usable technology. In large measure, that was because the classic Mac OS wasn't designed to serve the needs of a server platform.

Under Sculley, Apple also largely backed out of the application software to avoid stepping on the toes of its third party developers. QuickMail, FirstClass, and Microsoft Mail were among the first email programs for the Mac, which also made them among the first graphical email clients on any computer. Microsoft later ported its Microsoft Mail to Windows, where it competed on the PC against the very popular DOS-based cc:Mail.

Steve Jobs' NeXTMail

After leaving Apple, Jobs accomplished at NeXT what he hoped to do with the Macintosh Office. Its NeXTSTEP operating system was developed on top of a Unix foundation with the intent of delivering advanced networking and collaborative functionality.

Among the advances NeXT demonstrated as early as 1988 was NeXTMail (below). It allowed users to include rich text in multiple fonts, use drag and drop to include embedded graphics or file attachments, and could even include audio recordings using the built in voice annotation feature called Lip Service. It also supported 'mailfaces,' a feature which collected and set up a database of mail contact photos and matched them to incoming emails.



NeXTMail could also consult a corporate directory service to look up contacts, years before Microsoft even promised to deliver similar features in its Exchange Server product, which didn't ship until 1996. By then, NeXTSTEP had sat in maintenance mode for years after giving up on trying to sell its operating system in the PC market locked up tight under Microsoft's monopoly control.

New NeXTMail users were greeted by a welcome email message which included a voice recording from Jobs (below) and his signature. Jobs demonstrated the advanced features of NeXTMail in a 1992 NeXTSTEP Release 3 Demo presentation that is now on YouTube.



Microsoft's Exchange and Lotus Notes

Lotus Development bought cc:Mail in 1992 in an effort to migrate its users to Lotus Notes. However, the transition pushed many users with simple email needs to adopt the far more complex Notes groupware software. That left an unfilled hole for a less ambitions product to fill.

In 1991, Bill Gates outlined an initiative to match the features of NeXTSTEP in the presentation of Cairo, a code name that first referred to an operating system product that would follow the first release of Windows NT, and then later petered out into what Gates would described as a "product vision." By 1997, Microsoft stopped talking about Cairo entirely, but some elements of it resulted in actual products within the same decade.

One of the most significant examples was the 1996 release of Exchange Server and the Exchange Client email program (below), which later became Outlook for Windows and Entourage for the Mac. With the release of Exchange, Microsoft sold off its existing Microsoft Mail product for the Mac to StarNine.

Exchange cleaned up the low end of the PC market, which had largely been stuck with Lotus cc:Mail and lacked any simple migration path outside of upgrading to Notes. Exchange has since expanded upward in the market to compete against Lotus Notes directly, which is now owned by IBM.



On page 2: Apple's PowerTalk and CyberDog; NeXTMail at Apple; Mail in Mac OS X; and Tiger Mail 2.0.

Apple's PowerTalk and CyberDog

Back at Apple, by 1995 the aforementioned AOCE and its PowerTalk mail components (below) had been recognized as a failure on the same level as Copland, for many of the same reasons. Both tried to do too much, were built on shaky operating system foundations, and were demanding a lot from third party developers at a time when Apple's Macintosh looked like a poor platform for investment.



PowerTalk had intended to embed messaging features into the Mac System Software, making emailing a document as simple as printing (below). Rather than simply adding email support, the system also intended to incorporate digital signatures and encryption features, handle foreign language messaging, manage user passwords in a system wide keychain, and support an extensible, abstract information cataloging system (described in a MacTech back article from December 1994: Exploring Advanced AOCE Templates Through Celestial Mechanics).



In 1996, PowerTalk was finally put on ice and Apple changed its focus toward a software component strategy based on OpenDoc. As a demonstration of what could be done with OpenDoc building blocks, Apple introduced CyberDog (below), a collection of email, web browsing, newsreader, FTP, and other Internet related components.



Apple's software subsidiary Claris also bought up Emailer (below) in 1994, which was popular among Mac users in the mid 90s. Emailer was canceled along with much of the rest of Claris' aging portfolio during the housecleaning following Apple's purchase of NeXT in 1996.



NeXTMail at Apple

After acquiring NeXT, Apple was quickly remade in Jobs' image. Apple immediately shipped a cross platform 4.2 release of NeXT's operating system as a demonstration of what the company had acquired. It included the largely unchanged Mail.app (below).



In 1997, Apple shipped NeXT's Mail.app with a Mac OS appearance in its Rhapsody developer previews, under the name MailViewer (below). When major third party Mac developers -- primarily Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft -- refused to invest in Apple's new platform, the company had to come up with a new strategy for migrating the classic Mac OS APIs to run within the new system, allowing existing, classic Mac OS programs to run transparently. This new strategy set aside Apple's original plan to rapidly migrate Mac users to a modernized version of NeXTSTEP.



Mail in Mac OS X

That involved extending the classic Mac OS 7.6 with interim releases over the next several years, while Apple reworked and modernized a new hybrid system of NeXT and Mac technologies that would result in Mac OS X. In 2000, the third developer release of Mac OS X debuted the new Aqua interface. One of its design principles was the idea of slide out drawer windows, which the new Mail (below) used as a way to present its mailboxes.



With its initial commercial release of Mac OS X, Apple shipped Mail 1.x (below). It offered integration with the new Address Book, which built both upon the PowerTalk concept of a system wide contacts repository and NeXT's NetInfo directory system.



With Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2 in 2002, Apple added junk mail filtering and made continuing refinements to the overall interface. This was the first version of Mac OS X that was widely usable by mainstream Mac users. In their migration to Mac OS X, many left their former classic Mac OS email clients behind to use Apple's bundled Mail app.



With Mac OS X Panther 10.3 in 2003, Apple added integration with AOL Instant Messaging presence indication provided by the new iChat, and some limited new interaction with the newly released iCal.

Panther's Mail (below) was notable as being one of the few leading apps bundled in Mac OS X that wasn't converted to brushed metal. Address Book, iCal, iChat, QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, the Finder, and even the Calculator were all outfitted with a metal appearance. Mail did get a facelift however, which toned down its iMac style plastic pin striping and gave it a platinum title bar with close widgets set into it like gems rather than glued on top like gumdrops.



Tiger Mail 2.0

The release of Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 in 2005 brought Mail 2.0 (below). It got smart mailboxes, mail priority flagging, attachment slideshow features, an easy way to resize graphical attachments to save bandwidth, and closer integration with .Mac for syncing mail accounts, rules, signatures and smart mailbox settings. It also got faster improved searching overall thanks to Spotlight integration.

In order to support Spotlight's search engine, the new Mail converted its email storage from a variant of the MBOX format originally used by NeXT -- which put individual emails into a large database file, as most other email programs do -- into a simple new folder structure that saves each email as a separate file. This allows Spotlight to search through email messages just like individual documents, and return email messages as results to a search.

Mail 2.0 dropped its drawer and instead placed email account folders within a sidebar. It introduced a new unified look, which merged the toolbar into the title bar, creating a larger target for grabbing the window. Toolbar icons also introduced a bubble look, which grouped together more compact new icons by purpose.



On page 3: Leopard's New Mail; To Do Reminders; Apple Data Detectors; Take Notes; RSS Feed Reader; and New Mail Source List.

Leopard's New Mail

In Leopard, Mail 3.0 (below) gets its biggest leap forward yet. Its window follows the unified Leopard window appearance, with squared off window corners that look like more like iTunes. As with earlier releases, many of its new enhancements come from integration with other new or improved services in Mac OS X.

For example, the new stationery features build in a sort of mini-iWeb for creating nice looking HTML emails that embed the user's own photos into one of a variety of supplied templates. Templates are invisible unless you tap on the Stationery icon in the toolbar, so if you hate the idea of HTML emails, you won't even know its there. Until, of course, you start getting them from your mom. The Stationery-based HTML emails look good in any modern email client on the Mac or PC, including the iPhone's Mail.



To Do Reminders

Mail 3.0 also plugs in to the new Calendar Store in Leopard, which manages a system wide, shared repository of calendar and event information in the same way Address Book manages a central pool of contacts. This allows Mail (as well as third party applications) to interface with the same selection of To Do reminders as the new iCal presents. Select a section of text within an email describing an event or objective, right click, and select "New To Do" to convert the selection into a calendar reminder.



Why do this in Mail? It's not just a novelty. To Do reminders are linked to the message you created them from. From your To Do check list, you can click on an iTunes-like arrow (above, at the right end of the To Do titles) to bring up the email you linked it against. That makes the To Do a sort of organized, hyperlinked flag for email messages.

Since a To Do is a standard event, it can be assigned a due date (below) with reminder alarms, a set priority, and a calendar, so you can keep your events separated and organized, synced across systems, including -- shortly -- your iPhone.



Apple Data Detectors

Another cool feature in Mail is Data Detectors, which originated in Apple's Advanced Technology Group research lab in the mid 90s as a way to isolate useful information from a document, such as harvesting email addresses from a text file. Apple Data Detectors are back in Mail 3.0.

Emails in Mail that contain a date, phone number, or a contact (such within an email signature) are tagged with a drop down menu. Click on it and select "Create New Contact," and Data Detectors will scrape together as much as it can from the email: the name, mailing address, email address, phone and fax numbers, and copy them into a contact entry ready for your editing (below).



It does an amazing job of formating all the information correctly, including the city, state, and zip code. You can then click a button to add the new entry to your Address Book. You can also add the information to an existing contact. This is great if you hate having to copy and paste bits of a signature into your contacts manually. Mail's detectors can also act on time and date entries, offering to schedule an event in iCal (below.)



Take Notes

Mail 3.0 also gets Notes, which are HTML scratchpad emails with rich text, hyperlinks, and graphics or file attachments. They act as specialized email drafts, and can similarly be linked to To Do reminders, so a simple event can bring up a more detailed outline contained in a Note.

Following an upcoming iPhone update, they'll be the way to sync ideas between your mailbox and your mobile. That can already be done today with draft emails, but Notes makes it more accessible than digging around between mailboxes, and separates the and stylizes the idea of a note from an email draft. The contents of a Note can also be forwarded as an email.



RSS Feed Reader

While Apple already added support for parsing RSS feeds into Safari, Mail 3.0 offers to act as a simple RSS feed reader. That allows you to review new articles from your favorite websites (or podcasts) in the same context as your incoming emails.



New Mail Source List

With all the new stuff in the sidebar, Apple's given Mail's iTunes-like "source list" a feature that doesn't appear in iTunes, or any other application sporting a sidebar, such as the new Finder: Mail 3.0 can rearrange its main sections (such as Mailboxes, Reminders, Smart Mailboxes, and RSS feeds) by drag and drop, just as the existing Tiger version can rearrange mail folders. That lets you customize Mail to suit however you chose to use it.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Prism]

Will Mail 3.0 also include the use of sub-folders under a mail accounts Inbox?
I know there is Smart Folders, but I want my mail filtered properly. Meaning I want a mail physically moved to the right sub-folder, and not just a link.
What's the point of having smart folders when the mail itself stays in the inbox with the rest of the mail, of which a lot isn't filtered???
I never got that with Mail 2.0, hence I don't use it.

By the way, this goes for POP3 accounts. IMAP can doe this, since you're doing the sub-folders on the mail server and not on the on the local machine in the mail client.

[Lafe]

These articles are great! Keep 'em coming!

(But this one ended with no conclusion / wrap up. It just kind of . . . stopped.)

[deep]

In addition to the new features mentioned in the article, Mail's Activity Viewer will now be integrated into bottom of the sidebar. This is a welcomed change. I seriously hate the current floating window. The new version will show progress in the same location where Album Art is shown in iTunes. I wish Apple would just make it work like Safari's Status Bar and position it along the bottom of the window, but this is just as good I suppose. Worth a mention.

deep

[mzaslove]

Originally Posted by deep

In addition to the new features mentioned in the article, Mail's Activity Viewer will now be integrated into bottom of the sidebar. This is a welcomed change.

Thanks -- that's a nice change to know about for me.

[ThunkDifferent.com]

Thanks for the Leopard update agian, rockin' iAm amazed at how close the NeXT STEP OS was related to the current OS X, even looking at the old Apple OS seems Soooo antiquated, Steve is a true visionary never satisfied with e status quo. iWould argue that his mid-nineties NeXT mail app is more advanced than even Tiger mail, yes more advanced than Tiger 2.0, 3.0 is another story however, its just beats NeXT by a hair, as any cat that can jump like a leopard would.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A&eurl=

NeXT STEP release Demo (See mail, it was very advanced!)

[brianus]

Originally Posted by Prism

Will Mail 3.0 also include the use of sub-folders under a mail accounts Inbox?
I know there is Smart Folders, but I want my mail filtered properly. Meaning I want a mail physically moved to the right sub-folder, and not just a link.
What's the point of having smart folders when the mail itself stays in the inbox with the rest of the mail, of which a lot isn't filtered???
I never got that with Mail 2.0, hence I don't use it.

By the way, this goes for POP3 accounts. IMAP can doe this, since you're doing the sub-folders on the mail server and not on the on the local machine in the mail client.

Why do you need sub folders under POP3 accounts? I know other mail clients like Thunderbird allow this, but the distinction between those "sub" folders and regular mail folders is just visual; ultimately, they're just mail stored locally, with no *real* relationship to the POP server they're listed under. Is there a reason you can't just use Mail 2.0's regular, top-level, non-Smart folders?

[donnacha]

Lovely ...

... but will I be able to use it with my GMail and Google Apps email accounts?

[brianus]

Originally Posted by donnacha

Lovely ...

... but will I be able to use it with my GMail and Google Apps email accounts?

Doesn't Mail 2.0 already work with GMail?

[tundraboy]

So aside from being the person responsible for the insanely high pricing of the Mac, he was also to blame for prolonging the by then obsolete Apple II line to the detriment of future product development? I suppose one can't expect a peddlar of soda pop (where 'clear' cola in fancy frosty bottles is thought of as 'innovation') to understand the nature of innovation in the high tech industry. One more reason why John Sculley should go down in history as "The Man Who Nearly Killed Apple".

Rule No 1 for tech companies: Cannibalize your own products or someone else will do it to you.

[hohlecow]

Mail seems to be getting a little too much functionality, in my opinion. RSS makes sense (its kind of like mail), but notes and todos?

Have stickies fallen out of favor? With a "manager" interface, they could have easily been the default note store.

And todos? Is that really the domain of Mail? Why not leave that in iCal (does the new iCal still manage todos as well?

[Hattig]

"Mail in Mac OS X has progressively grown from the simple mail client Apple included with the first builds of Mac OS X into one of the best email solutions for the Mac"

lol hahaha haha ha

It looks nice.

But the underlying stuff is appalling. What Thunderbird or Evolution can update from an IMAP server in 1 second often takes Mail.app a minute.

Oh, I like the functionality it provides - the Spotlight integration and so on. But it's so frustrating to use compared to far better alternatives (technically, if not user interface wise).

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by brianus

Doesn't Mail 2.0 already work with GMail?

Certainly does.

[zunx]

Nothing like Eudora. The best ever e-mail application for Mac. A shame it is not yet native for Mactel.

[donnacha]

Originally Posted by brianus

Doesn't Mail 2.0 already work with GMail?

Originally Posted by Ireland

Certainly does.

In order to provide the features that make it so popular, Google goes somewhat beyond standard POP and, therefore, Mail fails to sync with the full GMail feature-set. For instance, when you read an email via Mail it should, but does not, appear as read in GMail.

Also, last time I tried it, about six months ago, Mail was unable to identify Sent mail and place it in the correct folder.

Obviously, it is Google, not Apple, who have veered from the standard BUT, given that Gmail and Google Apps are used by a huge number of Mac users, Apple should step up and add to Mail the additional logic necessary to properly interpret Google's system - it is an absolute travesty that some of the most advanced users are forced to use Webmail while an otherwise great mail application sits there unused.

[Louzer]

Originally Posted by brianus

Why do you need sub folders under POP3 accounts? I know other mail clients like Thunderbird allow this, but the distinction between those "sub" folders and regular mail folders is just visual; ultimately, they're just mail stored locally, with no *real* relationship to the POP server they're listed under. Is there a reason you can't just use Mail 2.0's regular, top-level, non-Smart folders?

I think he wants to know whether the "Inbox" still will list separate boxes for various mail accounts. If you look at the picture for Tiger, you see that, but don't for Leopard (which might be just a factor of different set-ups).

[MiMiC]

Originally Posted by ThunkDifferent.com

Thanks for the Leopard update agian, rockin' iAm amazed at how close the NeXT STEP OS was related to the current OS X, even looking at the old Apple OS seems Soooo antiquated, Steve is a true visionary never satisfied with e status quo. iWould argue that his mid-nineties NeXT mail app is more advanced than even Tiger mail, yes more advanced than Tiger 2.0, 3.0 is another story however, its just beats NeXT by a hair, as any cat that can jump like a leopard would.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A&eurl=

NeXT STEP release Demo (See mail, it was very advanced!)

MUCH Agreed! I am very impressed with this demo. And that was a long time ago! Very strange to hear Steve talk bad about Macs

[Hellenek]

"Mail's detectors can also act on time and date entries, offering to schedule an event in iCal" --- aaah like the Newton did. Excellent!

[SpamSandwich]

Originally Posted by brianus

Doesn't Mail 2.0 already work with GMail?

It sure does. Using it daily.

[Louzer]

Originally Posted by hohlecow

Mail seems to be getting a little too much functionality, in my opinion. RSS makes sense (its kind of like mail), but notes and todos?

Have stickies fallen out of favor? With a "manager" interface, they could have easily been the default note store.

And todos? Is that really the domain of Mail? Why not leave that in iCal (does the new iCal still manage todos as well?

I agree that Mail is getting too much functionality. Its basically trying to turn itself into Outlook (and everyone a while ago was claiming how Outlook was such a hodgepodge and its better to have separate apps).

RSS doesn't make sense to me, since I can't visualize that as being anything like mail. And are todo items going to synchronize with iCal? And how does Notes actually relate to "mail"?

This is the problem all software developers/vendors have. Once you've hit a point in development, there's nothing left but to add nifty new features outside the point of the application, just so you can say "Look, we've got new stuff!" (the same holds true for a lot of what's going into leopard). I've noticed Firefox starting to head down that same road. They're starting to add more and more features which, originally, were all optional pieces you could install through their nice plug-in system. Soon enough, I fear, its going to turn into Firefox Communicator or something.

And Mail being the best client for the mac is laughable. Maybe if they can fix the problems where people tend to lose their entire mail, perhaps. Me, I'll stick to the solid PowerMail.

[mugwump]

Meh, the whole thing smacks of the Apple executives spending all their time using Mail, and thereby want to place all of these unrelated features in there. I mean, they obviously don't use iCal.

Up next, Address Book is now a folder in Mail. Followed by a new mail folder filled with forms for ordering lunch. Followed by Mail Widgets. Next up, stock quotes embedded in every incoming email, kinda like a real time ticker if the emails are coming fast enough.

[Gustav]

Originally Posted by Prism

What's the point of having smart folders when the mail itself stays in the inbox with the rest of the mail, of which a lot isn't filtered???

Smart folders are just a fancy way of saying "Live Searches". If you think of them as an always up-to-date search, you may use them more effectively. For example, deal with the mail in the smart folders first, and you then won't have to deal with them in the inbox.

[ak1808]

Originally Posted by mugwump

Meh, the whole thing smacks of the Apple executives spending all their time using Mail, and thereby want to place all of these unrelated features in there.

I guess if the executive of a multi-billion-dollar company is using it (successfully), I should be just fine...

[Gustav]

Originally Posted by hohlecow

And todos? Is that really the domain of Mail?

For some people, yes. For some, their Mail application is the center of their work day - all work starts and ends within mail, so To-dos actually work there.

I don't know for certain, but I'll bet you can turn To-dos off in Mail if you don't like them.

[siren77]

Originally Posted by hohlecow

Mail seems to be getting a little too much functionality, in my opinion. RSS makes sense (its kind of like mail), but notes and todos?

Have stickies fallen out of favor? With a "manager" interface, they could have easily been the default note store.

And todos? Is that really the domain of Mail? Why not leave that in iCal (does the new iCal still manage todos as well?

I may be wrong but I got the impression from the article that any ToDo's marked in an email still go into iCal, it's just that they provide a link to that specific email where they were marked.

[MacTel]

Originally Posted by Lafe

These articles are great! Keep 'em coming!

(But this one ended with no conclusion / wrap up. It just kind of . . . stopped.)

I was looking for that wrap-up too. Mail 3.0 looks impressive with its new layout. The notes thing is handy.

Like most client/server solutions, the real power of Mail 3.0 may not be realized until Leopard Server is throne into the equation. With iCal server and Mail server there's probably some server-side goodness that this article is skipping. Of course, most users won't have the ability to have Leopard Server on their home network so this article is geared correctly.

[siren77]

Originally Posted by hohlecow

Mail seems to be getting a little too much functionality, in my opinion. RSS makes sense (its kind of like mail), but notes and todos?

Have stickies fallen out of favor? With a "manager" interface, they could have easily been the default note store.

And todos? Is that really the domain of Mail? Why not leave that in iCal (does the new iCal still manage todos as well?

"Every to-do you create includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any edits or additions you make."
That's from Apple's website. So they're in both really. Best of both worlds.

[FreeState]

Originally Posted by siren77

I may be wrong but I got the impression from the article that any ToDo's marked in an email still go into iCal, it's just that they provide a link to that specific email where they were marked.

You are correct - ToDo's and Notes can be used and accessed system wide.


http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/mail.html

Much ado about to-dos.
Forget manually entering a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To-do icon to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do you create includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any edits or additions you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email, you can access them from Mail on any Mac.

[brianus]

Originally Posted by Louzer

I think he wants to know whether the "Inbox" still will list separate boxes for various mail accounts. If you look at the picture for Tiger, you see that, but don't for Leopard (which might be just a factor of different set-ups).

The OP said he doesn't use 2.0 because it doesn't include the feature he's asking for, so I doubt he was referring to the separate boxes per account. I doubt they'd get rid of that anyway (and I certainly wouldn't use 3.0 if they did!)

Bottom line, with the iTunes-inspired "Source lists" replacing sidebars and drawers the OS over, Apple, but also those who have used and commented on Leopard developer builds, really should do a better job explaining how commonly used features have changed and what will require re-learning rather than just focusing on the bells and whistles.

[Prism]

Originally Posted by brianus

Why do you need sub folders under POP3 accounts? I know other mail clients like Thunderbird allow this, but the distinction between those "sub" folders and regular mail folders is just visual; ultimately, they're just mail stored locally, with no *real* relationship to the POP server they're listed under. Is there a reason you can't just use Mail 2.0's regular, top-level, non-Smart folders?

But I like the visual thing about it.
I also have more then one POP3 account.

I like to have separate sub-folders family, forums, etc, etc.
What goes on on the mail server, I don't care.
It's offline where I want my mail filtered.

It's been a while since I tried Mail 2.0, but if I remember correctly then I couldn't filter to a top-level, non-smart folder from any POP3 Inbox.
Like I said it's been a while, but if I could I would have been using Mail 2.0 right now.

[brianus]

Originally Posted by hohlecow

Mail seems to be getting a little too much functionality, in my opinion. RSS makes sense (its kind of like mail), but notes and todos?

Have stickies fallen out of favor? With a "manager" interface, they could have easily been the default note store.

And todos? Is that really the domain of Mail? Why not leave that in iCal (does the new iCal still manage todos as well?

To me, the RSS is the one thing that screams out 'feature creep.' Why web-based newsfeeds in a mail application? Mail is mail, not a newsreader. It can't do usenet, so it shouldn't do web either, and besides, Safari already handles it (and is the more logical app for RSS). Notes and to-dos, though, I understand. To-dos are really just another example of Apple making their productivity apps talk to one another. It's nothing "new" really; it just allows Mail to integrate seamlessly with a feature of iCal just as it already can with features of iPhoto, iChat and Address Book. And it makes perfect sense in a mail app -- in workplaces, tasks are often emailed, and iCal has long supported sending out to-do notifications *through* Mail.app, so this is just the other shoe dropping.

I agree with you regarding Stickies -- I don't understand why they've decided to make Notes a *part* of Mail (I've read that they're actually stored in a special, local imap mailbox), rather than just providing a Mail interface to a user-account-wide notes store you can also get to through Stickies. Oh well. In my experience, most Mac users aren't even aware Stickies exists.

[DoctorGonzo]

I'd love there to be the ability to set it to automatically load images from senders who you have approved images from in the past, as opposed to forcing me to go into Preferences and manually turn off "Automatically Load Images" every time a spam message makes it through the filters and needs to be selected, then deleted.

[brianus]

Originally Posted by Prism

But I like the visual thing about it.
I also have more then one POP3 account.

I like to have separate sub-folders family, forums, etc, etc.
What goes on on the mail server, I don't care.
It's offline where I want my mail filtered.

It's been a while since I tried Mail 2.0, but if I remember correctly then I couldn't filter to a top-level, non-smart folder from any POP3 Inbox.
Like I said it's been a while, but if I could I would have been using Mail 2.0 right now.

I do it every day. The "+" button in Mail 2.0's lower-left corner by default creates a regular, rather than Smart, mailbox at the top level (they're positioned in the very bottom of the sidebar), stored locally. Email-filtering rules can deliver from any inbox to any of these folders. I have one that pulls certain automated notices out of my work POP inbox into a folder, and another that filters mailing list postings out of an imap account. If you don't mind that the folders are top-level, try it!

I use Mail at home and Thunderbird at work, in both cases with two POP and two IMAP accounts, and though the visual metaphor is different in their respective sidebars, I really can't see any functional difference. There's little that I can do in one that I can't in the other, with respect to folder management.

[theGAR]

To really break into the corporate world (among a few other things), Apple needs to take the next step (no pun, etc ...) and produce an Exchange-like app. I know several people/companies who hold back on Mac's because of this. I don't know how good or comparable Mail/iCal server is, however.

[macnoid]

I like the functionality in the new Mail, but I think the next step Apple should take is to break it up.

I think Mail is becoming your all-in-one Organizer. I like apps like this, and I use them now. But I think it'd be better for all if the Organizer was separate from the Mail app. Keep Mail simple (if that's all you use and don't need to organize appointments and todos). Let this Organizer app have interfaces for third parties to plug in their own apps. If I don't care for iCal or Apple's RSS feed reader or even Apple's Mail, I could use a third party solution and if it were compliant with the Organizer API's I could be using OmniFocus, NetNewsWire, or Eudora.

I realize that the trend is one of history. Apple is just following in the shadow of corporate email clients like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Nots that used email as a foundation to build all of these extra features and turn it into an all-in-one organizer. In the end, I think Apple would be better off letting third parties bring their best of breed apps to the organizer (by allowing open interfaces and separating from the Mail app) than by trying to come up with all of this functionality itself.

While I am looking forward to the new features in Mail, the best thing path for the future is to split the out the "organizer" into its own app, and use a slender Mail, iCal, RSS Feed Reader, et al as the built in defaults for the organizer's back end.

[badtz]

Does anyone know if the new Mail supports IMAP-IDLE?

[kim kap sol]

Mail certainly is victim of feature-creep. I agree with Macnoid.

I used to love Apple apps for their simplicity and focus. Mail used to be just that, a mail client. Safari used to be just a web browser. iTunes used to be just a music player.

To Do, Notes and RSS do *not* belong in Mail. They belong as separate apps much like Address Book which provides a system-wide contact service used most prominently by Mail and iCal.

This new trend by Apple is disturbing. The line that separates what is and what isn't an acceptable feature to add to an existing app certainly isn't clear...but I could certainly have seen lightweight To Do, Notes and RSS Reader apps that could have tied into Safari and Mail if need be but would remain stand alone for people that simply need to add a note or add a To Do item without having iCal or Mail open.

What is wrong with you, Apple? The biggest problem now is whether Apple will ever have the guts to go back onto this decision? When a feature is added, it's not easy to remove it without angering a lot of people that love the idea of having orthogonal features in an app or people that got used to using them within the app. Apple did the right thing with iMovie (simplifying the app) and everyone screamed bloody murder.

One thing I do love about Mail 3.0 is the data detector. It detects names, addresses, phone numbers with amazing accuracy. This info can then be added to an existing contact or you can create a new one if Mail didn't find that contact in Address Book. It detects dates and times in various formats and languages and will generate an iCal event using that info with the title of the e-mail. Very impressive and practical.

I hope 10.6 separates Notes and To Do from Mail.

There's also something wrong with the aesthetics of the app. They changed from normal toolbar icons to gel capsule-like buttons with a smaller icon inside in Tiger...ok. But Leopard is shedding away Aqua and moving to a platinum-look. The Finder, Safari, iCal, iChat, Address Book, Font Book, Dictionary, Calculator have all gone platinum with metal buttons with a black silhouette icon on them. Why hasn't Mail (or Preview for that matter)?

None of Mail's toolbar buttons would be difficult to represent as a simple black silhouette except perhaps the Junk button. Check Mail is a simple envelop. Reply, Reply-All, Forward, Redirect and Bounce to Sender are just arrows. Delete is just a circle with a diagonal bar within it. Compose is a sheet of paper with a pencil...it's possible to do this as a silhouette and have it recognizable. Print and text sizes already exist in Safari 3.0's resources as black silhouettes.

Some of the buttons would require more creativity...like the Color icon that pops the color palette up. And the Photo Browser and Show/Hide Stationery icon.

Perhaps it would make Mail look too drab but it would actually fit in with the rest of Leopard.

[digital_dreamer]

Originally Posted by badtz

Does anyone know if the new Mail supports IMAP-IDLE?

Good question. I don't think so, but I'd love to be wrong.

It'd be nice for push email on my Treo 650.

regards,
MAJ

[suhail]

NeXT had email back in 1988? How? There was no real internet in 1988! I was running an Amiga and a C128 back then and was considered a NERD, I do not remember email, I do remember local-networking chat-rooms using modems but not emails?

Weird

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by brianus

Why do you need sub folders under POP3 accounts? I know other mail clients like Thunderbird allow this, but the distinction between those "sub" folders and regular mail folders is just visual; ultimately, they're just mail stored locally, with no *real* relationship to the POP server they're listed under. Is there a reason you can't just use Mail 2.0's regular, top-level, non-Smart folders?

I don't know about the posters original motivation for his request but there are good reasons to want this sort of arrangement. First; if we acknowledge that Apple storage of E-Mails as individual files is a good thing we then realize they are simple file system objects. This means that writing scripts to work against specific types of E-Mails is very easy.

Lets say for Example that you can get Mail to sort out all E-Mails of advertisements from a specific vendor for you. If these end up in a specific directory you can then write simple scripts to purge these ads every 45 days for example. Other important E-Mails can be backed up to secondary storage automatically. The idea here is to populate your USB dongle with only the stuff from correspondents that you find important automatically.

Things like searching for specific files with Finder would be easier too.

In the end I would want what the original poster is looking for myself. The usability enhancements that Apple is making with OS/X have me looking seriously at it for use on a laptop. This from a Linux user. The thing is they need to move forward as far as removing artificial restrictions with respect to power users.

Dave