Went to MAIL...back to Entourage

bodhi

Can't stand it anymore. If what I am hearing is correct Apple is trying to position itself so that if MS does bail Apple has enough integrated apps to soften the blow. Sorry but a pretty good Junk Mail Filter is not enough for someone to actively use Mail for anything but a bunch of teenagers sending email to each other. Can someone explain to me why Apple has created THREE apps that should all be integrated into one?



iCal

Address Book

MAIL



Why can't all of these be "Mail"? All three things exist integrated into one in Entourage and it makes sense.



Thoughts?

ghost_user_name

Apps like Entourage (and Mozilla) take the approach of throwing in everything and the kitchen sink. They are "swiss army knife" apps that do a dozen things, but some of them not as well as others. Many people (myself included) do not like the concept of a single app trying to do everything. It's better to have two apps each do something very well than a single app that does a mediocre job at both.



Also, keeping separate apps give you much better modularity options. If you don't like the way Apple's Address Book handles things, you can get rid of it! It uses an open format and any 3rd party may have new apps that access the same database with a different UI.



The same goes for Mail.



If I want to add a colleague's phone number and apartment address to my Address Book, why should I have to open Mail or a Calendar? Tell me, where's the logic in that? This kinds of things do not depend on each other and are not necessarily best when clumped together.



I don't see this as "softening the blow" if Microsoft would stop producing Office at all. Apple's and Microsoft's apps aren't even in the same class! Consider that Apple's apps are:



a) free (Entourage is FAR from free)

b) bundled with the computer (Office is usually not)

c) independent and modular (as I mentioned above)

d) better featured in several areas (services, junk mail, system-wide database, etc.)

e) easier on the eyes and look better (following the Mac OS X user interface guidelines much better than MS)



[ 09-12-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>

amorph

Some of this is design ideology: UNIX culture has always favored small, specialized applications cooperating on a task, as opposed to Microsoft's preference for consolidated mega-apps.



Having the applications separate greatly eases design and maintenance, allows each application's UI to be tailored to the task at hand, and makes it easier for third parties to shoe in replacement apps. It makes Services and application integration much more lightweight - you only have to deal with Address Book to get a vCard, not with some a monolith.



Of course, every architecture has a downside, and in this case it's having to deal with three applications and three interfaces to accomplish a set of related tasks. Microsoft and the other big vendors have made that especially painful by conditioning people to expect giant all-in-one applications. (I see my biases are showing through. Excuse me. )



You should of course use what you prefer; one man's feature bloat is another man's integration. It's certainly in Apple's interest to keep their apps svelte and specialized, and there are clear benefits for the user as well. If they improve the ways in which the three apps talk to each other (and extend them), maybe they can have the best of both worlds.



I actually hope that's what they're doing with AppleWorks: releasing it as a half-dozen autonomous applications that just happen to work really well together (e.g.: easily embedding each other's document types) would make it more robust and easier to update, and easier for other applications and scripts (that only wanted one little thing) to talk to. But, for the most part, they would interact transparently enough to act like one application.



[ 09-12-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

defiant

short: one job = one tool

bodhi

Here is where I am coming from...when I am on my computer working I always haver my email open so it's not a matter of "should I really have to open my Mail app to go to my address book" with me, to me email and an address book are side by side just as important. Very often I am in email and I need to look at an address or look at my calendar, I don't want to go down to the dock...load another app...wait for it to open...etc.

rogue27

Leave them all on, then you don't have to wait for them to load.



Anyway, imagine this:



Suppose you use Entourage for e-mail. I do, I think it's the best e-mail client for OS X. However, I do not use it's other features. Then I start up Mozilla which I like to use for web browsing because IE seems to have more issues than I care to deal with.



Now, to just e-mail and surf the web, I have the following things open:

1 web browser

2 email clients

2 news readers

1 calendar

1 address book



How is that efficient?



If chimera got the bugs out, I'd trash mozilla for that. I just want to browse the web, not do all the other shit they threw in there. It's wasting system resources. Same for entourage. I just want to check my mail. If outlook express was available for OS X, I'd ditch entourage for that.



Also, with a system-wide standardized address book, other applications can be designed to work with it. Third party developers wouldn't have the same amount of luck trying to communicate with the address book in entourage.

voxman

I agree. Entourage is head and shoulders above Mail. iCal is nice , but still buggy. Hopefully if and when M$ updates Office they will intergrate Apple's Address book.

kesh

I have to go with the 'one task, one app' side. I've tried Entourage, but I can't stand it. The calendaring feature is nice, but I dislike how tightly integrated everything else is. And I really don't like it as a mail client, either.



Also, Mail and Address Book are integrated. All your email addresses are stored in AB now, which is what I would prefer. The actual contact info is all in one app (Address Book) but can seamlessly be accessed from another (Mail, iCal, etc.). Better than having duplicate information in an email application's own address book, IMHO.

hmurchison

Well wouldn't Apple just tie things together using Services.



That way Opening mail.app and then requesting an Address via services could return a result without launching the addressbook. Once Apple get's it's Digital Hub Apps going...they'll need to focus on the linking between the apps.