Oh come on. If you know that, say, half of those e-mails are irrelevant because they're more than 5 years old (this is just an example!), you can set a date range like "everything between 5 years ago and today."
The hundreds of thousands of e-mail could easily be cut in half right off the bat...that filter is done much more quickly...then the next filter will find what you want within the new pool of e-mails.
Also remember that Leopard's Spotlight is a lot faster than Tiger's Spotlight. If the Smart Mailboxes (which I'm pretty sure use Spotlight) do choke under Tiger's Mail even with a date range filter, then it's entirely possible that the performance issue could be gone under Leopard's Mail.
Smart folders aren't as smart as required, much of the time. There isn't enough AI to make them see what is needed.
I'd like to make a smart folder for all the e-mails that come to me that have anything to do with my daughter's school, in which I'm very active. But, so far, at least, I've not been able to figure out a way to configure one. Too many people send me mail, along with the various school personel. There is nothing in common with many of the e-mails for a smart folder to recognize.
I also buy much over the internet. I'd like to have a smart folder to grab all of the order confirmations, serial numbers, etc., that come in, but that seems to be too complex as well.
Each user has their own preference. Apple has only introduced the To-Do functionality into Mail, I was initially using a 3rd-party software for my To-Do's (had a built-in alarm and reminder and everything) but I'm looking forward to this feature, which ties in Mail to iCal. Maybe in the future, Apple will consider making a seperate application for To-Do's. It's unfair to expect them to meet the demands of every kind of user, where some will appreciate the built-in functionality, while others will want it seperate. Give them some time and we might even get both.
The nice thing about the way they have implemented it is that it is exposed for programmers to access. So it is perfectly possible for someone to create a separate notes application and still tie into the notes/events database.
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?
Are you kidding? Those things are the very reason I still don't switch from entourage. I like the integration of emails, to-dos, calendar events etc... In a normal day of work, I am constantly associating deadlines, meetings and such with emails.
Here's one very basic necessary feature I'd like to see in Mail someday if not sooner:
I'd like to be able to edit the subject line to my own liking. To not be able to do this is just bizarre. Forwarding is not the answer.
Also, I'd like to be able to move contacts into groups from the Address Panel instead of having to switch to Address Book itself. And how's about a BCC button in there as well?
When I add an attachment, I want it to ALWAYS show up as an icon, not the content of the file -- sometimes.
I don't understand why when I get an email with pictures in it, I also have to tell the program to save the pictures. Didn't it already download them anyway? Just go ahead and put them in the folder I've chosen for downloads.
I'd like to permanently set Mail as my default mail program instead of having Mail arbitrarily reset it to Eudora. I can't delete Eudora as I don't trust that everything got transferred to Mail.
I have already submitted all these feature requests to Apple.
People keep complaining about how Mail is getting bloated. It most certainly is NOT. There are 3 additions:
1) RSS - If you dont want to use it, it will be completely invisible to you. Personally, I think this is just an interim step towards a system wide RSS service like Vista's. But again, RSS does make sense in Mail, same as Newsgroups kind of make sense in thunderbird
2) ToDos - This is not an additional Mail feature, but rather a system wide service (correct me if i am wrong, but that is what I have read everywhere, and that is what this article seems to indicate). It makes complete sense to integrate this service with Mail, because a) it shows how other apps could use this service, and b) Mails are often a common way to create todos (such as events, etc).
3) By adding Notes to Mail (which really is not even a feature, but rather a second Draft mailbox, with different formatting and presentation) Apple has made Notes a roaming service, accessible from any internet connected terminal. So you take Notes in Mail when you want to transport those Notes with you. You can continue using whatever you currently use for Notes (I use stickies) but when you want it to be accessible from other computers/locations, you make a Note in Mail.
Incidentally, is anyone aware if the todos will also be contained on the IMAP account?
People keep complaining about how Mail is getting bloated. It most certainly is NOT. There are 3 additions:
1) RSS - If you dont want to use it, it will be completely invisible to you. Personally, I think this is just an interim step towards a system wide RSS service like Vista's. But again, RSS does make sense in Mail, same as Newsgroups kind of make sense in thunderbird
2) ToDos - This is not an additional Mail feature, but rather a system wide service (correct me if i am wrong, but that is what I have read everywhere, and that is what this article seems to indicate). It makes complete sense to integrate this service with Mail, because a) it shows how other apps could use this service, and b) Mails are often a common way to create todos (such as events, etc).
3) By adding Notes to Mail (which really is not even a feature, but rather a second Draft mailbox, with different formatting and presentation) Apple has made Notes a roaming service, accessible from any internet connected terminal. So you take Notes in Mail when you want to transport those Notes with you. You can continue using whatever you currently use for Notes (I use stickies) but when you want it to be accessible from other computers/locations, you make a Note in Mail.
Incidentally, is anyone aware if the todos will also be contained on the IMAP account?
While I'm starting to agree for points 2 and 3 (it does make sense for Notes to be part of Mail but it's a hacky way of using e-mail as a medium to keep notes...I know people do it all the time but it doesn't mean it's right...like using Excel as a database), I absolutely disagree with point 1.
If anything, Usenet should be integrated to mail...not RSS. The only thing in common between emails and RSS is that they're both pushed information. It doesn't mean it should be part of Mail. RSS is already a system-wide service...it's already somewhat comforting to know that it's just tying into something that already exists.
The real reason I want Notes to be a stand-alone app that offers a system-wide service (sure, it can be integrated to Mail just like the To Do feature) is because taking notes is not an action that is restricted to e-mail. Why shouldn't I be able to take notes at any time? Why shouldn't I be able to select a paragraph on a webpage and make a note out of it (which could perhaps link back to that page)? Why can't I make a note out of something someone told me through iChat?
I know the main reason is because the amazing thing about Notes is that you send it to yourself through e-mail and that requires that an e-mail account be set up in Mail but there are certainly ways to have it a stand-alone app that acts as a local note-taking app that integrates INTO Mail so you can send these notes to yourself.
edit: on another note, the data detector feature should be system-wide too. Why it's restricted to Mail is again beyond my comprehension. Data detector in Safari and iChat would be much appreciated (it already is on the iPhone Safari)
I like it. Can't wait to get an iPhone with all this new stuff in Mail.
Guess what? I actually LIKE Outlook. Well, actually, I hate Outlook. But I like the IDEA of it. The implementation of course is crap (crashes, hard to use, etc). I'm sure in a year Mail/iPhone will make it look like a joke. Outlook I must say is very useful at work, being a consultant, where I'm out and about frequently, with a busy calendar, and being frequently invited to meetings, and all this is coordinated through Outlook.
I like the idea of what Mail 3.0 is trying to do: "have a single point of attention to watch and organize yourself". I just disagree that the email program should be that single point.
When you receive a Fax it's saved to a folder, but to get your attention your Mac has to email it to you. If I want to write myself notes, you can things in Stickies but to be archived and put in with your other pieces of attention, you have to email it to yourself. If I want my Console app to bring the logs it makes to my attention, I need to email them. If I want iCal to remind me of something, I can have it display on-screen if I'm my Mac, but emailing a reminder is yet another option.
All of these things are competing for my attention and they want to use my inbox as a channel to communicate with me. But email is a time sink because of things that sound urgent when they aren't. I'll often shut down Mail during the day because I get too many "Urgent!" emails that really aren't. But having an app that shows my Email, iCal events, Stickies reminders, Incoming Faxes, Console log dumps, Growl notifications, RSS feeds, or whatever else I configure that's important to me.
Let's keep email for the humans trying to communicate with me and make Mail 4.0 the best email app out there. Put the functions for "focusing" into a different app, and make a plugin interface so that I can drop whatever apps I think are worthy of my attention.
Mail embodies two very good ideas. Be a great email client and be a focus point for getting things done. Hopefully this will become two separate apps in the future.
It's very, very handy, I do it with a script from the command line at the moment.
Imagine you have a message from two months ago with the subject "Re: Fw: Your mail" which is about some very crucial matter. Nice to be able to change it to "Brain transplant schedule for November" or whatever, so that you can quickly see it while scanning your "important" folder.
It's very, very handy, I do it with a script from the command line at the moment.
Imagine you have a message from two months ago with the subject "Re: Fw: Your mail" which is about some very crucial matter. Nice to be able to change it to "Brain transplant schedule for November" or whatever, so that you can quickly see it while scanning your "important" folder.
Hey, that's very soon, should we get a card and sign it?
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
Supposedly the feature was included, but I don't remember where I read it from. If not, hopefully Michael Rothwell's current IMAP-IDLE plug-in for Mail will continue to work .... but I would really prefer something proper from Apple
It's very, very handy, I do it with a script from the command line at the moment.
Imagine you have a message from two months ago with the subject "Re: Fw: Your mail" which is about some very crucial matter. Nice to be able to change it to "Brain transplant schedule for November" or whatever, so that you can quickly see it while scanning your "important" folder.
I don't know if I'd agree with overwriting the original subject - having that around would help quite a bit when you want to find related emails.
I do see that being able to tag an email with a subject line more appropriate to you, the recipient, could be handy, though. For the most part, this could be shown instead of the subject (i.e. in your mailbox lists and so on), and then in the message display area it could show your new subject and the the original subject afterwards. Using your example:
Subject: Brain Transplant schedule for November - Originally: Re: Fw: Your mail
The only downside I'd guess is that it would only show up with email clients that would be aware of the user subject override... which would probably be Mail.app, the iPhone and .Mac Webmail.
I can't take any to-do software seriously that doesn't have repeating to-do's (aka tasks). iCal does not have it and I'm extremely disappointed that the screen shot of mail 3's to-do dialog does not have a check-box or field for repeating the tasks.
I'm currently using iGTD for task management and it syncs fairly well with iCal. Through iGTD I'm able to better manage the tasks and repeating tasks sync to iCal with no headaches (unlike repeating tasks in Palm OS).
Mail is about written communication: apple chat should therefore be included into mail, so one can have a look at the conversation afterwards. Conversations are treated very elegantly in Gmail (without the Re:s). Also, one can label different tags to your messages/threaded conversations without the need to copy your message to different folders.
As much as I like the new Stationiary idea, Apple has way to go to manage my daily mail.
I've said this before and I'll say it again...I don't know why I do considering I understand everyone's got their own way of organizing things but...
...why is everyone fighting it? Why is everyone wasting precious time creating folders and scripts to filter/separate/delete specific mail? If you know what makes this category of mail so special, then it's probably entirely possible to create a Smart Mailbox or find the e-mail or the group of e-mail that you want through Spotlight.
I'm starting to see a lot of people pulling their hair out because they're living in a world that isn't as simple as it once was in the early 1980s and 1990s...a world where people regularly get dozens of e-mails a day, have hundreds to tens of thousands of photos and music files. Some people are still trying to sort and sift through all that manually. It's funny and sad at the same time.
I could return your latter argument: Smart Folders require mails to be filtered to fall into special rules. Unfortunately, real life doesn't always follow rules. Imagine I've got two groups of friends who exchange lots of e-mails so I want one folder for one group and another for the second group so I can see discussions of either group all in one place without being disturbed by any other e-mail in between. Easy you say, just set the Smart Folder to filter with regard to sender/recipient? Unfortunately, some people belong to both groups, and not every time mails are being sent to the group but to one person only (in particular me, otherwise I wouldn't receive it obviously). I can't see any rule to cover that, but it's easy with 'hard' folders and simple filtering that covers 90% of all cases and me manually moving the remaining 10%.
I got lots of similar cases with my e-mail, so I can't imagine there wouldn't be a use for hard folders for other people.
Thing is, I can arbitrarily move any e-mails to any hard folder which I can't with Smart Folders. Life IS arbitrary oftentimes.
Nothing like Eudora. The best ever e-mail application for Mac. A shame it is not yet native for Mactel.
True true, but so far this poses no problem whatsoever. The one feature that needs most performance in Eudora, seaching through thousands of emails, is so blindingly fast anyways that I haven't missed the native Intel version so far. The only downside I can see so far is that it takes quite long to start up. Once it's running it beats any other email app hands down, speed wise. I just really, really hope Leopard doesn't break Eudora.
So for those of us working in organizations that use microsoft exchange for a mailserver: does anyone know if Leopards mail is any better at connecting to an exchange server than tigers mail?
Comments
http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/
I didn't find any new info re: compatibility w/ Mail 3.0...
jwd
Oh come on. If you know that, say, half of those e-mails are irrelevant because they're more than 5 years old (this is just an example!), you can set a date range like "everything between 5 years ago and today."
The hundreds of thousands of e-mail could easily be cut in half right off the bat...that filter is done much more quickly...then the next filter will find what you want within the new pool of e-mails.
Also remember that Leopard's Spotlight is a lot faster than Tiger's Spotlight. If the Smart Mailboxes (which I'm pretty sure use Spotlight) do choke under Tiger's Mail even with a date range filter, then it's entirely possible that the performance issue could be gone under Leopard's Mail.
Smart folders aren't as smart as required, much of the time. There isn't enough AI to make them see what is needed.
I'd like to make a smart folder for all the e-mails that come to me that have anything to do with my daughter's school, in which I'm very active. But, so far, at least, I've not been able to figure out a way to configure one. Too many people send me mail, along with the various school personel. There is nothing in common with many of the e-mails for a smart folder to recognize.
I also buy much over the internet. I'd like to have a smart folder to grab all of the order confirmations, serial numbers, etc., that come in, but that seems to be too complex as well.
I've found this to be true for many needs.
Each user has their own preference. Apple has only introduced the To-Do functionality into Mail, I was initially using a 3rd-party software for my To-Do's (had a built-in alarm and reminder and everything) but I'm looking forward to this feature, which ties in Mail to iCal. Maybe in the future, Apple will consider making a seperate application for To-Do's. It's unfair to expect them to meet the demands of every kind of user, where some will appreciate the built-in functionality, while others will want it seperate. Give them some time and we might even get both.
The nice thing about the way they have implemented it is that it is exposed for programmers to access. So it is perfectly possible for someone to create a separate notes application and still tie into the notes/events database.
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?
Are you kidding? Those things are the very reason I still don't switch from entourage. I like the integration of emails, to-dos, calendar events etc... In a normal day of work, I am constantly associating deadlines, meetings and such with emails.
I'd like to be able to edit the subject line to my own liking. To not be able to do this is just bizarre. Forwarding is not the answer.
Also, I'd like to be able to move contacts into groups from the Address Panel instead of having to switch to Address Book itself. And how's about a BCC button in there as well?
When I add an attachment, I want it to ALWAYS show up as an icon, not the content of the file -- sometimes.
I don't understand why when I get an email with pictures in it, I also have to tell the program to save the pictures. Didn't it already download them anyway? Just go ahead and put them in the folder I've chosen for downloads.
I'd like to permanently set Mail as my default mail program instead of having Mail arbitrarily reset it to Eudora. I can't delete Eudora as I don't trust that everything got transferred to Mail.
I have already submitted all these feature requests to Apple.
1) RSS - If you dont want to use it, it will be completely invisible to you. Personally, I think this is just an interim step towards a system wide RSS service like Vista's. But again, RSS does make sense in Mail, same as Newsgroups kind of make sense in thunderbird
2) ToDos - This is not an additional Mail feature, but rather a system wide service (correct me if i am wrong, but that is what I have read everywhere, and that is what this article seems to indicate). It makes complete sense to integrate this service with Mail, because a) it shows how other apps could use this service, and b) Mails are often a common way to create todos (such as events, etc).
3) By adding Notes to Mail (which really is not even a feature, but rather a second Draft mailbox, with different formatting and presentation) Apple has made Notes a roaming service, accessible from any internet connected terminal. So you take Notes in Mail when you want to transport those Notes with you. You can continue using whatever you currently use for Notes (I use stickies) but when you want it to be accessible from other computers/locations, you make a Note in Mail.
Incidentally, is anyone aware if the todos will also be contained on the IMAP account?
People keep complaining about how Mail is getting bloated. It most certainly is NOT. There are 3 additions:
1) RSS - If you dont want to use it, it will be completely invisible to you. Personally, I think this is just an interim step towards a system wide RSS service like Vista's. But again, RSS does make sense in Mail, same as Newsgroups kind of make sense in thunderbird
2) ToDos - This is not an additional Mail feature, but rather a system wide service (correct me if i am wrong, but that is what I have read everywhere, and that is what this article seems to indicate). It makes complete sense to integrate this service with Mail, because a) it shows how other apps could use this service, and b) Mails are often a common way to create todos (such as events, etc).
3) By adding Notes to Mail (which really is not even a feature, but rather a second Draft mailbox, with different formatting and presentation) Apple has made Notes a roaming service, accessible from any internet connected terminal. So you take Notes in Mail when you want to transport those Notes with you. You can continue using whatever you currently use for Notes (I use stickies) but when you want it to be accessible from other computers/locations, you make a Note in Mail.
Incidentally, is anyone aware if the todos will also be contained on the IMAP account?
While I'm starting to agree for points 2 and 3 (it does make sense for Notes to be part of Mail but it's a hacky way of using e-mail as a medium to keep notes...I know people do it all the time but it doesn't mean it's right...like using Excel as a database), I absolutely disagree with point 1.
If anything, Usenet should be integrated to mail...not RSS. The only thing in common between emails and RSS is that they're both pushed information. It doesn't mean it should be part of Mail. RSS is already a system-wide service...it's already somewhat comforting to know that it's just tying into something that already exists.
The real reason I want Notes to be a stand-alone app that offers a system-wide service (sure, it can be integrated to Mail just like the To Do feature) is because taking notes is not an action that is restricted to e-mail. Why shouldn't I be able to take notes at any time? Why shouldn't I be able to select a paragraph on a webpage and make a note out of it (which could perhaps link back to that page)? Why can't I make a note out of something someone told me through iChat?
I know the main reason is because the amazing thing about Notes is that you send it to yourself through e-mail and that requires that an e-mail account be set up in Mail but there are certainly ways to have it a stand-alone app that acts as a local note-taking app that integrates INTO Mail so you can send these notes to yourself.
edit: on another note, the data detector feature should be system-wide too. Why it's restricted to Mail is again beyond my comprehension. Data detector in Safari and iChat would be much appreciated (it already is on the iPhone Safari)
I'd like to be able to edit the subject line to my own liking. To not be able to do this is just bizarre. Forwarding is not the answer.
Modify other people's subject line?
Guess what? I actually LIKE Outlook. Well, actually, I hate Outlook. But I like the IDEA of it. The implementation of course is crap (crashes, hard to use, etc). I'm sure in a year Mail/iPhone will make it look like a joke. Outlook I must say is very useful at work, being a consultant, where I'm out and about frequently, with a busy calendar, and being frequently invited to meetings, and all this is coordinated through Outlook.
When you receive a Fax it's saved to a folder, but to get your attention your Mac has to email it to you. If I want to write myself notes, you can things in Stickies but to be archived and put in with your other pieces of attention, you have to email it to yourself. If I want my Console app to bring the logs it makes to my attention, I need to email them. If I want iCal to remind me of something, I can have it display on-screen if I'm my Mac, but emailing a reminder is yet another option.
All of these things are competing for my attention and they want to use my inbox as a channel to communicate with me. But email is a time sink because of things that sound urgent when they aren't. I'll often shut down Mail during the day because I get too many "Urgent!" emails that really aren't. But having an app that shows my Email, iCal events, Stickies reminders, Incoming Faxes, Console log dumps, Growl notifications, RSS feeds, or whatever else I configure that's important to me.
Let's keep email for the humans trying to communicate with me and make Mail 4.0 the best email app out there. Put the functions for "focusing" into a different app, and make a plugin interface so that I can drop whatever apps I think are worthy of my attention.
Mail embodies two very good ideas. Be a great email client and be a focus point for getting things done. Hopefully this will become two separate apps in the future.
Modify other people's subject line?
It's very, very handy, I do it with a script from the command line at the moment.
Imagine you have a message from two months ago with the subject "Re: Fw: Your mail" which is about some very crucial matter. Nice to be able to change it to "Brain transplant schedule for November" or whatever, so that you can quickly see it while scanning your "important" folder.
It's very, very handy, I do it with a script from the command line at the moment.
Imagine you have a message from two months ago with the subject "Re: Fw: Your mail" which is about some very crucial matter. Nice to be able to change it to "Brain transplant schedule for November" or whatever, so that you can quickly see it while scanning your "important" folder.
Hey, that's very soon, should we get a card and sign it?
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
Supposedly the feature was included, but I don't remember where I read it from. If not, hopefully Michael Rothwell's current IMAP-IDLE plug-in for Mail will continue to work .... but I would really prefer something proper from Apple
It's very, very handy, I do it with a script from the command line at the moment.
Imagine you have a message from two months ago with the subject "Re: Fw: Your mail" which is about some very crucial matter. Nice to be able to change it to "Brain transplant schedule for November" or whatever, so that you can quickly see it while scanning your "important" folder.
I don't know if I'd agree with overwriting the original subject - having that around would help quite a bit when you want to find related emails.
I do see that being able to tag an email with a subject line more appropriate to you, the recipient, could be handy, though. For the most part, this could be shown instead of the subject (i.e. in your mailbox lists and so on), and then in the message display area it could show your new subject and the the original subject afterwards. Using your example:
Subject: Brain Transplant schedule for November - Originally: Re: Fw: Your mail
The only downside I'd guess is that it would only show up with email clients that would be aware of the user subject override... which would probably be Mail.app, the iPhone and .Mac Webmail.
I'm currently using iGTD for task management and it syncs fairly well with iCal. Through iGTD I'm able to better manage the tasks and repeating tasks sync to iCal with no headaches (unlike repeating tasks in Palm OS).
Mail is about written communication: apple chat should therefore be included into mail, so one can have a look at the conversation afterwards. Conversations are treated very elegantly in Gmail (without the Re:s). Also, one can label different tags to your messages/threaded conversations without the need to copy your message to different folders.
As much as I like the new Stationiary idea, Apple has way to go to manage my daily mail.
"Todo" into mail could be a fun thing if you would be able to send these things to your team members
I've said this before and I'll say it again...I don't know why I do considering I understand everyone's got their own way of organizing things but...
...why is everyone fighting it? Why is everyone wasting precious time creating folders and scripts to filter/separate/delete specific mail? If you know what makes this category of mail so special, then it's probably entirely possible to create a Smart Mailbox or find the e-mail or the group of e-mail that you want through Spotlight.
I'm starting to see a lot of people pulling their hair out because they're living in a world that isn't as simple as it once was in the early 1980s and 1990s...a world where people regularly get dozens of e-mails a day, have hundreds to tens of thousands of photos and music files. Some people are still trying to sort and sift through all that manually. It's funny and sad at the same time.
I could return your latter argument: Smart Folders require mails to be filtered to fall into special rules. Unfortunately, real life doesn't always follow rules. Imagine I've got two groups of friends who exchange lots of e-mails so I want one folder for one group and another for the second group so I can see discussions of either group all in one place without being disturbed by any other e-mail in between. Easy you say, just set the Smart Folder to filter with regard to sender/recipient? Unfortunately, some people belong to both groups, and not every time mails are being sent to the group but to one person only (in particular me, otherwise I wouldn't receive it obviously). I can't see any rule to cover that, but it's easy with 'hard' folders and simple filtering that covers 90% of all cases and me manually moving the remaining 10%.
I got lots of similar cases with my e-mail, so I can't imagine there wouldn't be a use for hard folders for other people.
Thing is, I can arbitrarily move any e-mails to any hard folder which I can't with Smart Folders. Life IS arbitrary oftentimes.
Nothing like Eudora. The best ever e-mail application for Mac. A shame it is not yet native for Mactel.
True true, but so far this poses no problem whatsoever. The one feature that needs most performance in Eudora, seaching through thousands of emails, is so blindingly fast anyways that I haven't missed the native Intel version so far. The only downside I can see so far is that it takes quite long to start up. Once it's running it beats any other email app hands down, speed wise. I just really, really hope Leopard doesn't break Eudora.