Mail.app vs. Thunderbird

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I use Thunderbird daily and am totally ignorant of Mail.app. I could be pursuaded to switch.



Which is better? I'd love to hear your opinions.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JavaCowboy

    I use Thunderbird daily and am totally ignorant of Mail.app. I could be pursuaded to switch.



    Which is better? I'd love to hear your opinions.




    I never used Thunderbird on a Mac, but am using it on my linux box. I like how Mail.app has integrated Spotlight in to it's search, as well as giving the option for 'Smart mailboxes', I think I had about 20 or so smart boxes and never moved me email out of Inboxes because of it. On comparing the junk mail filters of Thunderbird and Mail.app, I found Mail.app to be more agressive and found some real email ending up in a junk box, whereas Thunderbird seems to be more conservative and I still have to mark alot as junk.
  • Reply 2 of 18
    They both suck horribly. Apple Mail is probably marginally better though. And everything else is generally worse, though they might have some features or basics done better.



    Sigh, for doing so many other things right, Apple certainly didn't do so with Apple Mail. At this point I'd gladly fork over ~30 bucks for a really really good email client.
  • Reply 3 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Electric Monk

    They both suck horribly.



    Compared to what? Outlook?



    Don't make me laugh.
  • Reply 4 of 18
    pyr3pyr3 Posts: 946member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Electric Monk

    They both suck horribly. Apple Mail is probably marginally better though. And everything else is generally worse, though they might have some features or basics done better.



    Sigh, for doing so many other things right, Apple certainly didn't do so with Apple Mail. At this point I'd gladly fork over ~30 bucks for a really really good email client.




    What was done wrong in Mail? Lots of people complain about apps, but few actually elaborate. I'd be interested in what gripes you have with Mail.app or just current email client in general.
  • Reply 5 of 18
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by wgauvin

    ....I found Mail.app to be more agressive and found some real email ending up in a junk box, whereas Thunderbird seems to be more conservative and I still have to mark alot as junk.



    You should put Mail into training mode for a fortnight or two. If you do this, you will get very few, if any, false positives and you will see few, if any, spam messages. The take away message is that Mail's spam filters work beautifully.
  • Reply 6 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. Me

    You should put Mail into training mode for a fortnight or two. If you do this, you will get very few, if any, false positives and you will see few, if any, spam messages. The take away message is that Mail's spam filters work beautifully.



    It was working well until my PB got stolen. But yes, it does work beautifully, and you can modify the Mail Junk rule around (a little).
  • Reply 7 of 18
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    I use Mail pretty much prime time and have no complaints. I use Thunderbird at the office for my personal email accounts and it is weird. Thunderbird also crashes and hangs from time to time.



    I like the Mail / Address Book / iCal combo, so I'll be sticking with it. .Mac multi-mac syncing rules!
  • Reply 8 of 18
    mrsinmrsin Posts: 163member
    Email clients (sigh).



    I found 'thee' perfect one on the PC side of the house - "IncrediMail," since switching to Apple, I've spent more time than I care to admit searching for the email client that 'does it for me' on the Mac side of things. Naturally there is no "IncrediMail" version for the Mac . My conclusion: Mail.app is the best of the bunch - so far. Don't get me wrong, there are a few others that come very close - Thunderbird among them. Another with an 'interesting' concept is "Balzac." For my needs at the moment, I will stick with Mail.app until IncrediMail ports a version to the Mac or someone else writes an IncrediMail like email client.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MrSin

    Email clients (sigh).



    I found 'thee' perfect one on the PC side of the house - "IncrediMail," since switching to Apple, I've spent more time than I care to admit searching for the email client that 'does it for me' on the Mac side of things. Naturally there is no "IncrediMail" version for the Mac . My conclusion: Mail.app is the best of the bunch - so far. Don't get me wrong, there are a few others that come very close - Thunderbird among them. Another with an 'interesting' concept is "Balzac." For my needs at the moment, I will stick with Mail.app until IncrediMail ports a version to the Mac or someone else writes an IncrediMail like email client.




    Have you ever received mail from an IncrediMail user? Not too pleasant!
  • Reply 10 of 18
    mrsinmrsin Posts: 163member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. Me

    Have you ever received mail from an IncrediMail user? Not too pleasant!



    Yes I have, but I do understand the point you were making . I do have a Family member that uses IncrediMail, though the attached sound didn't work, the rest of the email displayed OK. From time to time, others not using IncrediMail, send me email as well that do not always 'format' correctly, but that's to be expected with the variety of application programs available, don't you agree?



    Thanks for the post Mr. Me 8)!
  • Reply 11 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JavaCowboy

    Compared to what? Outlook?



    Don't make me laugh.




    Yeah really. . .



    I'd say Mail.app is quite good. It has very good searching features, and it can connect to an Exchange server. Last I checked, there weren't a lot of mail programs that had both of these.
  • Reply 12 of 18
    The thing that bugs me the most about Mail.app is that I cannot find a way to turn the preview off. One can reduce its size to the point it becomes invisible but it seems it still downloads the message when you focus the header.



    Second thing is that there is no status bar. One can open a window showing status information but it goes to the background once you click someplace in the main window.



    A little off-topic: Is there a way (keyboard short-cut, prefferably) to quickly cycle through an application's open windows?
  • Reply 13 of 18
    b3njb3nj Posts: 70member
    command + `



    scroll's through windows.

    works with most of the .app's.
  • Reply 14 of 18
    RolandG, try double clicking on the resize bar, also, when it is resized all the way down it IS hidden, it does NOT fetch the data for the preview or even try rendering it
  • Reply 15 of 18
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    When I sent an email to bunch of people, I address it to myself and Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) everyone else, to protect them from spam.



    But then Mail won't tell ME who I sent the message to. That is a problem that should have been fixed by now.
  • Reply 16 of 18
    Is there some way I can configure Mail.app to allow me to use nicknames to resolve nicknames in my addressbook to email addresses?



    Let's say I have this entry:



    First Name: Jeffrey

    Last Name: Lebowski

    Nickname: The Dude

    Email: [email protected]



    If I start typing "Je..." or "Leb..." it resolves to [email protected]. If I type "the..." it resolves to nothing.
  • Reply 17 of 18
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JavaCowboy

    Is there some way I can configure Mail.app to allow me to use nicknames to resolve nicknames in my addressbook to email addresses?



    Let's say I have this entry:



    First Name: Jeffrey

    Last Name: Lebowski

    Nickname: The Dude

    Email: [email protected]



    If I start typing "Je..." or "Leb..." it resolves to [email protected]. If I type "the..." it resolves to nothing.




    This would be important, since as we know, "You're Mr. Lebowski; I'm The Dude. So call me Dude, Duder. . . El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing. . ."



    Excellent.



    As for doing nicknames, I haven't had much luck doing things like getting "Tom" to Resolve to "Thomas," but I haven't tried very hard. I suppose you could make a second address book entry, but that's not an ideal solution.
  • Reply 18 of 18
    i am a apple mail user but there is 1 thing that is a drag and is causing our server problems: apple mail doesn't limit its' server connection hence our poor mail server is severely affected by all mail users. tb has the feature to set the max number of server connection to cache which is really good. I can't find a way to set this on apple mail. does anyone have any tips or know a way around it? im afraid that if there is no fix we may need to move all users to tb! \
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