David Crow - Latest Comments in Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

dave — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:19:33 -0000

Eudora is the best. Unfortunately, it's no longer being updated. But the little details that it incorporates, such as finding the next email by typing in the first few letters of the person's name, return receipt, automatic conversion of urls to links, select text and drag to new location and more, make it far superior for power email use than wimpy Apple Mail.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Bill — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:49:59 -0000

Eudora. 
I have numerous e-mail accounts, lots of mailboxes and all my e-mail saved for sinvce 1997. 
I am amazed but I donÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t consider the advertisements to be a hassle at all. I usually donÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t notice them and when I do pay attention, itÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s for something I want. 
Storing and sorting old e-mail is what I want an e-mail program for.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Rick — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 13:09:06 -0000

Apple Mail is the best user experience, i.e., Mail.app rocks! Not sure what your problem is, but IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢m sure it has more to do with you than with the app. IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢ve used it since it was introduced. ItÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s simple to use, uncluttered interface, easy to set up accounts (I have 12 email accounts, and I filter mail into a variety of mailboxes). I archive old email to keep it from consuming too much disk space. There are two kinds of problems. User created, and computer related. No offense, but I think your problem is the former.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Andrew Karantzis — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 07:23:00 -0000

Hi David, 
Mail has failed for me time and time again. I switched to Powermail 7 years ago. To all of the people who say clean your inbox, I say bah! thats ridiculous why should a software program dictate how much email I should have in my inbox. 
My in box has over 3000 emails in it and my whole mail database consists of over 50000 emails. 
Powermail from ctmdev (<a href="http://www.ctmdev.com/) " target="_blank"><a href="http://www.ctmdev.com/)" target="_blank">http://www.ctmdev.com/)</a> </a>works well for me, I suggest if you want a real email client then switch.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

AltOpt — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:24:19 -0000

Tiger Mail.app is the first version that I can tolerate, and I love it big time. I moved from Eudora. 
I use POP access to a gmail account though, and not IMAP. I wouldnÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t be surprised if IMAP was the root cause of your sorrows, because I have heard anecdotally that IMAP is only well implemented in a few email clients. One that keeps being mentioned is Mulberry (although I have heard it is being discontinued or something). 
I use Mail.app in the Ã¢â&sbquo;¬Å“GMail styleÃ¢â&sbquo;¬? i.e. I leave everything in the In Box, and use Smart Mailboxes and the search function to find mail. 
I plan to take everything in my In Box, and shove it into a Ã¢â&sbquo;¬Å“2005Ã¢â&sbquo;¬? mailbox at the end of 2005, and startout with an empty In Box again. Should work.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

OSX — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:02:42 -0000

Never once had any problems with Mail.app on NeXTSTEP and now Mail on Mac OS X. Going on 11 years of use now. Sorry you feel that way. Best email client on the planet IMHO!

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Gary Cohen — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:12:20 -0000

You will have the same problem with regardless of what e-mail program you use. The problem is not Apple mail, but rather the way you use it. Mail must be archived on a regular basis Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' itÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s that simple. Keep your inbox and outbox under a couple of hundred megabytes.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

james downwad — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:03:53 -0000

I use Eudora because I receive and send a huge volume of email and retain everything relevant to my work. I think I have around 22,000 messages stored, have received nearly 7,000 messages this year, and have sent slightly over 2,000. I use my saved messages as a database to search for information I have received or sent at one time. It is not unusual for me to search my entire database of messages for key phrased many times a day, and Eudora always returns results rapidly. 
Eudora may have an aging UI, but no other email program I know of comes close to being able to spritely handle the number of email messages I receive, send, and retain.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Ralph — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:56:24 -0000

Find out whatÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s wrong with your system. 
Mail works just fine on my iMac -and is very snappy, thankyouverymuch. Oh. And itÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s never crashed, either. 
In any event, I wouldnÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t recommend Entourage. Under 10.3 it corrupts attachments -and M$ has sofar been unwilling to address the issue.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Andrew — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:48:42 -0000

Hiya David, 
IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢ve also heard that Apple Mail doesnÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t play well with IMAP servers. IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢m not a big fan of proprietary databases (Entourage, Mailsmith) but Entourage might be a better choice for you. Otherwise, the only email app thatÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s ever been 100% reliable for me is Eudora. 
I too have done some musing on the subject: 
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/dpcvx " target="_blank"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/dpcvx" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/dpcvx</p... </a> 
Hope this helps!

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Carl Springer — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:40:44 -0000

Sounds like the root issue is the bulk of your email data. Most email clients that I have used over the years choke after a while. Rather than switching frequently, you might consider adding an archiving process. I use Entourage Email Archive to convert message and attachments to FileMaker Pro format ever since Entourage choked with a 1 GB database file. If you still want to switch again, good luck to you.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Ernst Mulder — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:47:05 -0000

Yes, itÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s commercial software but Entourage is really good. ItÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s fast, itÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s logical and also capable. Also you havenÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t looked at Eudora since 9.x but the OS X version is good, stable but alas not so modern, and youÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢ll have to pay to get rid of advertisementsÃ¢â&sbquo;¬Â¦ IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢ve tried Thunderbird but it crashes all the time.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Art Buesing — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:41:38 -0000

I found that my freeze problems ended when i upgraded to Tiger. MailÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s interaction with Addressbook keeps me as a user. I use Eudora at work on my XP machine with very good results, but with an IPOP acct. IPOP isnÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t as good as IMAP, if you use multiple machines.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Sandeep — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:12:20 -0000

David, Give Apple Mail another chance. Perhaps some maintenance is needed. Try rebuilding your mailboxes, this may solve the speed issues. I am on a PB/G4 with 1.5 GB RAM, my Mailbox is at 7.363 GB and I have nothing but praise for Apple Mail, especially when smart mailboxes are combined with the plug-ins from indev.ca (Mail Tags and Mail Act on)....

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Juha Haataja — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 08:35:40 -0000

Do you have some extra plug-ins etc. installed with Mail? 
I have tens of thousands of messages on three different 
mail accounts, and I havenÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t had much to complain about Mail. 
(Using a 1,3 GHz iBook G4.) 
But my style is to remove messages from the inbox as soon 
as I read them. 
One time I tried to use Entourage 2004, but it was no faster and 
had some usability issues compared to Mail. Even spam filtering 
seemed to work better in Mail.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

won — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 08:33:47 -0000

I use Eudora, and havenÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢t discarded much for about five years. Mind you, I do filter things to other mailboxes to keep my inbox relatively uncluttered. 
Works fine except for a performance hit (mostly confined to Eudora itself) when sending mail.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Dave Stephens — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 04:46:14 -0000

I had the same thing happen to me Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' I ALSO have a huge inbox. 
I fixed it Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' removed some plug-ins AND also deleted preferences AND also fixed a corrupt font Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' check out MacFixit and find help there Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' you are NOT alone Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' many have found help! Good luck Ã¢â&sbquo;¬' I, too, almost chucked the dang thing outÃ¢â&sbquo;¬Â¦

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Henry Rzepa — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 03:35:41 -0000

I agree about performance. I only use Mail.app when I need secure email, since its certificate handling is actually very good. For performance, I continue to use Eudora (and have for the last 15 years or so), the down side to which is no certificate handling.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Paul — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:41:53 -0000

Mail.app works great for me under MacOS 10.4.3. Fast, reliable, works with all of my IMAP accounts now, just great. Was working with Thunderbird, but after the 10.4.3 update, Mail.app has worked like a charm.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

chucky — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:35:22 -0000

Keep Mail. Ditch the IMAP. 
Mail performance problems exist only with certain IMAP accounts. So use a Gmail account with POP access along with Mail, and be happy.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Charles Sullivan — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:09:35 -0000

Eudora works well with OS X.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Jp — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:03:53 -0000

I have close to a Gigabyte mail file and itÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s stable and fast. I think you have a repair issue. IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢ve honestly not crashed once.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Welshdog — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:15:33 -0000

Umm yeah, empty yer inbox. I use the mail app everyday at home and at work. At home IÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢m on a rev A 12Ã¢â&sbquo;¬? Powerbook 867mhz, no problems. I have 6 different mail accounts and about 20 mailboxes to sort and store things I keep. Do you ever Ã¢â&sbquo;¬Å“rebuildÃ¢â&sbquo;¬? your mailbox? It works and is a big help.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Martin — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:35:09 -0000

Gotta agree with you. Mail.appÃ¢â&sbquo;¬â&bdquo;¢s performance is pathetic. No email program should be this slow.

Re: Apple’s Mail is the worst user experience

Rostislav — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:18:50 -0000

Thank you for the article. I wanted to love Mail, but I feel the same way you do. It is possibly the worst Ã¢â&sbquo;¬Å“freeÃ¢â&sbquo;¬? application Apple has in their line up. Thanks for the alternative suggestions. I have been considering other options as well. You did the ground work for me.