What I love about Google’s conversation view is that your inbox doesn’t fill up with all of the individual messages, but rather just shows the latest in the thread. Search still searches all of the messages, of course, and you can get to them. But I’ve found no need to see all of the individual messages (the way Apple’s Mail does when you expand the thread) separately.

The main thing that I love about Gmail’s conversation view which Apple’s Mail doesn’t provide is threaded previewing. While Mail will group the threaded messages in the list together, if you select the whole group it just shows you the from, subject, date, etc fields and you have to click them to open the individual email. This isn’t threaded messaging, it’s just grouping a list. If you’re text messaging app on your phone grouped your texts but didn’t show them inline you wouldn’t call that threaded messaging.

What would help this view a lot would be if, instead of just filling the preview window with a list of messages when you select the whole thread, Mail would show you the messages, one after another so that you can skim the whole conversation without opening each individual message.

Like I said, I use Mail’s Organize by Thread feature and think it’s ok, but it’s still a far cry from Google’s conversation view. Until I find a plugin or upgrade that will allow me to do that (Lion?) then I will still argue that Gmail’s conversations are far, far superior.

So props to Apple Mail for very general thread support. My mouth waters when I think about it.

However, does Apple Mail support “Grouped by Sort” like Thunderbird does? (I’m on my office PC now, so I can’t check myself)

In Thunderbird, you can sort by something (example: label or recipient) and then hit “g” to “Group by Sort.” The result is a tree view of all of the set of all things in the sort category. Each group thing can then be expanded to show all of the messages grouped underneath it (and it appears to sort each of those messages by date; I would rather it sort by the previous thing I was sorting by).

(NOTE: This too only works in saved searches if you are only searching through a single inbox. ALSO NOTE: Grouping by Sort does not work with “View:” as you would expect. If you want to group a view by sort, you’ll need to create a saved search)

Here are two example screen shots. In the first, I’ve grouped by label (these are GTD-style labels). In the second, I’ve grouped by date. Notice a problem with grouping by date is that automailers that didn’t take the time and effort to date their mail end up getting shifted into the “Old Mail” pile. :(

http://links.tedpavlic.com/images/hawkwings_tbird_gsort1.png

http://links.tedpavlic.com/images/hawkwings_tbird_gsort2.png

Something that I think is nice about this is that you can implement something that LOOKS and FEELS a little like kGTD right within Thunderbird. Store all your actions in one box (Inbox, perhaps, or a GTD folder) and then create saved searches that actually do NO filtering. In each copy of the box, sort by something different. Sort by label in the GTD folder. Sort by recipient in the “Actions” saved search. Sort by subject in the “Projects” saved search. Now in all three folders, group by label.

Now implement TkGTD by setting up e-mail forwarding (if you have your own domain, wildcard forwarding will work great) from addresses representing each of your contexts to your main address. (add those address to your address book with a context nickname to make the display prettier) When you want to send yourself a new action to add to your GTD database, e-mail the appropriate context (“errands”, “desk”, “work”, “office”, etc.) and start the subject with a project identifier (perhaps prioritized with symbols at the front). When the e-mail arrives, label it appropriately (TBird has 5 labels: Action/Defer/Waiting/Respond/Read). Use the “flag” to mark next actions.

Now clicking on your “Actions” folder lists all of your actions grouped by context. Clicking on your “Projects” folder lists all of your actions grouped by project. Clicking on your “GTD” folder lists all of your actions grouped by action type (action/defer/waiting/etc.).

All that’s missing is recur/reset… Otherwise it’s kGTD. (without the fun iCal syncing)