CRM4Mac brings iCal, Address book and Apple Mail together into one interface. It also allows you to link documents and log phone calls with particular contacts in your Address Book. A new version, CRM4Mac 2.0, has just been been released, featuring Spotlight support and other improvements.
CRM4Mac doesn’t modify the apps themselves, but simply combines them so that all your events and emails are displayed together, according to date by default. A screenshot from the developer’s website shows it in action:
It displays the Address Book contact linked to the highlighted email. A preview pane can be opened in the main window.
You will either love or hate this idea. People like Mike Salsbury, who feels that the integration in Ximian Evolution makes it better than Apple Mail would probably love it. Others, like me, who value the “purity” of working with mail and only mail in one app, with events and only events in another and so on, will be faintly appalled.
Reviews of earlier verisons of the software are likewise mixed. The developer’s website lists a number of testimonials. But the users’ reviews on MacUpdate, Versiontracker and on other blogs are not all positive. In any case, you have 30 days to trial a fully functional version if you want to test it out for yourself.
CRM4Mac costs USD 49.95 and comes in Panther and Tiger flavours. It is (UPDATE: June 2008 no longer 
) available from the developer’s website.
P.S. CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management”.
[...] I don’t care for it myself, but CRM4Mac also offers interface integration, bringing iCal, Mail and Address Book together in one window. [...]
[...] It’s a common complaint, the kind of thing that CRM4Mac tries to provide. [...]
We gave this a whirl company wide, and after 2 days, and 9 angry users, we passed on it for multiple problems. The system is slow, it’s integration with the programs in general was buggy at best. One of our users on a powerbook made the sad problem of double clicking the program from the installer dmg, which as notes on the site, will cause his powerbook to run in overdrive until the program is forceably removed. It has potential, but it was clunky and not polished — even on my G5 dual 2ghz with 4gigs of RAM.
From a personal point of view, the interface is very unattractive. Stairstepped icons, and cluttered layout shows me this is a program without designers, and that’s very un-mac like.
I like it, but it’s kind of slow. It’s also kind of pricey. All software is pricey though. If it was faster and offered some kind of a bang it might be better. I like the interface because it’s simple. I like the idea because I do so much that I need somewhere to keep notes. It scares me because keeping data in their system without knowing much about it is risky.
I really wanted to like this product. I relay did. It looked like the perfect solution to me. As a way of integrating all of the programs I like and use n a daily basis into one window. I enjoyed it very much. And it seemed to run smoothly for me, I did not notice any problems in the speed of the app. But there were some little quirks, and some questions I had so I sent an e-mail to the company and heard nothing back. I then sent another e-mail back and heard nothing back. I was concerned as the trial period was running out. So I e-mailed them again and did not receive one e-mail response from them. This was a shame because I was ready to buy, but in then end I thought if this is the concern they show before they have my money, they will care even less once they have my money. I did like the program though but the lack of response bothered me enough to pass.
[...] CRM4Mac is a contact management interface for Mac OS X which combines Address Book, iCal and Mail into a single interface. [...]
Hi J
Sorry to read you had problems contacting us. We really try to reply all email within 24 hours. Many users and non-buyers have experienced this.
Yet silly things can ruin things. The feedback template on our website sent the email to the wrong emailaddress. We did not get notified and did not notice this because via direct email we still received a lot of mail. The moment several people started to complain about our reponse we looked into the matter and found the cause.
Sorry for the bad experience. Did you download the latest version 3.01?
Hope you like it and contact us (direct ;-) )
I tried to contact the publishers and had the same problems. I sent 3 emails via the website and got no reply and there are no alternate emails on the site or in the program.
What I wanted was to be able to click on one contact and see the entire email and ical history for that contact, but it doesn’t seem possible. There is no manual or instructions on the website and so I am left with a demo product that may do what I want but I will never know.
It’s a shame that a potentially really neat piece of software is let down by poor documentation and support.
I too wanted to have this program work. I even paid the price, but found too many problems with no response from my e-mails I sent. Was so mad I had to have the credit card company deny payment.
The sad thing is I did another trial version and the same problems exist.
Such a shame I really wanted it to work
Anyone who’s upgraded to Leopard, don’t bother. The programmers indicate in their FAQ’s that development on this program has ceased and there is no version for Leopard planned.