Why Mail.app quotes the way it does
If you didn’t read the comments on drunkenbatman’s “Talking Mail.app” interview 
, you might have missed a very interesting link posted by Chris Mear which explains why Mail.app quotes text in the way it does.
The format=flowed FAQ explains why text that once upon a time looked like the example on the left, now looks like the example on the right:
It also argues that this is a very good thing.
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Tags: Apple Mail, email, mail.app, quoting, text
February 22nd, 2006 at 4:10 am
Tell you the truth, I visually prefer the singular line. From a designers perspective, it adds more continuity and is easier to understand. This is the same premise regarding blockquotes in web design — Kubrick, which your wordpress blog is based on, does this by default for blockquotes. The linear motion is more unified, to paraphrase… but I could see how it comes fearful out of the norm.
Besides, you can always go to format > quote level and adjust it much easier than any other mail app I’ve found.
February 22nd, 2006 at 8:18 am
I’ve found that nontechnical users find the vertical line easier to comprehend than > as well. It’s hard enough to get them to quote (or understand that what you are doing is quoting) that any little thing helps.
March 3rd, 2006 at 10:45 am
The issue isn’t (or shouldn’t be) how the message looks in reading mail. It’s how the message looks when you’re entering mail. If the vertical lines were just how mail represented “> ” and “> > ” then you could backspace over them and *put them back* smoothly. Instead, you had best not accidentally delete a character to far when trimming quoted text lest Mail.app lose track of where you are.