Thunderbird and Mail.app compared
Eric Meyer is in a bind. He likes (and hates) enough things about both Thunderbird and Mail.app that he doesn’t really feel at home in either.
In a thoughtful post he compares the strengths 
of the two.
Smart folders are a plus for Mail, but Thunderbird’s superior options for navigating mailboxes with the keyboard leave Mail.app in the dust.
In conclusion he wonders:
Mail seems a lot snappier than Thunderbird, that’s for sure. But it has enough limitations for someone like me that I don’t think I can stick with it. I’m probably not part of its target audience.
It’s that perception, hard to dispell, that Mail.app is for grandmas or n00bs or those-who-don’t-know-any-better or top-posters or [insert favourite disparaging class description here].
Tags: Apple Mail, email, keyboard shortcuts, mail.app, smart folders, switching, thunderbirdRelated posts
June 18th, 2006 at 10:37 am
I’m a Thunderbird user too, and I tend to agree with Meyer’s comments. However, one major power user feature that Thunderbird lacks (and doesn’t get mentioned often) is scriptability. Yes, I know Thunderbird has a powerful plugin architecture, but it is largely undocumented. What little documentation that does exist has no structure. The only real way to learn it is to find an existing extension that does something similar to what you want and then look at the JavaScript to see what it’s doing. It’s too much work for the payoff most hand-written scripts are designed to give. It’s also not really practical to write scripts that control Thunderbird from external apps, except by going through enormous hoops (several days of effort).
Power users need scripting! Mail has it, Entourage has it, Outlook has it. Why not Thunderbird?
June 18th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Firt off, I’m a hard core tech nerd and I love Mail.app.
My previous mail client for years was Pine. I find that I just don’t “live in my email” enough to warrant super fancy features/scriptability. I tried the Mail Tags plugin for a couple of weeks but eventually abandoned it cause I never used it’s features. IMHO, all the key features one needs for dealing with E-mail are in Mail.app. They are: rules, search, SSL for RX/TX, and threaded view.
What I’m getting at is: No, Mail.app is not for Grandmas. It completely satisfies any user who treats email like it was intended to be… text based communication.
June 18th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Actually, munkyboy, that IS how I treat email: as text. My complaints are more in the realm of polish (e.g., alternating rows, which would benefit anyone from grandmas to power users) and a sufficient paucity of account and filter options for my needs. Plus there’s the complete inability to keyboard-navigate mailboxes with keystroke commands–think “go to next unread message”– and the downright bizarre inability to highlight four messages at once and hit command-R to open replies to each one.
So I’d argue that Mail.app does not completely satisfy any user of the type you describe, because I am that type of user. I just want more capability than Mail.app currently possesses, and as a result, using it slows me down dramatically when I’m dealing with e-mail. I can’t accept that. e-mail takes up way too much of my life as it is.
June 18th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Eudora. ” Send Again”… love that feature.
Mail.app seems to have gone backwards from panther to tiger. Maybe I need more time with it - the interface looks slicker, but over simplified.
June 19th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Thunderbird has smart folders. It’s called a Saved Search.
June 19th, 2006 at 1:02 am
Eric reckons saved searches are no good in Thunderbird though.
I don’t use Thunerbird enough to know one way or the other.
June 19th, 2006 at 3:28 am
I use them every day. Sure, they aren’t perfect, but they are there and work well.
June 20th, 2006 at 6:45 am
How is Eudora’s ‘Send Again’ command different from the one in Mail.app?
June 20th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Gibbons, I’m glad you asked that. I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance of Eudora by asking the same thing. Is there a difference?
June 22nd, 2006 at 5:22 am
Thunderbird is a fine client, but it does not work with Spotlight and Address Book, or with Enigmail (on Intel Macs).
All my regular email accounts are on IMAP servers and I do use TB on Windows when needed, but nothing does everything I need on my Macs better than mail.app.