Comments on: Thunderbird and Mail.app compared

By: Wayne

Wayne — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:22:07 +0000

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.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:28:05 +0000

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?

By: Gibbons Burke

Gibbons Burke — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:45:32 +0000

How is Eudora’s ‘Send Again’ command different from the one in Mail.app?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:28:11 +0000

I use them every day. Sure, they aren’t perfect, but they are there and work well.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:02:37 +0000

Eric reckons saved searches are no good in Thunderbird though.

I don’t use Thunerbird enough to know one way or the other.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 14:54:46 +0000

Thunderbird has smart folders. It’s called a Saved Search.

By: john holmes

john holmes — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:05:39 +0000

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.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 03:54:19 +0000

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.

By: munkyboy

munkyboy — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 02:17:16 +0000

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.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 00:37:37 +0000

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?