Get your hands on Mail 3.0 now
You don’t have to wait until next year to get your hands on the new features in Mail 3.0. The third-party apps and plugins that may have inspired the new features are available now.
However odd and unsettling this year’s WWDC keynote was (Leander Kahney has some interesting thoughts 
), it was good news for Mail.app fans.
Apple has spent some time and energy working on Mail. With the exception of templates, the other new features previewed by Steve Jobs will make it a better productivity tool.
With notes, to-dos and the ability to manage RSS feeds (See Apple’s new Leopard Mail web page for more), Mail 3.0 really will “help you to do more with your Mail” as Apple suggests.
Oddly, Apple’s press release rather oversold these advances. “Leopard’s Mail includes breakthrough new features that have never been seen before in a Mail application,” it pronounces.
Not true. And not smart either. Why the Apple PR machine didn’t adopt a more honest approach (”Leopard’s Mail takes some great ideas and makes them even better”), I don’t know. It’s as if Thunderbird, MailTags, Event Maker, Note to Self, or the stationery in Outlook Express and other mail clients never existed.
In any case, the good news is that you can take advantage of these new features now (if not always in quite the polished form Leopard promises).
To-dos (not system-wide) — MailTags
Templates (not HTML) — Mail Templates, Roll your own
Notes (not RTF) — Note to Self
RSS feeds (in your Inbox) — FeedMailer, rmail
I can’t make up my mind about the new HTML templates. My inner plain-texter revolts, but I can see how some people will find them tremendous fun.
Tags: Apple, Apple Mail, iCal, Leopard, mail.app, Notes, Productivity, RSS feeds, templates, todosRelated posts
August 9th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
I haven’t seen the WWDC keynote for myself yet, but if Apple did say that these features never existed before Leopard Mail, then they’re extremely ignorant or plain arrogant. Whatever the case may be, we all use Apple Mail (the majority of us anyway) and are really quite glad to see them incorporate all this stuff into Mail.app. I am totally digging the OS-wide To-Do Notes and the built-in RSS reader. That’s the one thing I really miss in Mail, after having used Thunderbird for a long time on Windows XP.
And the templates are cool too. I’m confident it’s time for your “inner plain-texter” to put on some clothes. They’re a lot like the iWeb templates.
August 9th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
I would never use any of the HTML features but they are probably going to be the biggest eye-candy selling feature for the masses. The look good though :)
August 9th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
What really impressed me was the FOUR-pane view! Imagine it on a widescreen Mac, from left to right you have mailboxes, the email list, then the one you’re reading, and finally your reply. So smoothly your eye tracks across the page, simply wonderful. Rumour has it that when it ships there will be a FIFTH pane at the bottom for a ticker tape RSS display…
August 9th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
P.S. Just kidding…
August 9th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
The “ToDo” capacity of Mail seems less like something attached to Mail (and thus MailTags) but a universal feature built as a service into the whole system. That’s pretty slick.
But there’s a piece of software that already does this: Hallon. It allows systemwide ToDos, like are promised now, though sadly and frustratingly it doesn’t incorporate with iCal. You can draft a mail to yourself, (put “Note:” into the subject line for better smartfolder filtering…), then easily attach it with a keystroke to your universal ToDo list, include a due date, write some additional notes, etc.
The icon lives in your menu, and you can attach Finder items, Safari links, iPhoto, Addresses (the name and what you need to call about, for example), and much more. It’s a powerful piece of software, hurt by its lousy calendar input format, and a few odd behaviors with keystrokes. I use it all the time, though. Universal ToDo lists, not just in Mail.
Link to Hallon is:
August 9th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Whoops. The link is:
http://hallon.sourceforge.net/
August 9th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
I didn’t hear anything about better compatibility with Exchange servers. Is Apple finally going to give us the ability to disable public folder syncing? Currently, we have to set this within our Active Directory accounts.
August 10th, 2006 at 1:22 am
I hope that there are some other improvements in Mail that are not sexy enough to make it into a keynote but will represent a real improvement for users. Fingers crossed!
August 10th, 2006 at 5:38 am
I just hope Apple improves the spell checker so it can automatically correct typos, etc.
August 10th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
I have to say I’m on the “revolts” side regarding the “stationary”. It reminds me most of Incredimail and getting mail from those users is always painful.
While I certainly prefer plain-text email, tasteful HTML email (i.e. for bold/italic text, links and so on) is something I can live with.
How is it that Apple, famed for their design, can’t create modern, tasteful, templates? (It’s not like a template is a new idea!)
August 11th, 2006 at 2:07 am
The stationary isn’t immediately for me, but let’s keep in mind that not all stationary needs to be over the top. It can be a matter of very subtle touches, like font choices and default text for common uses - a business email template as opposed to a personal email template, for example. That’s how I expect I’ll use it anyway - I represent several clients in communications sometimes, and being able to gently customize those emails to match the brand of my client is a real plus to me.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Jobs wants this OS and applications to be run in enterprise situations? Then give us a mail application capable of requesting a return receipt - how difficult can this be?
September 28th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
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