Reactions to Leopard Mail
After a week in which the blogosphere dissected the keynote from every angle, frantically hunted for new hidden features in Leopard and evaluated how much of it is really new and/or useful, it’s time for a round up of the “general view” on Leopard Mail.
HTML Templates suck
The new HTML templates 
were never going to be a big hit in the blogosphere. MacSlash writer acaben speaks for many :
…they’ve now made it EASIER to send out craptastic HTML email. Apparently, mail.app didn’t suck hard enough as it was, so they had to spend all of their engineering dollars making it as annoying as possible, instead of, you know, making it work well. WTF.
Pierre Igot at Betalogue has a similar view :
Real Mail users in the real world are just hoping to get decent performance and a proper interface for managing tens of thousands of archived emails. Instead, we get “30 professionally designed stationery templates.” Yet more crappy HTML email! Grrrrreat.
I share the same dislike of HTML in email, but I think it is time for bloggers to pause and take a collective deep breath. We are not like other people. Other people like HTML email a lot. Jim Puls attempts a defence of the new templates and HTML in email:
HTML e-mail exists so that you might be able to communicate with people better by more richly expressing yourself.
Productivity enhancements
Notes, to-dos and the inclusion of RSS feeds for extra information-processing focus were greeted more positively. Although these features are not new and are (partially) available to Mail users now through the work of third-party developers, Apple will present them in a more polished form. When Apple eats its children, it always makes a good job of the meal (remember Konfabulator? RIP).
Overall, restrained praise is the general tone. These things are welcome but not overwhelming.
Chris Clark at decaffeinated represents the tone of many blog posts I’ve read in the last week:
The system-wide ToDo server is a very cool idea, but everything else about the Mail preview perturbs me. Stationery? Great, more (no doubt standards-ignorant) HTML email. Thank god for hidden preferences that force plain text display by default. A notes mailbox is pretty cool, so long as it plays nice with IMAP servers (I worry that it won’t), and RSS is a gimme. Next.
Paul Thurrott seems conflicted . On the one hand he says the new features are welcome; on the other:
Apple’s Mail application (often called Mail.app in reference to its beginnings on the NeXT platform) is being updated with some truly lame features: Stationary, notes, to-do notes, and RSS. Ugh. These aren’t major features, and they’re certainly not worthy of the time Jobs gave them during the keynote.
Macworld presents an extended evaluation of Leopard Mail. It likes the new features but remains unimpressed in general:
New bells and whistles, such as Notes, To Dos, RSS support, and stationery templates, expand the program’s reach and make it more of a multitasking tool. However, if you’re using a third-party e-mail application because you need powerful management features not offered by Mail, these additions alone aren’t likely to change your mind.
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Tags: Apple, Apple Mail, HTML, keynote, Leopard, mail.app, Notes, preview, to dos, views
August 12th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
What I havent’ seen, that I keep wishing for, is improved imap performance. Jag and Panther mail were my default client, they worked well on imap and I was happy. Tiger mail imap performance, due to spotlight I thing, was so bad I have been looking for a good replacement ever sense. I’m on T-bird now, but miss a lot of functions of mail. Please, please will they fix imap support?
P
August 13th, 2006 at 12:23 am
I hope that there are a few things like improved IMAP support hidden away in Leopard Mail which are not sexy enough to headline a keynote. Fingers crossed.
August 13th, 2006 at 12:40 am
I like the additions a lot (although I couldn’t care less about HTML mail).
But, it’s weird. Are they still going to call this thing “Mail”?
A To-Do management app and RSS reader app are odd things to fold into the Mail package. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it is damned weird.
I don’t understand the underlying philosophy. Is the Mail the new repository for anything that can be accessed via a TableView, but isn’t iTunes?
Anyone have any better suggestions?
August 13th, 2006 at 1:16 am
[...] This year, one of the big debates seems to be raging about the new Leopard version of Mail.app, the built-in e-mail client in Mac OS X. The overall mood seems to be that some of the enhancements to Mail.app, mostly notable HTML-based stationery, are either detrinmental or unimpressive. The new system-wide to-do service is receiving somewhat favorable reviews, while the built-in note-taking feature and RSS integration are being met with a collective “meh.” [...]
August 13th, 2006 at 2:01 am
Apple cultist that I am, I was reading the Apple Human Interface Guidelines this week and they include a telling passage in which Apple advises developers to use an “80 percent strategy” — to design for 80 percent of OSX users, who are normies, rather than the 20 percent who are cultists and power users — when designing software. This is the doctrine that brought us the Dock, which most users love ’cause it’s cool and bouncy and it magnifies, but which many power users ignore with add-ons like Quicksilver. It’s also the doctrine that is bringing us these new tinker-toy features in Mail. So I think it’s funny that the Mac cognoscenti, all of them web designers, bloggers, IT guys, etc., are complaining about changes to an app directed at college kids with their first MacBooks. Apple knows that power users don’t care about the stationary or the RSS or the “to-dos” in Leopard Mail because power users already have their own favorite apps and workarounds for those functions. I personally like Mail — but I don’t get 100 e-mails an hour, like a lot of people — so for my purposes it does what I need with a clean interface and helps me stay organized. I hope to keep that good thing going in Leopard, although I’ll probably never use the RSS (I use NetNewsWire) or the “Notes” (I use SOHONotes) or, yes, the stationary.
August 13th, 2006 at 2:25 am
Yea, but did they fix the very long standing problem of line breaks in long URLs that won’t work on the recipient’s end? It continues to amaze me how Apple has allowed this unique to Mail flaw to continue. Whenever someone gets an email with a bad link (that only picks up the first line) they instantaneously know it is from a Mail user.
Come on guys! Fix all the exiting ones now!
August 13th, 2006 at 5:44 am
It’s kinda funny watching what could be described as power users bitching about Mail – a program they would never use anyway. It’s like a PhotoShop pro from a high end pre-press house complaining about iPhoto. What’s next, tirades about how Stickies isn’t based on an SQL database?
Relax, Mail never was and never will be a pro-level app, just like TextEdit isn’t FrameMaker. Until OS 11 comes out, most of the new stuff at the OS level will be under-the-hood from hear on out. As for performance: who can say now? It is only a beta after all. If it weren’t, it would be shipping!
August 13th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Performance and reliability are usually the most important things in mail – even for new users.
As for the new HTML templates, whether there’s a need is neither here nor there but is it just me or do they just suck? Distinctly underwhelming even if you DO want it.
August 13th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Does that problem happen when URLs are wrapped in angle brackets?
August 13th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Ah, sjk, that’s not a bug; that’s a feature.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Hey!
Just use this http://tinyurl.com/ and forget about it!
August 13th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
In regards to some of the new Mail.app features:
- ToDo integration: This can be good if it’s done right. Making a mail message a ToDo item or being able to attach a mail message to a ToDo item would be very good. It would also make it easy to reply when you’ve done the item.
- RSS integration: Why? Safari already does this.
- HTML Templates: Ugh. But some people like shiney.
August 13th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Gee, Tim, that’s a comment, not an answer. :)
Sure, if you know about and remember to use that workaround. Bet I’m not the only one who’d rather the problem be fixed than add to an already overloaded workaround list.
Why do anything that something else already does? I use NNW and Safari as feed readers and will likely add Leopard Mail to the list.
August 14th, 2006 at 2:38 am
I use MSoffice on my laptop (work Mac) and Mail on my home Mac.
The new features are fantastic for me at home where my wife and kids use the computer and really don’t need or can’t be bothered with Office, and when I am sending the odd mail to a friend or my parents (with all the pictures attached).
I would never use it at work (tried that already and had to switch back!).
Bravo Apple!!!!
Adding these simple features really makes life simpler for the rest of us!
August 14th, 2006 at 3:35 am
I assume those that have found specific bugs have filed them with Apple’s bug tracking system ( http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/ ) so they actually get fixed…
August 14th, 2006 at 5:01 am
Sam Says,
Yep, *years* ago. There were several threads on the Apple discussions forums which disappeared…could have been “deleted” or they may simply have fallen off the chart because of the very limited space allocated to some of the forums…you never know for sure, but Apple has a habit of making unfavorable comments go “bye! bye!” It is rather embarrassing when I see people sending out email with this continuing error. (I don’t use Mail, but some family members do. Some of them now use Firefox rather than Safari, among other reasons, because I have it set up with an extension to make a TinyURL for them to insert in email.
I will probably drop Apple another “why hasn’t this been taken care of?” note.
Cheers
August 14th, 2006 at 7:00 am
I nothing about ms exchange 2007 support, but yeah mail.app already don’t work with latest betas.
August 14th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Remember, although the “To Do” feature was demoed in Mail. It’s not actually a “mail.app” feature. It’s a service that will allow you to turn stuff into to-dos in many applications system-wide.
I hope the templates feature allows you to create your own templates that are not necessarily html based.
The “Notes” feature, seems to hint at feature bloat. And the RSS feed support in Mail screams feature bloat. Especially for an Apple app.
Apple usually tends to try to keep things simple, and not clutter their apps up. Usually that means people looking for high power apps have to buy them separate from the system default apps, or get plug-ins to extend them. This is a suprising departure.
August 14th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
“Remember, although the “To Do†feature was demoed in Mail. It’s not actually a “mail.app†feature.”
Untrue.
The To Do viewer in Mail is very much a mail.app feature.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:30 am
My gripe continues to be the lack of ability to insert photo, scaled to desired size, in with the text of an email.
I use Eudora because I often embedded photos in with my message. I feel this enriches and shortens the message.
Pictures at the top of a message is a nice try at being effect communications. Apple acknowledges the need for pictures with their solution so it stands to reason that embedded pictures is more complete solution as has been the practice with published periodicals for tens of years.
To Apple I say about Mail, nice start. Time to finish the job.
Jim
September 19th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
[...] When Leopard Mail was previewed last month, it provoked a lot of reaction. One of the things people broadly welcomed was the introduction of more “productivity features” like to-dos, notes and the integration of RSS feeds. [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 5:16 am
Ok … whose brilliant idea was it to hide the message counts on the actual mailboxes in the sidebar? Now I’ve got mystery red message counts in my dock but when I open Mail I cannot tell where the hell the unread message is! What possible reason is there to remove the message counts in the sidebar?
November 1st, 2007 at 8:43 am
Hmmmm…. I can see them. I wonder what’s going on. Care to email me a screenshot?