Photoshopped Mail.app on TV?
Aaron emailed me a screenshot of Mail.app taken from an episode of the TV show Weeds (Series 2, Episode 5), which you can see below. Another screenshot has been posted 
on Flickr. It seems to show a message preview pane in a drawer on the right.
I am suspicious. It looks like a photoshop job to me.
Tiger icons and Panther Mail drawers seem odd. The Apple menu seems to be missing, the app is identified in the menubar as “Email” rather than “Mail”, the Applescript menu is where it was positioned in Panther, whereas it is on the right in Tiger Mail. The Junk mailbox appears below Trash in Tiger Mail but these are reversed in the screenshot (and these cannot be reordered):
On the other hand, it appears to be a functioning app. I’ve not seen the episode, but Aaron tells me that “the cap comes from a longer sequence that shows the character browsing through an inbox full of mail, with multiple messages popping up in that pane.”
A puzzle. What do you think?
[Thanks to an Apple Mail demi-god for technical advice. You know who you are!]
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Tags: Apple Mail, mail.app, panther mail, Photoshop, plugin, screenshot, Tiger Mail, weeds
September 18th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Every computer screen seen on television or in a film should be considered an animated mock-up until proven otherwise. There are too many variables involved for a production to risk using a real system most of the time. (Random crashes, actors not being able to type, getting sued for having an Apple — or Microsoft — logo on the bad guy’s computer, etc.)
If it seems like the computer is following the actor’s movements/commands: remember that TV has the advantage of being scripted. :)
September 18th, 2006 at 10:57 am
A couple of other things
new mail button is labelled “write” — it is “new” in Tiger
Date received lists Time first, date second. I don’t know if this order can be changed in system prefs but I don’t think it can
In message panel, the “date” field is listed as “received”
It almost looks like it could be a weird prerelease of tiger mail from some time ago.
September 18th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
i saw this episode, and i think the reason for the modification was obvious.
in the story, the girl (pictured) has been ignoring her boyfriend for a couple days, and he has been losing his mind, incessantly sending her emails. you see, the girl had gotten pregnant, and decided to terminate the pregnancy, and the boy was bombarding her with dozens of emails, each one containing a possible name for the baby.
by moving the preview pane to the right, we could see the long long list of incoming emails, and read them along the right side. with the actual Mail app arrangement (preview on the bottom) it would have been quite as clear just how many emails he’d sent.