Will Leopard Mail kill MailTags?
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.
It looks like the Apple Mail Development Team is giving Mail some more grunt for getting things done, and might even muscle in on the territory currently occupied by MailTags 
.
A poster in the MailTags forum asked today,
With the promised tighter integration of Leopard’s new Mail and iCal, including managing ToDo’s directly from Mail, why should I invest in MailTags 2.x now? What more will MailTags be offering?
Good question. And MailTags developer Scott Morrison has produced a good answer. He has listed all the things that MailTags will continue to offer than Leopard Mail doesn’t (as far as anyone knows):
If this is too hard to read, you can see a full-sized version of the list on the MailTags forum .
From what I’ve seen, there’s no reason to think that MailTags will be redundant when Leopard Mail arrives.
It will continue to provide a comprehensive structure and process for my workflow through its projects, keywords and priorities, something that Leopard Mail cannot offer.
What do you think?
Tags: Apple Mail, leopard mail, mail.app, mailtags, Notes, Productivity, to dosRelated posts
September 20th, 2006 at 12:59 am
Long Live MailTags! Scott is a true inovatorLong Live MailTags! Scott is a true innovator. Although I really like the Mac, it’s been a long time since Apple has developed a tool as well suited and useful as MailTags. It will really p:ss-me-off if they “Watson”ize MailTags. Sherlock was never as good as Watson, and Apple ran a great developer away from the platform. I like Apple, but it is not without its warts.
-Long time Mail.app user
September 20th, 2006 at 1:25 am
Yeah, MailTags is how do you say… wicked.
I am not all that worried about Mail in Leopard taking over the job MailTags does for me. I think it will actually be a very nice add-on to Mail 3.0, complete the circle ya know?
September 20th, 2006 at 1:59 am
Has anyone tried using mailtags with the new mail? I also heard that the developer pre-release of mail 3.0 does not have keyboard short cuts. Anybody know here or should I go to the mailtags forum?
September 20th, 2006 at 7:11 am
I’d go to the MailTags forums
and ask there, although you might find people using the pre-relrease version reluctant to talk too much about their experience.
September 20th, 2006 at 7:57 am
Leopard is now available as a download to ADC Select members of Apple’s Developer program and above (sorry no student member downloads).
So, for $500 (far less than the cost to attend WWDC) you too can see this thing play out… Mine’s downloading in the background and weighs in at a 4.33 Gb image (not including the 493 Mb of documentation).
September 20th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Gee that is only slight more than 1$/10 MB (less if you get the documentation!)
Becoming a select member is a great deal once you add in the fact you get the releases before and up to the gold master of Leopard (worth $129 or more), hardware discounts (can be worth several hundred dollars) even an ipod discount is substantial (considering there is no educ ipod discount any more) The price for membership pays it self back pretty quickly.
Just mind the NDA — Being a developer has its reponsibilities :)
September 20th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Scott,
> Just mind the NDA — Being a developer has its reponsibilities :)
I hear ya. if only more developers thought that way… *cough* as I look at all the versions available for download online *cough*
Ah well, it’s good to have developers like you around.
September 20th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Actually I hope there is a lot more developers like me around– my fear is that if Apple perceives the $500 is too low a barrier to keep out people that want to access to prerelease software so that can torrent it, they would raise the membership.
That may keep out a few more “spectators” but could hurt new developers (ie those without a product/source of revenue yet) It took a while for me to justify the money but I don’t regret it.
September 20th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Here-here Scott. It’s totally a fine balance of cost vs. quantity of members.
Glad to see one dev who respects the rules Apple has put in place, and for a good reason too.
September 20th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Whitney McBee makes the claim….
“It will really p:ss-me-off if they “Watsonâ€ize MailTags. Sherlock was never as good as Watson, and Apple ran a great developer away from the platform.”
Get the story right. First came Sherlock. Watson was an extension of the Sherlock notion and it’s creator was not driven from the Mac platform. Watson was bought by Sun (and wilted in that environment) while Dan went on to create another piece of software call Sandvox
Check out his blog at http://gigliwood.com/weblog/
Apple can screw many things up, but please quit this urban legend *rap about Watson.
Next you’ll talk hooey about Widgets and Konfabulator… with that developer being driven off the Mac platform and finding respect on the dark-side. Err what MS is now doing “Gadgets” Will he move to Ubuntu next?