A modest Leopard Mail wish-list
Colin Devroe knows what he likes and doesn’t like about Mail.app, although he says that “I’m not as much of a power-user of Mail as I probably could be.”
He has produced 
a list of gripes and a modest list of wishes for Leopard Mail.
I see what he means when he asks for more flexible searching:
The search box should allow for multiple filters such as you find in the current Finder. Searching for a subject, then being able to click + to drill down until you find what you are looking for. I have about 12,500 pieces of email, and finding the 1 that I am looking for can sometimes prove difficult with a single search filter.
It would be great at the click of a Finder-like plus sign to search for emails from a particular sender with a particular word in the subject line:
That’s much easier than the Boolean search “hack” for Mail.
The complaint about smart mailboxes is also right on target. And well-observed; I’d not noticed it before.
When you create a smart mailbox and select “message is in mailbox” you get a list of your existing smart mailboxes. When you try to create a “message is not in mailbox” criterion, you don’t. Why not? He wants it fixed.
His modest feature requests — an iLife media browser and the automatic compression of multiple attachments — are not what I would choose, but it’s great to see someone thinking outside the box and coming up with features that add functionality not just eye-candy.
A fine post.
Tags: Apple Mail, attachments, bugs, leopard mail, mail.app, media browswer, searching, smart mailboxesRelated posts
November 14th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
I’m glad we agree on some of the things Tim. Its good to see that I’m not alone with some of my wishes. Hopefully, as my wish list continues, you’ll find other things too that you agree with.
Thanks for the link!
November 15th, 2006 at 1:36 am
I got a few wishes and fixes too:
fixes:
- address book panel doesn’t search for nicknames
- smart mailboxes don’t get refreshed: I have to select another smart mailboxes and then come back (well, maybe this just happen to me, I haven’t read of anyone else having this problem)
wishes:
- in the mailboxes list, a counter for all the messages that are in each mailbox, not only for the unread mails.
- the ability to set, in the message list, different columns for different mailboxes.
- more rules options!
- templates, which you can set as default for certain recipients or mailboxes.
bye :-)
November 15th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Some wishes, none of which is likely to come about:
* improved support for IMAP;
* the ability to subscribe to chosen IMAP folders;
* better feedback in the interface, so that one doesn’t have to keep the “Activity Viewer” open;
* local mailboxes (including the Outbox) that always show, not “intelligently” appear and disappear according to whether they have contents or not;
* PGP support would be nice;
* those horrible ugly buttons that are inconsistent with every other application should go.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:13 am
I think, well hope, that the next “killer-app” will be someone who completely forgets the paradigm we’ve been using for email clients. The 3 or 4 pane display of folders, lists, mail text etc is, in my opinion, hackneyed and been done to death by everyone from Microsoft, to Apple, Mozilla, Eudora etc etc.
In terms of look, feel and use - there is little significant difference between any of the popular email clients.
For most of us, I would guess that email is one of our most used applications, along with a browser. I just can’t see that the lack of innovation in the look, feel and use means that what we are working with today is the “ideal” paradigm for an email client.
With features such as Core Animation, Video, Graphics now a feature of OS X and Vista - surely someone can do us all a favour and do a new email client front end altogether. Apple is trying something new with Time Machine (and I’m not saying it is “right” only that it’s innovative) - please someone save us from email clients!!!!
$0.02c
November 17th, 2006 at 8:21 am
* iTunes like interface for searching — if you have a message, say, from “Steve Jobs”, there would be an arrow next to it like in iTunes. Click on it and it will show all emails from Steve Jobs. Option-click on it and it will show only messages in that mailbox from Steve Jobs. Shift-opt-click will show all messages sent *to* Steve Jobs.
* Do the same thing in a smart subject line search (i.e., Mail.app would know to ignore FWD, RE and all that mess).
Beyond that I’m pretty happy. :)
December 8th, 2007 at 5:05 am
I would love to see some sort of RSS organization. I subscribe to a lot of feeds, and right now they’re all listed separately.
If only I could organize them into categories like sports, CSS, SEO, design etc
December 8th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Hey Lee,
I would HIGHLY recommend Vienna. It’s open-source and freeware, it can handle a ton of subscriptions (I have around 350) and you can organize and search, set up drilled-down smartboxes and customize the layout:
http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php