1. Lean and extendable
Apple’s design strategy for Mail has created a lean and efficient email client. Unlike other email clients for Mac, Mail.app is not packed full of features and bloat that you never use. While some missing features niggle (for example, the inability to adjust the timeout delay on server connections or to opt out of format=flowed quoting if you want to), the overall result is a pared-down focussed app that is second to none.
Its power purrs away under the hood, yet it is simple enough that you can explain its workings to your mother-in-law. I know.
Because of this restricted focus, developers have launched an amazing array of plugins and utilities that extend what Mail can do. You chose the plugins that you want to make the email client you need on top of the rock-solid base that Apple provides. It doesn’t get much better than that.
2. Unified Inbox
Since I use it all the time and familiarity breeds contempt, I often overlook things like the beauty of Apple Mail’s Unified Inbox. You can with some jiggery and pokery create a unified inbox in other email clients, but right out of the box Apple gives you the single collection bucket you need to process and deal with everything in one place. Gotta love that.
3. Looks the part and does the job
Some email clients look the part but can’t do the job. GyazMail 
, for example, has a nice Mail-like interface, but doesn’t support IMAP or manage other core functions quite as well.
Some email clients can do the job but look (and feel) like a wildebeest’s backside . Thunderbird, I salute you (from a distance).
Mail.app has married looks and power like no other email client on the platform. That’s something to be thankful for.
4. Integration with other iApps
While Mail keeps its focus on just doing mail and doing it well, it opens its arms to iCal, Address Book and iPhoto in ways that make life easier and more productive. There is a hack to get iPhoto to send images to other email clients, but nothing like the native, two-way interaction Mail users enjoy.
5. Address Book pictures
This might seem like a small thing, but I love it to death. As I wrote in one of the first posts on Hawk Wings (An Ode to Apple Mail):
I love the way Apple Mail places pictures from my Address Book into the emails I receive…. I spend a lot of the day answering emails or shunting them from one place to another. It can be a dehumanising experience. With the pictures, it’s easier for me to remember that the posters are real people and that this is real interaction (even if it’s happening in the rather thin, ethereal realm of the internet). I finish the day with a better feeling of having dealt with real people with real problems. I love that.
That’s a fistful of reasons why I am thankful for Mail.app.
If I’ve left something out that is close to your heart, let me know. It is, after all, a time for unbashed thankfulness beyond all normal restraint.
I didn’t know about that expandability. Any ideas of good plugins? :)
Just for you, I offer 140+ ideas about good plugins.
:D
Hi Tim,
Your #2 reason to be thankful for Apple’s Mail app is the probably the #1 reason why I don’t use it, though you make a compelling argument with your other points.
I currently have five e-mail accounts set up in Thunderbird. Some are personal and some are work related. The last thing I need is for those messages to get all jumbled up together in one inbox … Yikes!
So I await the day Thunderbird will finally make itself a proper member of the Macintosh community by adding — at minimum — Apple Script support and Address Book integration. Until then, I stumble along…. :)
Thanks for all the great info!
Mike