Dreaming of a smarter Mail.app in Leopard
Web designer and self-confessed standards fanatic Jeff Croft is not dreaming of a white Christmas. He is dreaming of the best imaginable Mail.app 
that might come his way in Leopard.
Of course, he is also dreaming of a better Safari, a faster Spotlight and other things that have no place on this blog.
But when he gets around to Mail, iCal and Address Book, he pulls out all the stops:
Better integration of the personal productivity and communication apps. It is, frankly, appalling that iCal, Mail.app, Address Book and iChat know very little about each other in the current Mac OS X environment. I want Google-like recognition of phrases and other natural-language idioms in e-mail. If Matt e-mails me and says, “we need to have the weather page working by noon tomorrow,†Mail.app should prompt me to create a to-do item in iCal with a due date of 12:00pm tomorrow, a summary of “Have weather page workingâ€), with Matt included as an attendee and a link to his Address Book card. If I get an e-mail from Dan that says, “Let’s chat about this tomorrow around 3pm,†I want a pop-up on my screen tomorrow at three that says, “Dan is currently online. Would like to start a video chat?â€
I’ve been getting a taste for this greater integration by playing around on Zimbra at work. It cleverly displays a pop-up with your existing appointments when you mouse over text that it has parsed a date. Nice.
Much improved Mail.app. I love the overall UI of Mail.app and I haven’t found anything I like better. But, still, there are several improvements that can be made, especially in terms of performance. Mail.app sucks with large IMAP folders, and I’ve got several of them. Could I break them into smaller folders? Sure. Should I have to? Hell no. Smart Mailboxes, a true gem of Mail.app, are a little underpowered. Compared to iTunes, there just aren’t enough filtering attributes. Many people want a widescreen version of Mail.app, so it seems like a worthy addition, even though I’m not sure it’s something I could get used to personally. And yeah, we could stand to loose the gel-cap icons (although I don’t find them nearly as offensive as some folks do).
(In a spirit of seasonal goodwill towards the Mail Team, I tried to run Mail.app with the lozenge buttons again a week ago. But I… just… couldn’t… bear… it. If you feel the same, help is at hand.)
Tags: Address Book, Apple Mail, getting things done, gtd, iCal, imap, Leopard, mail.app, ZimbraRelated posts
December 20th, 2006 at 2:14 am
Jesus people…there is no such application as Mail.app…it’s called MAIL or APPLE MAIL. Please start speaking with some common sense. This is NOT NeXT and there is no .app in the program’s name. Welcome to 2006
December 20th, 2006 at 7:49 am
And unrecognized spam says
“Grow your manhood to 8″ in 24 hours”
and now my calendar the next day asks if my manhood has grown??
And another has a young girl saying
“Meet me tonight for free.”
and now my address book has her name and e-mail address automatically added!
And my wife…?
left when she saw these entries.
ummm, let’s not worry about these “intelligent” features for a while. Of course making it a bit easier to add these types of connections ourselves would be a good thing.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Jared, Check the archives as to why it is called Mail.app on this site (and others):
http://hawkwings.net/2006/10/19/why-do-people-call-it-mailapp/
December 20th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
It’s funny, I have absolutely no problem at all with the lozenge buttons in Mail. Nor do I have a problem with the different interface styles used in the various Apple programs. I’m a pragmatist — I reckon if it works better and won’t create confusion, do it. On the whole the apps all work pretty much the same interface-wise.
I must say the one interface change that does REALLY annoy me is the maximise/restore button in iTunes that switches between the regular window and the mini player. That’s just utter blasphemy — they’ve taken one of the most basic elements of the OS interface and made it unpredictable. And when you actually DO want to maximise iTunes, how do you do it?
December 21st, 2006 at 2:01 am
“Jared, Check the archives as to why it is called Mail.app on this site (and others):”
That is ZERO excuse for calling an application by an INCORRECT name. If you want to differeniate the application from generaic “mail” then use the name APPLE MAIL. There is not an iChat.app, Safari.app or even Finder.app. There is also NO Mail.app. Please start speaking intelligently about your computer system and Apple Mail.
December 21st, 2006 at 6:41 am
Jared:
Calm down, man. It’s not worth getting your blood pressure up, nor your panties in a twist.
The man answered your criticism with good reasons why he does what he does. Live with it, or don’t come back to his blog.
Personally, I just use Mail, since folks I talk to know what I’m talking about. Your mileage may vary.
That’s what I like about the American version of the English language. You can pretty much maul it however you like, and there’s no language police to come smack ya down!
December 21st, 2006 at 6:44 am
Oh, and by the way, yes there IS a Mail.app. That is the real name in the Finder, if you tell Finder to Show Extensions. Then you’ll see ‘em.
So STFU until you know what you’re talking about!
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:24 am
I totally agree. I have been searching for apps with integration for ages especially as Filemaker Pro and Apple AddressBook do not collaborate easily.
I recently across CRM4Mac (www.crm4mac.com) which pulls data from each individual Apple application: iCal, Address Book, Mail - very well, while leaving each app to work independently. BUT… I would love to see Zimbra style connections underpinning the Mac OS. Something like the ability to view links using an Apple “Dictionary” style control-click would do nicely to begin with. Don’t you think?
More connections and musings at http://www.applepipsqueak.blogspot.com