Mailsmith: New Intel-friendly public beta
Bare Bones has announced a new public beta of Mailsmith, its (once upon a time) landmark email client.
Mailsmith 2.2 (beta) is a universal build, so it runs with all the grunt that an Intel Mac can provide.
It also changes the way in which email data is stored. Once you start using it, you can’t go back to Mailsmith 2.1.5.
The new version features an updated user interface:
Mailsmith picks up numerous changes to the UI, built-in text editing, and transformation abilities, all derived from BBEdit 8/TextWrangler 2. They are too numerous to list here, but generally fall into the realm of Unicode support, improved Mac OS X appearance and behavior, and various performance and behavior refinements.
Other updates include more options for handling compressed archives, the ability to import gzipped mbox files, a new “flag” option for messages, a new top-level menu for Bare Bones “Clippings” feature, improved display of emails composed with the “format=flowed” option (hurrah!) and more.
The full list of improvements is provided in an email from Bare Bones CEO Rich Siegal 
on the Mailsmith mailing list along with this warning:
Mailsmith 2.2 is not ready for release to the general public. It is pre-release software, which has not been completely tested or debugged. We will do our best to fix any bugs that are reported; but you must acknowledge, at least to yourself, that you are assuming a certain amount of risk by using this pre-release version; and that by assuming that risk, you accept all responsibility for the consequences of doing so.
If you dare, you can download a copy of the new beta from Bare Bones web site.
Mailsmith doesn’t support new-fangled things like IMAP or Exchange accounts.
[Via TUAW ]
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Tags: bare bones, email, Mailsmith, not apple mail, not mail.app, POP
April 4th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Argl … they should have put the Yojimbo interface guys on Mailsmith. The interface is still computer stoneage. Mailsmith still sucks, the search is a bad joke, slow like hell and an interface that is so slow to handle that I’d rather search by hand …, still no “filter” field, the import from Mail.app “forgot” to import about 10000 messages here, it took about 1GB of REAL memory for the import from mail (2.8GB mail folder) – and the import was useless due to the fact that it had not import everything, it still can’t display even images inline … waaaaaaah
It’s a good 1980s application with some powerful filter and text editing features but the complete rest is e-mail hell at best. Sorry, nice try. Back to work guys.
And actually they are able to write nice looking and working products. I really like Yojimbo (I have registered Yojimbo, BBEdit and Mailsmith) and with some limitations BBEdit but Mailsmith is the worst product they have – and one of the worst integrated mailers for Mac OS X out there.
April 4th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
There are some things to love about Mailsmith, above all its text editing capabilities (borrowed from BBEdit). Writing long emails — for instance, when you need to make a detailed reply to a message and include quotes from it — is easier and smoother in Mailsmith than in any other Mac email app. It also has a few small features that Mail lacks and that I really enjoy: you can make bottom-posting the default, you can delete attribution strings, you can set the background color to something a little easier on the eyes than white, and you can make notes on any message, whether sent or received or in draft. And since I started using Gmail I don’t even need the IMAP anymore.
But. (1) While in general I love plain text emails, there are rare occasions when I need formatting, or people send me messages with essential formatting. (2) No LDAP support. I’m a college teacher, and Mail supports our LDAP server flawlessly, which gives me thousands of email addresses that I can access by typing a few characters. (3) No smart folders. I have gotten very attached to those. (4) I don’t know whether these are widespread issues, but for me Mailsmith is inconsistent in applying the rules (“filtersâ€) I set and in recognizing addresses of people I have already corresponded with.
I downloaded the new version immediately and gave it a try, but though it is much improved — I’m especially pleased that it uses the system spelling dictionary — I’m not going to be able to use it. I’m just hoping that Leopard Mail, in addition to providing some of the already-seen bells and whistles that I despise, will also improve its basic text editing capabilities. But I have my doubts about that.