To clarify, I am not mistaking what I am used to vs. what is intuitive. In effect, they are one in the same. A person intuits what makes sense to them. If it makes sense to organize information in one fashion, then that is how a user will do it.

Matthew

It would seem that PIM clients are around because a long while ago software houses offered the business market suites of programs. These basically constituted programs for employees to work in (wps, spreadsheets, etc) and to go with that there was a program for what was ancillary to their work (calendar, contacts). When email began to make its way into the office it was added to the latter program.

IBM now puts instant messaging into its “everything else” program, Notes, as well these days; and one might just as well wonder why most PIMs *don’t* incorporate that, since a lot of intra-office communication is going on over IM these days.

Interestingly, people have even gone further than that. There’s a PIM client that was written with the notion that it would be a good idea not just to have mail and calendaring in the same application but to do away with the distinction between them. That’s “Chandler”. It’s not been a success. In fact, it’s become a cautionary tale:

” ‘No Silos’ was supposed to mean that instead of having your email in one silo, and your calendar in another silo, and your reminder notes in a third, there would just be a single unified silo holding everything.

“As soon as you start asking questions about ‘No Silos,’ you realize it’s not going to work. Do you put your email on the calendar? Where? On the day when it arrived? So now I have 200 Viagra ads on Friday obscuring the one really important shareholder meeting?”

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/01/21.html

That’s one client available on Mac that even Tim, who probably likes to try everything around, would probably steer clear of. I have tried it, and you can send and retrieve mail – just about – when you finally find where in the program to do so, but it crashes every few minutes.

To me calendaring and mail are not necessarily linked functions, although there can be links between them. This is no different from the “real world” where my calendar doesn’t even have to be in the same room as my letterbox.

But, obviously, some people are used to working with PIM clients and like that way of doing things.

He’s mistaking ‘intuitive’ for ‘what he’s used to’ because expecting to make meeting requests in a mail program rather than a calendar program seems to me more than a little like trying to use my oven to make coffee….

Simply is no bad thing…. it is hard to switch if you are a massive outlook user but there is no way I could go back now !

It’s different.

This is a con as much as it is a pro, as much as I hate to admit.

Thank you for linking to my article. And yes, the big thrust of the article was about workflow. When Apple ships Leopard, I will re-evaluate my position on the iApps & Mail. However, Entourage 2008 is around the corner too. It will be interesting to see which really ensures that the workflow needs are met.

Thanks,

Matthew

That reminds me. I looked at Mailsmith, whose update you recently noted. It felt like using Firefox–like it was a port from another OS. And in point of fact, I suppose it is. I’ve only ever used the Unix-based/NeXT-derived OS X never the “classic” OS, and it felt odd to me.

Even the tabs in the UI looked odd: I recall those glassy tabs from IE5.2 (and from the Apple website, which is sadly in need of a facelift). Those oversized windows, that non-proportional–and tiny–font; nothing quite where you’d expect to find it, no HTML rendering, poor integration with the OS, and no IMAP support. It was just bizarre to me: I couldn’t imagine using it. And yet people like John Gruber and Michael Tsai, who are obviously long-time users of the old Mac OS, clearly like it. I guess they are used to it from the old days, so that it has become engrained into their work habits, and they would find Mail.app uncomfortable to use.

I started having huge junk mail issues. Mail wasn’t “learning” what I considered junk. It would rescue emails from my yahoo email account’s spam folder and put it in Mail’s inbox. I would tighten controls and virtually nothing would make my inbox. Finally gave up and switched to Thunderbird.

The comment that the smart groups are dumb since you have to enter a variety of names is just silly – My extended family is enormous with probably 20+ different surnames to follow. Not to mention the potential overlap since my business contacts number near a thousand. Therefore, I just put the word “family” in the comments section and use a smart list to look this up in the comments. I think that this would be a perfect solution for free form tagging (just a little more structured that raw text notes).

As for iCal, I disagree – I think it’s pretty. However it’s not terribly ergonomic. I still use it since it integrates with the sync services with my various accounts and electronic devices. I have found that the latest iteration that auto detects incoming invitations really very nice to work with.