TUAW has launched its annual “Mail.app is terrible” post.

Last year (26 October 2005) it was What’s wrong with Apple Mail and how it needs to be fixed. Twenty TUAW got into the spirit of things and listed their gripes which were interesting to read.

This year it’s How Apple doesn’t really understand email either on the Desktop or webmail.

The general sense is that Apple hasn’t performed well:

Don’t get me started on how it’s taken our favorite fruit half a decade just to build an almost-usable email client application (certainly won’t be business-class anytime this decade). I mean, waiting until 2007 just to have a proper email client? Super. Anyone else not really digging Apple’s lame attempts to manage email?

The name of the perfect email client against which Mail.app is judged so harshly is not revealed, nor are we told what will make Leopard Mail “proper”.

Still, it’s a good place to vent frustrations or to watch other people vent theirs (if you are into that sort of thing).

Related posts

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• Leopard Mail development continues behind (mostly) closed doors
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Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 is out.

While the release itself contains no new features, only general stability improvements and security fixes (full list ), the release notes mention a number of bugs and known issues, some of which affect Mac users in particular.

Four of the problems are described as known issues, the last of which may affect Intel Mac users:

1. If after you run the Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 installer, the extension compatibility and update wizard does not appear, go to the Extension Manager and manually check for updates.
2. If the Extension Compatibility and Update wizard appears but does not complete, first try to focus some other window and return focus to the wizard. If that does not correct the problem, hit Cancel and go to the Extension Manager and manually check for updates.
3. If the Extension Compatibility and Update wizard downloads and installs extension updates but those updates are not applied, open the Extension Manager and manually check for updates.
4. On Intel-based Macintosh computers, PowerPC-only binary extensions do not work unless users upgrade to an Intel-native or Universal version or turn on Rosetta. To turn on Rosetta, click on the Thunderbird icon, click “Get Info” and then check the “Run Under Rosetta” box.

Two more potential Mac-specific issues are detailed in the notes:

1. If you are running Thunderbird 1.5 or Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 on Macintosh computers with Intel Core processors under Rosetta, you will get upgraded to a PowerPC-only, Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 product via the automated update system. You will need to download the Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 Universal Binary build from www.mozilla.com to take advantage of the native support for Intel-based Macintosh computers.
2. There is no Talkback on Intel-based Macs when running natively or under Rosetta. The Apple Crash report program should launch in the event of application crashes.

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Here’s something you don’t stumble across everyday. Jim Puls is a engineer on the Apple Mail Team (hence a kind of demi-god) and he has a blog!

Given the much-hyped culture of secrecy at Cupertino and much-hyped stories of Steve Jobs’ views about communication with the outside world, anyone who sticks their head above the parapet (NDA or not) is admirable. (See further extended commentary on Apple and blogging here ).

In his latest post , he takes issue with a recent list of scandalous problems in mail.app.

He rates the poster at rtfa.net as “better than most of the trolls you find on anonymous blogs” but has some robust and forthright things to say in Mail.app’s defence.

Jim describes himself as a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, who survived a graduation address from Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser al-Missned and went on to work for the Apple Mail Team (perhaps as a result of the advertisement for Mail Team engineers earlier this year? Perhaps earlier.)

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The owner of rtfa.net has posted a list of the things that are annoying, broken or just plain scandalous about Mail.app.

He is an unhappy Apple Mail user: “Well, if Thunderbird integrated with spotlight and OSX address book, it’d be a no-brainer. However, I’m entrenched.”

And life in the trenches with Mail.app is not good.

Three problems score the highest scandal rating — incorrect treatment of IMAP’s “seen flag”, the “lost message” problem and the “invalid pointer” problem.

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A poster on macOSXHints has posted a tip to reduce the long delays in producing a reply window that sometimes occur in Mail.

He suggests that it caused by settings in the Keychain and provides a work-around to fix it.

I had this problem earlier in the year. In my case, it wasn’t caused by Keychain settings, but by my .Mac account.

I won’t repeat it all here, but you can read the whole saga in “Apple Mail phones home too” where you will also find the fix.

In short, Mail was trying to connect through port 80 to verify my iChat certificate. My work firewall blocks port 80. Hence the delay.

Interesting that Mail phones home in an unannounced but benign way, don’t you think?

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Hugo Haas has been wrestling with Mail.app.

Frustrating for him but interesting for us, he’s found four things that Mail.app can’t do:

• IMAP over SSL does not work if used through an SSH tunnel
• SMTP over SSL does not work if a SOCKS proxy is in use
• When a SOCKS proxy is set, excluding a hostname or domain does not work: it just makes any connection to a matching host fail
• Using an PAC file does not give satisfactory results (I don’t remember the details of this one, but basically I bumped into a number of issues)

I’m not so sure about the last one. Mail seems to negotiate the proxy.pac file at my work without any problems. I’ve never tried to do the other three myself.

Still, it’s nice to know that there is still room for improvement in Mail.app and the hope of even better things to come.

Related posts

• The puzzle of extra returns in Mail.app replies
• Ten ways to make Mail.app better
• Self-signed SSL certificates in Apple Mail
• Security flaw with scripts in Mail.app
• Savaging Mail’s sending silliness