A poster in 43Folder’s Google Groups writes:

Ok, so I really like Apple’s Mail, iCal and Address Book interface a hell of a lot better than Entourage (no offense En’tage enthusiasts). But until Apple gets it’s act together and really puts up a fight in gluing those apps together (with a better task/note interface), I think I just found another reason to stick with Entourage.

It’s a common complaint, the kind of thing that CRM4Mac tries to remedy.

Today I came across OD4Contact, which takes the integration of iCal, Address Book and Apple Mail to a whole new level. It’s amazing what this app promises to do.

The app is a contact management solution that organises Apple Mail, Address Book, iCal and iChat around your contacts. Real-time synchronization brings emails and other information from Apple’s native apps into its interface.

The following screenshot shows some of its potential:

Click for a full-sized screenshot

It also supports linking tasks with Address Book contacts, synchronization of data with iPod or PDA, the ability to organise everything by project (for task-focussed users) or contact (for people-focussed users), reminders, map searches, printing options and more.

OD4Contact was updated a few days ago and now has improved email support and better scanning of iChat logs.

As you might expect, this kind of app costs money. A single license costs USD 54.90 or 49.90 Euros.

You can read more about it and download a demo of the app from the developer’s web site (The app is now called Contactizer Pro).

A few days ago, the co-creator of MacZealots posted an interesting piece on how Mail.app (and all the other OS X email clients) suck.

Today, TUAW takes the plunge in a different way, asking readers to say what they think is wrong with Apple Mail and what they would like to see fixed. The author of the post, David Chartier, doesn’t much care for third-party “plugins and add-ons and widgets and gidgets” which are never as good, he suggests, as the code written by the guys who wrote the app itself.

Nonetheless, as a small public service, here is the third-party answer to some of the gripes people have posted on TUAW. You might like to read the TUAW article. It’s interesting to see what bugs other people.

Some of those things only Apple can fix. But some can be fixed with plug-ins and gidgets. You will find some solutions, by comment number, after the jump.

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