I’ve finally given up all hope that Steve Jobs will ever answer my emails, so it’s time to close off the “Talking Mail.app” series that ran on Hawk Wings through February and early March.

A number of developers and iCelebrities cheerfully gave up their time to conduct “email interviews”, sharing their views on what’s good about Mail and what’s not so good, what plugins they use to make their Mail experience better and how Mail.app could be improved.

Here is the full list of interviews:

Scott Morrison – MailTags and Mail Act-on developer.
Joe Kissell – Mac writer and journalist.
Daniel Jalkut – Rising Tech blogger, developer of FastScripts.
Fraser Speirs – Connected Flow, developer of FlickrExport, XJournal.
Leander Kahney – Managing Editor of Wired News, Cult of Mac.
drunkenbatman – “Some guy with a website”.
Pierre Igot – Betalogue, writer, translator, Mac tech support person.
John Gruber – Daring Fireball. Blog superstar.
Andreas Amann – Mail Scripts developer.
Giles Turnbull – Writer, Mac journalist.
Rui Carmo – Tao of Mac.
Peter Maurer – Textpander, Witch, Butler, Service Scrubber, etc, etc.
Andrew Escobar – Developer of Mail Stamps.
Brady J Frey – Design Company Creative Director.
Rob Griffiths – macOSXHints, MacWorld.
Matt Haughey – A Whole Lotta Nothing, MetaFilter, PVRBlog.
Ethan Schoonover – kGTD, photographer.
Merlin Mann – Productivity god. (*swoon*).
Brent Simmons – NetNewsWire, MarsEdit.
Michael Tsai – SpamSieve, DropDMG, ATPM.

Thanks, guys. Hang on a minute…. Yes, they are all guys. How did that happen?Talking Mail.app, mail.app, apple mail, likes, dislikes, plugins

Michael Tsai is an indie Mac developer whose products include DropDMG and SpamSieve .

He’s also the publisher of ATPM , a Mac e-zine that’s now in its 12th year.

His main Mac is a Dual 2 GHz G5 with 2.5 GB of RAM and two 20″ Dell 2005FPWs. He says, “I will eventually switch to the 20″ iMac Core Duo that I’m using for testing, but there are some development tools that I haven’t gotten switched over to Intel yet, and I’ll probably wait until DiskWarrior can handle the new partition format.”

HW: How long have you been using Apple Mail? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

MT: I used Emailer 1 and 2 for several years and really liked it, however, database corruption problems prompted me to switch to Outlook Express 4 for a time. Then Mailsmith came out, and I’ve been using it as my main client pretty much ever since. I subscribe to a ton of mailing lists, and I’ve long used a separate client to handle the mailing list mail. For a while that was Eudora, but around the Jaguar timeframe I switched to Apple Mail because, unlike Eudora, it doesn’t store the message data in mangled form.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

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Brent Simmons is an Architect of Client Products at NewsGator Technologies where he works on NetNewsWire , an RSS aggregator for Mac OS X.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

BS: I currently use Entourage mostly, because it works much better than Mail.app with our Exchange system.

I’ve used Mail.app in the past, though — along with Eudora, Mailsmith, pine, and mutt.

Actually, I do use Mail.app exclusively with my .Mac email address. And of course I use it as a developer (figuring out how to make it so you can send email from NetNewsWire via Mail.app).

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

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Merlin Mann is the guy who does 43 Folders .

He uses a 17″ PowerBook that’s greatly in need of an upgrade.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

MM: I’ve used Mail.app since the first non-beta of OS X I installed, although for a long time we “saw other people.” For the longest time I had this really Byzantine, IMAP-enabled system of using Mail.app for any kind of serious email work and Entourage for all other PIM-based work. I felt like one of those guys on the Ed Sullivan Show, dashing around, trying to keep all the plates spinning.

Since moving to kGTD and iCal a few weeks ago, I’m 100% off Entourage, but do use Gmail, and occasionally my provider’s web app if I’m away from home base.

I loved Eudora back in the day — it’s what I used for like 5 years starting in ’95 — but it started to feel crufty and a bit out of date. Took me months to get used to not having all my mailboxes in separate windows — an old-school Mac practice that’s since been replaced by the ubiquitous 3-panel interface.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

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Ethan Schoonover is the developer of Kinkless GTD (kGTD), a collection of AppleScripts and a template for OmniOutliner Pro and iCal that implements David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” philosophy for Mac users.

HW: How would you describe yourself?

ES: A recent interviewer described me as an “international gadabout” which is my preferred title as it sounds both worldly and completely irresponsible. Otherwise I would suggest ‘photogrammer’. Work (and right brain stimulation) is photography (ejas.net ) but I program when I’m not shining bright lights at people.

HW: What kind of Mac do you use?

ES: My primary Mac is a Dual 2.7 G5, 4GB Ram, with two terabytes of disk space (half internal, half external). On the road I use a 15″ Powerbook. iPod Mini 2nd gen (I’m holding out for the iPhone). Main monitor: 23″ cinema, Second monitor, a Philips 18″, vertical orientation.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

ES: I’ve switched (back) to the mac (after a ten year hiatus) almost exactly a year ago. Until then I was an Outlook addict. When I started my “OSX adjustment period” and began to select my core apps, I took a look at Entourage. Entourage is ugly. Really, really ugly. On the mac, for the most part, ‘ugly’ correlates strongly to ‘crappy’. Not in all cases, but it’s a common symptom. So I decided against Entourage and went straight for Mail.app.

I was in shock at first since it had no clear calendar or task integration. I’ve since learned to love the simplicity and single mindedness of this approach. To abuse some OO terminology, the i-apps in OSX tend to have strong cohesion and are loosely coupled which I now realize is a very good thing for my PIM functions.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

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Matt Haughey is the founder of MetaFilter and Ask MetaFilter , PVRblog , Ten Years of My Life , and A Whole Lotta Nothing .

He is a designer and developer living near Portland, Oregon. He currently runs a new 20″ iMac G5 as his primary machine, with his 12″ powerbook demoted to traveling companion.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

MH: I’ve been using Mail since April 2004. I started with Entourage on my first powerbook in early 2002, but it eventually got so slow I could no longer tolerate it.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

MH: The only one I’ve used is the one that makes the buttons look and act like Mail did pre-Tiger. [Mail Stamps.]

HW: What’s your favourite thing about Mail.app?

MH: The simplicity of it. There’s no wasted screen real estate or features I never use.

HW: What’s your pet hate about Mail.app?

MH: I wish searching was just a tad more robust. 8 years ago, Eudora let me search for any message that had an attachment that ended in .pdf that was sent from the domain of my accountant’s website. Apple Mail can’t do that, unfortunately, but I found MailSteward through your blog that can hopefully cover my search needs.

HW: If you could tell the Apple Mail development team one thing, what would it be?

MH: Make an advanced search option to do what I just described — let me search on two or three fields.

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You can read other interviews with developers and Mac identities talking about their Mail.app experiences by following this tag cloud link.talking mail.app, likes, dislikes, apple mail, mail.app, Matt Haughey

Rob Griffiths is the founder of macosxhints.com and is now a Senior Editor for Macworld , responsible for daily updates on macosxhints.com, as well as various projects for Macworld, both online and in print.

His primary machine is a first-generation Dual 2.0GHz G5 with 2.5GB of RAM.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

RG: Since the 10.0 Public Beta. I had to use Entourage at work, and hated it. It just looked so ugly and felt cluttered, though I did like it’s three-column view. As soon as Mail gained Exchange support, I switched at work, too.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

RG: I’ve used many at various times, though presently I’m not running any.

HW: What’s your favourite thing about Mail.app?

RG: It’s got a nice, simple yet powerful interface.

HW: What’s your pet hate about Mail.app?

RG: Rules need to be more powerful.

HW: If you could tell the Apple Mail development team one thing, what would it be?

RG: Please improve the keyboard support; navigating via keyboard only is tricky at best right now.

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You can read other interviews with developers and Mac identities talking about their Mail.app experiences by following this tag cloud link.talking mail.app, likes, dislikes, apple mail, mail.app, Rob Griffiths