Dave Hamilton from the Mac Observer is thinking about switching to Mail.app.

He has had a gutful of his old mail client:

Mailsmith, by most rights, has stagnated. It pains me to write this, because as I said, I’m a really big fan of BareBones, and enjoy a great working relationship with their head-honcho, Rich Siegel. But it’s true… Mailsmith hasn’t had a public release/update since March of 2005. Now some folks may argue that it doesn’t need an update, and for those folks, I’m sure that’s correct. My big problem is that I manage a LOT of e-mail… I have almost 1400 mailboxes within which are nearly 200,000 e-mail messages. I pretty much save everything, and it’s saved my ass in HUGE ways over the years, so I ain’t gonna stop.

So, he wonders, does Mail.app have what it takes to manage a large number of mailboxes and bucketloads of email? Or is he better off archiving off a large slab of the emails and staying with Mailsmith?

My advice is not much good. I only have about 35,000 emails spread over four IMAP accounts and about ten mailboxes (see further, “How the delete key is your best friend”). That’s chicken feed by Dave’s standards.

Justin Blanton once ran a challenge to find the largest Mail mailbox, putting up his own inbox of 22,000 as a candidate.

What’s your experience? What’s your biggest mailbox? How many mailboxes does your Mail.app handle without working up a sweat?

Can Mail.app take the load? Does size matter?

Related posts

• Switching from Eudora for Windows to Mail.app
• Six Ways Mail beats the pants off Entourage
• Script to export email from Mailsmith
• Mailsmith and Notes (!) kick Mail’s butt
• KMail to Mail.app import script improved

MegaPixel Maven posts a tip on resizing photos in Mail.app using the “Image Size” drop box in the bottom right-hand corner of the Compose window.

As the author points out, you can use this function to reduce an image in the Compose window to Large (1280×800 pixels), Medium (640×400) or Small (320×200) sizes.

Three points:

• Mail does a really bad job of reducing the image. Rob Griffiths ran some tests on this when the tip was posed on macOSXHints last year. He discovered that Photoshop is between 61% and 73% more efficient at the same tasks. Even iPhoto itself does a better job.
• Another option is to use a utility like Downisze or Scale to Mail, which will resize your images efficiently without the need to fire up a monster like Photoshop.
• If you use Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail or QuickMail Pro, Simon Jacquier’s iPhoto Mailer Patcher lets you hack iPhoto to set your email client as the recipient of resized photos. Instructions can be found in an earlier Hawk Wings post.

Related posts

• On Emailing Photos with Mail.app
• iPhoto Mailer Patcher 4.1: Use iPhoto with more email clients
• iCal email notifications with other clients
• iPhoto Mailer Patcher: email pics for (almost) everyone
• Toggle image and attachment display in Mail.app

In a recent MacNotables podcast, Adam Engst (TidBITS publisher), Andy Ihnatko, Dan Frakes, and Chuck Joiner discuss what they like and don’t like about their current and past email clients.

They discuss Eudora, Mail, Entourage, PowerMail, Mailsmith, Gmail, and even Elm.

The promo on the podcast’s web page reads:

Think that the choice of email clients is easy? Think again. The MacNotables ride into town on their favorite email clients and you’ll be surprised at what programs get the nod and why. Should you use the free option? Pay for a stand alone program? Use part of a productivity suite? Switch to web mail? There are no obvious answers but the panel gives you some things to consider and talk about where they would like to see email go in this bonus-length session.

The MacNotables podcast, I read on its web site , is “the podcasting home to some of the Macintosh industry’s best known and most visible personalities”.

Have a listen .

It was interesting to hear of plans to rewrite Eudora completely from the ground up. Too late, methinks, although not everyone will agree.

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• SidewinderX: Automated spam reporting
• iPhoto Mailer Patcher 4.1: Use iPhoto with more email clients
• iCal email notifications with other clients
• Gmail or Mail.app? Both winners
• Email client poll: The winners and losers

In Apple’s Discussions, Tom Weir discovers again why he had ditched Mail.app for Mailsmith.

He was lured back by Tiger, MailTags and MailTemplates, but after transferring his 20,000+ emails over, he launched Mail and found that it couldn’t find his mail. As a result, “I had to recreate and re-import and futz all day with it. Which is why I had given up on it and gone and bought a mail program,” he says.

End result: “Back to dull, dull, but very stable Mailsmith. Mail isn’t ready for professional use.”

Meanwhile, over at the Notes/Domino 6 and 7 forum, Mike Brown is roasting Mail as a pretty boy that can’t compare to the power of Notes when it comes to attachments.

Testing on Panther Mail, he finds that Mail handles the editing of attachments in draft emails in some really weird ways. Sometimes the edits are there, sometimes not. With Notes, changes are always saved into the attachment.

End result: “One up to Notes, methinks.”

Related posts

• Script to export email from Mailsmith
• Can Mail.app cope with heavy loads?
• Work-around for Outlook attachment problems
• Will Leopard Mail kill MailTags?
• Ubuntu switcher takes a step back to Mac

One of the really nice things about Mail.app is the way it works closely with other iApps like iCal, Address Book and iPhoto. But Mail doesn’t have the stranglehold on integration.

A while ago, I posted about iPhoto Mailer Patcher, a hack for iPhoto that allows you to set Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail or QuickMail Pro as the default email client to which iPhoto sends resized images for you to email.

ZappTek provides hacks to help other email clients send iCal notifications. There are patches for Entourage, Eudora, Mailsmith, PowerMail and GyazMail.

Because it lacks AppleScript support, Thunderbird misses out on both counts.

Think carefully though. The developer warns that you will need to reinstall iCal in order to undo the installer’s modifications, if you change your mind later.

Related posts

• iPhoto Mailer Patcher 4.1: Use iPhoto with more email clients
• On Emailing Photos with Mail.app
• iPhoto Mailer Patcher: email pics for (almost) everyone
• Emailing photos in Mail.app
• SidewinderX: Automated spam reporting

John Gruber is the author of Daring Fireball. His primary computer is a 15-inch PowerBook G4 named Joker.

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

JG: I’ve only been using Mail regularly since early September 2005, when we began eating our own dog food and switched our mail server at Joyent (the company I work for) to our own product, which supports IMAP but not POP.

I use Mail only to access my Joyent email account. I use Mailsmith to access all my other email, and have used it since version 1.0 in 1998. I’d still be using Mailsmith for my Joyent email if it weren’t for the fact that Mailsmith only supports POP.

(To be clear: I wholeheartedly endorse our decision at Joyent to only support IMAP clients.)

Also, you don’t want to get me started on calling Apple Mail “Mail.app”.

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

JG: None.

HW: What’s your favourite thing about Apple Mail?

JG: The way it allows you to paste images inline within plain text messages.

HW: What’s your pet hate about Apple Mail?

JG: When it comes to writing, its mail composition environment is clumsy and primitive.

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

JG: That the way Mail attempts to handle quoted passages in replies (in plain text messages) is cute if you want to be a top-poster who quotes the entire message you’re replying to, but frustrating and annoying if you want to do the right thing.

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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.

Related posts

• Talking Mail.app: Scott Morrison
• Talking Mail.app: Rui Carmo
• Talking Mail.app: Rob Griffiths
• Talking Mail.app: Pierre Igot
• Talking Mail.app: Peter Maurer