Apple Legal has been doing its best 
to take down screenshots that break its non-disclosure agreements, but I guess the sheer volume of posts almost guarantees that some will get through.
Spilled Cow has posted six screenshots of Leopard Mail (notes, making a to-do, a note with a to-do, a to-do list, adding an RSS feed and dispalying an RSS feed).
HardMac (Le Macbidouille) has more detailed shots of to-dos and to-do options.
You don’t have to wait until next year to get your hands on the new features in Mail 3.0. The third-party apps and plugins that may have inspired the new features are available now.
However odd and unsettling this year’s WWDC keynote was (Leander Kahney has some interesting thoughts ), it was good news for Mail.app fans.
Apple has spent some time and energy working on Mail. With the exception of templates, the other new features previewed by Steve Jobs will make it a better productivity tool.
With notes, to-dos and the ability to manage RSS feeds (See Apple’s new Leopard Mail web page for more), Mail 3.0 really will “help you to do more with your Mail” as Apple suggests.
Oddly, Apple’s press release rather oversold these advances. “Leopard’s Mail includes breakthrough new features that have never been seen before in a Mail application,” it pronounces.
Not true. And not smart either. Why the Apple PR machine didn’t adopt a more honest approach (”Leopard’s Mail takes some great ideas and makes them even better”), I don’t know. It’s as if Thunderbird, MailTags, Event Maker, Note to Self, or the stationery in Outlook Express and other mail clients never existed.
In any case, the good news is that you can take advantage of these new features now (if not always in quite the polished form Leopard promises).
To-dos (not system-wide) — MailTags
Templates (not HTML) — Mail Templates, Roll your own
Notes (not RTF) — Note to Self
RSS feeds (in your Inbox) — FeedMailer, rmail
I can’t make up my mind about the new HTML templates. My inner plain-texter revolts, but I can see how some people will find them tremendous fun.
This post will appeal to Mail users who keep an eye on the wider picture or who live partly in a Windows world.
As Microsoft revs itself up to deliver Windows Vista sometime next year, it is working on the next generation of email clients for the new OS, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail Desktop.
Bryan Starbuck , the development lead for Windows email clients, has posted a feature list of the two apps:
Windows Mail, which Hawk Wings has already covered , is the new name for Outlook Express. It is the default client in Windows Vista, Apple Mail’s most direct “competitor”.
You can read more about it on Microsoft’s Vista preview site or watch a 46 min video demo.
Windows Live Mail Desktop is a more ambiguous project. It aims to broaden the scope of “the email experience” by integrating RSS feeds and web searches into its interface.
The RSS feed feature sounds clever. It will allow you to forward or email your thoughts about a particular blog post to the author as you read it. Search-as-you-type promises to locate information quickly.
Active Search will be great, Bryan says :
Active Search bridges the gap between your inbox and the broader web using the power of search. Using Active Search is essentially the same as conducting a ton of related searches the old fashioned way – by cutting and pasting terms from your email into a separate web browser – only without all the effort.
Screenshots of the next Outlook beta speak for themselves .
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