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?

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

For the record, before the hit count was reset by the move to the new domain, Hawk Wings’ most popular posts ever were:

1. Top ten things every Mail.app user should have (6904)
2. MacFreePOPs: Getting emails from hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, SquirrelMail, AOL, etc (5464)
3. Talking Mail.app: John Gruber (4311)
4. 202 different Apple Mail icons (3434)
5. MailTunes: A great idea, but…. (3431)
6. Talking Mail.app: drunkenbatman (3088)
7. Mail Appetizer - Notification for those who can’t wait (3078)
8. Getting Things Done in Apple Mail (2916)
9. Mail Act-on - Getting sorted, saving time (2787)
10. Switching from Thunderbird to Apple Mail (2786)
11. Mail Forward: AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! to Apple Mail (2700)
12. MailTags 1.1 released (2662)
13. Importing email from Outlook and Outlook Express (2574)
14. Talking Mail.app: Merlin Mann (2508)
15. Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part II (2496)

Related posts

• Lozenge-button-o-phobia
• Hawk Wings Greatest Hits 2006
• Give Mail.app a complete productivity workout
• Email Nirvana with MailTags and Mail Act-on
• Weekly Roundup

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?

(more…)

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

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?

(more…)

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

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?

(more…)

Related posts

• Talking Mail.app: Ethan Schoonover
• Talking Mail.app: Scott Morrison
• Talking Mail.app: Rui Carmo
• Talking Mail.app: Rob Griffiths
• Talking Mail.app: Pierre Igot

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?

(more…)

Related posts

• Talking Mail.app: Merlin Mann
• Talking Mail.app: Scott Morrison
• Talking Mail.app: Rui Carmo
• Talking Mail.app: Rob Griffiths
• Talking Mail.app: Pierre Igot