Other clients display an ellipsis or just chop the date off, but Mail is in a class of its own:

…only Apple’s Mail actually changes the format. When I first discovered this, I sat there delighted, making the column wide and then narrow, beaming as the date format switched smoothly and seamlessly between numbers and text to perfectly fit the space allocated.

Part of the magic of this discovery was the serendipity. If it had been a “feature” — a behavior purposely brought to my attention by Apple — I would have shrugged and said, “so what?” But because I discovered it by accident, it struck me as artisan touch; a craftsman’s attention to detail.

For him it is a reminder of the repeated way in which “Apple delights with its focus on the user experience”.

Surely it is just coincidence, but it is nice to read Leander’s epiphany after a month in which Mail.app gave Mark Pilgrim an excuse to switch away from OS X altogether.mail.app, apple mail, user interface, usability, happy users, apple, mac osx Similar Posts:

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He points out a number of problems in design and operation with its text fields, contextual menus and information drawer.

I’ve been using iCal for two years now (since switching) and already I’ve become harden to these problems — I unconsciously work around them, I think it’s normal, I don’t see them at all anymore, if I ever did. But Pierre does.ical, user interface, bugs, alarms, betalogue, text fields, problems Similar Posts:

• Dotting the “i” in iCal
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