But this is a topic that needs to be adressed more fully. The frustrations with Apple's mail.app are bubbling all over.
I've had it with mail.app
Migrating to gmail having used mail
and then salient commentary from Mac Blogdom.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by John Gruber
This is the real shame of certain app categories on the Mac where, for whatever reason, competition no longer exists. There are so many different ways one could design an email app (to take but one example), but the only two serious IMAP clients in active development are Apple Mail and Entourage. ↩
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I don't think that people are requesting the world from an email program just basic stability and features that allow us to many the daily deluge of incoming communicatons.
It appears that many email mavens want a certain group of features.
In no particular order:
1.
Widescreen- 3-pane support (like the Widemail mail.app plugin) for getting the overall view of your inbox, folders and messages.
2.
Excellent iMap support. - IMAP is king.
3.
Integrated Webkit- Sometimes you want to surf and build your links and a web browser is key for that. Sometimes you want to just bounce to a page and then get back to managing your inbox.
4.
Calendar - Calendar Store and CalDav support enable iCal and Google Calendar synchronization.
5.
Folder Actions- In addition to smart folders I want to be able to process data that hits folders to append metadata and other automated tasks.
6.
Simplicity- I don't want the email client doing To Dos as Omnifocus is better for that. I don't want it handling RSS because NetNewswire handles that. An understanding of what people want in an email client is essential.
7.
MobileMe- for push technology.
8.
Account Management- Receiving and sending from all live accounts should be easy
9.
Auxilliary features- Integrated Chat (Adium), Blogging support, Social Network access etc via stable plug-ins.
10.
Media Playback- Click on a video or audio file the file plays. Quick Look doesn't work well inside email save for photos.
I don't know if Apple prevents the access of necessary resources for making an email client but there doesn't appear to be any attempts by them to improve mail.app other than adding exchange support. Omni has the experience with Webkit, the UI chops and supporting applications in Omniplan, OO and name recognition to leverage their talent in this area.
Email is one of those areas there the incumbent bundled program doesn't necessarily kill the chance for success.