Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Internet Tools
You're in Charge: What would you change about Apple Mail?
I'm sure from time to time we all get our gripes about a piece of software we use every day. Lately I've been having mine about Mail, and I started thinking of a few ways I'd really like to see some improvements. I know there are plugins and add-ons and widgets and gidgets, but in my opinion, enhancements usually seem to work better when they're done by the guys who originally made the app.So in the name of good ol' fashioned coffee talk, I'm bringing the question to you: let's say you're in charge of Apple Mail's development. What would you change, fix or enhance? Is there a bug in need of squashing, or does a plugin need assimilating? Perhaps there's a missing feature you dream of at night? Feel free to share. You never know, someone more important than even TUAW might be listening. I ran a piece like this over on The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog back in September and Adobe's Product Manger of Photoshop stopped by to respond to readers' comments. That was awesome, but I'm not making any guarantees. Just grab a good cup of coffee and let's hear it.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Thorn said 12:37PM on 10-25-2005
I request a fix.
In Mail, I have my Inbox + folders sorted by date so that the *newest* emails are on top. Unconventional, I know, but ...
My gripe is that when I delete an email, Mail moves UP (instead of down) to select the next email. This is unlike any other mail program I've used, and even after a few months of using it, I still accidently end up having to rescue emails from the trash can becuase when I press DELETE 3x, I expect the email I've currently highlighted, plus the two BELOW it, to get deleted -- not the two ABOVE it.
Le Sigh
Reply
mediaburn said 12:39PM on 10-25-2005
I want to see it ported to the pc. Outlook sucks :-)
Reply
Philipp said 12:44PM on 10-25-2005
It would be great to have full control over html/plain-text formatting and displaying of emails.
Reply
systemsboy said 12:44PM on 10-25-2005
My major beef with Mail in Tiger is that inserting tabs into a message doesn't work properly. After entering a tab, it becomes a series of spaces. Try it: open a new message, type test, hit tab, type test again. Now arrow back through the characters. Instead of jumping back the full tab length when you reach the spot where you typed the tab, it goes back one space at a time. Tabs are used for making evenly spaced tables, which I do all the time, but it's broken in Tiger's Mail. It worked in Panther, and I want it fixed.
Reply
burton hollifield said 12:47PM on 10-25-2005
I would make it deal better with systems with bulletin boards. We use 'cyrus' where I work. I cannot use mail at work; I have to use Thunderbird, because mail seems to want to subscribe to every possible board on our system. Fix that, Apple.
Nothing worse that starting up mail (so I can use spotlight to search emails) and then waiting 1/2 hour for it to refresh to all the thousands of boards on our system.
Reply
Philipp said 12:47PM on 10-25-2005
And, what I forgot, is what happens to me every time I try to empty my trash: Mail only deletes emails I deleted locally but none of them I deleted in my IMAP-mailbox, i.e. I have to use "apple + a & backspace" two times. It's nothing serious but should be concerned as a bug. :-)
Reply
AK said 12:50PM on 10-25-2005
Support for Mail.app in an office environment is needed to even think about using Mac's for business.
Specifically, native support for MS Exchange is needed - for both Mail and iCal is badly needed. Snerdware's Groupcal (http://www.snerdware.com/) does not yet work with Tiger.
Ximian and the Ximian Connector are now open source, but only run using Fink - but most users won't bother with that (plus the current version is unstable).
See more on my related /. thread here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156738&cid=13139017
Reply
Scott said 12:56PM on 10-25-2005
Anyone else have this problem?
If I am reading a mail, say a long one like from the cocoa development mailing list, and I scroll to the bottom of that e-mail, clicking to the next e-mail in the sequence will put my cursor at the bottom of that e-mail too rather than putting it at the beginning of the message.
Drives me nuts.
I filed a bug report way back when but we'll see if it ever gets any attention.
Reply
Kim Brockie said 12:56PM on 10-25-2005
Well here is defentily 2 BIG features that should have added
having a iCal window directly in mail, and that you could set your mail and calender up with a exchange server.
a function to Disable attachment preview :|
Reply
Rob Nolen said 12:57PM on 10-25-2005
I love keyboard shortcuts. What genius decided to make the Send Message shortcut Shift-Open Apple-D, instead of Open Apple-S? Outlook is Alt-S. And the first comment is dead on, that is really annoying as well. Also, why don't the Home and End keys go to the beginning and end of the line like they are supposed to when editing a message? That bugs the crap out of me.
Reply
chase said 12:58PM on 10-25-2005
The ability to manage reciept behaviors would be great...
Reply
Ian G. Canino said 1:03PM on 10-25-2005
How about better integration with iCal? Link mail messages to events and being able to set up appointments from within mail?
Reply
Sven said 1:04PM on 10-25-2005
Using Mail daily, and occasionally ical. Would like to use ical more though. Tried Entourage for a while. Integration is top. Please integrate ical and Mail. Makes more sense than have to get out of one program and into another just to look at the schedule, when making a mail about an appointment.
Reply
Simon said 1:04PM on 10-25-2005
I'd love to be able to flag a message to remind me to deal with it later. I often want to deal with a mail later in the day, but after a few hours, it's buried and easily forgotten. I know there are Applescripts that do similar things and integrate with iCal, but that kind of integration isn't really necessary all the time. I just want it to nag me.
Reply
Will Clark said 1:05PM on 10-25-2005
I would love to see some more formatting capabilities when drafiting an email such as bullet lists or ordered lists.
Reply
Peter Garner said 1:08PM on 10-25-2005
Fix the bug whereby if you have Mail.app as a login item and set to hide, it doesn't hide.
Reply
gillsans said 1:08PM on 10-25-2005
Amen on Exchange server support, especially with iCal. But only because I don't recieve meeting invitations from Outlook and I refuse to use Entourage. Luckily Entourage isn't much better with Exchange support so I can justify it ;)
Reply
The Plaid Cow said 1:09PM on 10-25-2005
* Good AppleScript support.
* Ability to turn off the bar that show a reply and just have the > characters.
* Email aliases which are not in Address Book (like for mailing lists)
Reply
Geir-Tore Lindsve said 1:11PM on 10-25-2005
What I really would like to see fixed is the place where the cursor are set when I want to reply to a mail. I hate top-posting, so I would like to have the cursor initially set below the quoted text (like I can set the signature to be under the quoted text).
Reply
Shua said 1:13PM on 10-25-2005
When using SpamAssassan you have a spam folder that spam gets moved to - since this folder is within your Inbox (using IMAP) the New Mail count includes all the spam that you have received - this is handled differently in Panther, etc. I would like to only see the new mail that is in the Inbox, NOT including what is in the spam folder.
Reply