Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Features, Internet Tools, .Mac
Review: new .Mac webmail delivers, mostly
Apple teased us with an announcement of a .Mac webmail upgrade at the end of September, and yesterday they delivered. The new webmail feels zippy (though it was understandably a little sluggish a couple times while I was testing it last night), and the innovative, refreshing new features raise the bar for competing services. Still, with all the slick new polish, a few long-standing gripes have yet to be addressed, and some of the web client's new abilities bring along irregularities and new complaints. But don't think I'm a hater - I just renewed my membership last week, and this is a most welcomed update to one of the most important components of Apple's hotly debated .Mac suite of web services. With this yin and yang balance in mind, let's dive into the review.
.Mac webmail goes web 2.0
Of course, the most significant and obvious upgrade is the completely revamped UI, which now resembles and behaves (in some ways) like Apple's desktop Mail.app client. As you can see from the screenshot, a new 3 pane view offers a folder list on the left, a customizable (10-50) message list on top, and a message preview pane on the bottom, just like mom used to make. As an added UI bonus, the separation bar between the message list and preview panes is draggable. Nice.
But the webmail update isn't just skin deep - plenty of keyboard shortcuts accompany the new polish for a great combination of beauty and brains (though I'm laying down a penalty of 10 points by not enabling the shortcuts by default, regardless of who .Mac's demographic is). A complete list of shortcuts is linked from the preferences, and there are keys for nearly every action including: sending messages, deleting, navigating up/down messages, back/forth between batches of messages (take that Gmail), searching and printing.
Besides keyboard shortcuts, some clever features and UI tricks are peppered throughout. On the left is a shot of an Address Book search, which lives below the folder list. Results are displayed below the search box, and clicking on a name offers a popup with their information, and things like email addresses and public iDisks are linked for easy access. On the right is the Quick Reply window, accessible by clicking a button which appears next to selected messages (a quirky 'only when you clicked on it' UI element that first reared its head in iTunes 7). Opera's built-in email client has done this for a while, and Apple's implementation is nice and simple.
Address Book came along for the ride, too
Address Book on the web also received an update, as it features a new UI and functionality. Keyboard shortcuts are present here as well, including keys for emailing, editing and deleting contacts. A list view is now accompanied by a grid view (pictured, though blurred to protect my peeps), and the same linking behavior is also present, such as clicking an email address to create a new composition window addressed to the contact.
Am I using Mail.app, or Webmail.app?
An interesting choice from the webmail team in their goal of bringing desktop client UI to the web is the behavior of creating a new message (shortcut: n, as you might imagine). These new messages are created in new windows (in fact I had to give Firefox's popup blocker permission to open my first one), and I actually can't find any way of writing a message in-line, like most traditional webmail UIs (see: Hotmail, Yahoo!, previous .Mac). I'll bet this might be jarring to both traditional users and everything-in-a-tab nuts alike, though it certainly does have that space-age 'hmm, am I using Mail.app, or my browser?' feel to it.
Other desktop functionality has transgressed the web realm, like dragging and dropping messages. Holding shift allows you to select more than one message, and you can then drag them all into a folder. However, being that I'm talking about a browser and not a true-blue email app, this is where the new .Mac webmail experience gets a little lost in translation.
One of these things is not like the other
So far, Apple's done a good job of infusing .Mac's webmail with some serious functionality, but their goal of re-creating the desktop look and feel with some clever web technologies falls short in a few key areas.
The first, which the big G has already pointed out, is the unfortunate boundaries these web technologies are confined in. For example: you can hold shift and select more than one message, but you can't use the arrow keys to make these same selections. Now it's very possible this is a minor point at best (it could be argued this is a practice for the über-email nerds in the crowd), but it's still a good example of all the little behaviors that simply don't translate well from Mac OS X apps to web technologies.
Another more glaring flaw in the new webmail is the lack of rules. Mail.app has a powerful rule system providing users a lot of flexibility for automatically sorting messages. While .Mac syncs these rules between desktop clients, .Mac webmail doesn't utilize them, so all my messages are waiting in my inbox on the web (including junk messages, still), whereas Mail.app would have filed them away like the good little email secretary it is. Now I can understand the limitations of web technologies when it comes to fulfilling some of these features, but I think these issues highlight some significant discrepancies in .Mac's implementation of the 'desktop client on the web' concept. Maybe some of this can happen when web 3.0 (beta) rolls around.
All things considered: nice work, .Mac
Let's face it: no one can please everyone, but this new webmail is pretty hot, considering everything .Mac is up against, like a segmented demographic and high expectations from the nerdier half of it. All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the new webmail digs, and I'm glad to see Apple putting a strong foot out onto a crowded dance floor with the likes of Gmail and the new Yahoo! Mail Beta which, might I add, has been in 'beta' since, well, the term was invented. The new .Mac webmail is a well-rounded offering, even with a few holes to patch, and I think it'll make most customers at least a little happier they spent that $99 on a membership.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Marco F. said 9:29AM on 10-27-2006
I tend to agree with the whole view here. I really missed the rules in the old .macmail, and hoped this was added in the new version. alas, it didn't.
I also have some small issues with view refreshes.. sometimes webmail refuses to show the mailbox I clicked (using FF2 on windoze at office). I need to hop to another box, and back again, then it works.. weird. (maybe cache related though).
also, I've found that the option "save sent mail in Sent Messages folder" is redundant. I've disabled this option, but all outgoing mails are still stored in Sent. (I was desperately looking for a "save to sent" option when I composed an email I wanted to keep... this option is gone per mail, and is now "always on", it seems. (maybe the option is a negative one with typos in it.. so ENabling "save sent" actually DISables it?...
anyway, I noticed hotmail has been upgraded to "MSN live email" as well.. still, I prefer good ole dotmac (and not just for webmail, really).
thanks, Apple.. now please work on bandwith and performance improvements for the other services (like idisk? please?)
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Ralph said 9:43AM on 10-27-2006
Server-level spam filtering. Gimmee. Please.
(If it's in place, way way too much is making it through.)
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Bobu said 9:48AM on 10-27-2006
Another new feature that is quite helpful is the addition of "from" names for each email alias.
I agree, a great upgrade overall.
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Randy M. said 9:53AM on 10-27-2006
I think Apple did a beautiful job on the new webmail and address book in dotmac. BTW, the Quick Reply window *does* work without clicking on the email message first. You simply have to mouse over that column next to an email of choice, then the Quick Reply and delete buttons appear. I have always hated interface elements like this, that require scrubbing the window with your mouse in order to locate and use. Still a nice feature though.
One problem I do have however, is for some reason none of the pictures in my address book are synced to my dotmac address book. Anyone else experience this? Also, does anyone know if they have turned on the IDLE feature on their IMAP servers (needed for push mail to Treo)?
Now, if Apple could just make the calandar on a user's dotmac home page actually DO SOMETHING, I would be happy (maybe it could link to functional calanders that are synced from ical?? ...or is that too obvious?)
At least we're moving in the right direction.
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Ben said 10:02AM on 10-27-2006
So, if you switch to two-pane view, message list, composition, etc. all happen in the same window, rather than opening in new ones. Pretty slick, although I'm not opposed to having a new window open for composition and standard reply when opening a message in a new window to read it. That's the behavior I'm used to in Mail.app.
Also, you can mouse over the quick reply and delete buttons next to a message that is not selected and they will appear and be available. That is, mouse over one and both will appear. The one under the cursor will turn blue to show clickability.
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V. Mardian said 10:21AM on 10-27-2006
So it "feels zippy" but it was "sluggish". Those two things seem mutually exclusive to me.
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edmund said 10:23AM on 10-27-2006
.Mac does not compete with GMail. One is free, the other is not. As soon as Apple returns to the iTools days of free webmail, they will be a competitor of Google's. For now, .Mac Webmail is pointless for current Gmail (or even Yahoo Beta) users.
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Andy said 11:42AM on 10-27-2006
Randy: Last I knew, .Mac doesn't support IDLE on their IMAP servers.
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David Chartier said 10:30AM on 10-27-2006
#6: Just like when any new services that have at least a decent bit of buzz behind them debut, *everyone* starts pounding on said service right away. So when I was reviewing last night, the new webmail, at times, felt a little sluggish. I attribute this to everyone and their mother who has any interest in .Mac nailing the servers at the same time.
But when it seemed like that effect wasn't happening, the new service did indeed feel zippy. New windows open pretty quickly, moving between messages and batches of messages was quick, and so was search for contacts and creating new emails for them.
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Pierre said 10:48AM on 10-27-2006
The fact that the revamped .Mac webmail doesn't support rules or the impossibility to select multiple messages by holding shift *doesn't* mean that this is due to the limitations of Web 2.0. It most certainly have to do with the implementation of the webmail itself and I believe that rules will be added in a future update.
Web 2.0 by itself doesn't mean a lot, it's mostly a buzzword/marketing term and is related to new generation online services (like wikis, media sharing portals and such) but is also often associated to specific technologies like Ajax or, worse, with the 'semantic web' which as nothing to do with Web 2.0...
I'm no expert, but I can only advise that you use the 'Web 2.0' (or Web 3.0) term with a lot of caution and take a look at the wikipedia definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2
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Brendan said 10:59AM on 10-27-2006
€99 is too much!! I repeat €99 is too much!!!
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bradders said 11:33AM on 10-27-2006
For those of us behind corporate firewalls/proxies that are a little too agressive the old version of webmail is still up here:
http://www.mac.com/WebObjects/Webmail1.woa/wa/EntryAction
I cant use the new webmail at all from work. :(
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Todd said 12:03PM on 10-27-2006
I think this is a pretty good update, though granted I'm not a heavy webmail user. If this is the shape of things to come with dotmac, then I'll be happy. The moment they can fix idisk to make it faster and stop hanging files during transfer, I'll be much much happier. Now, about those dotmac-only dashboard widgets we were promised...
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Diogo H. said 12:05PM on 10-27-2006
Here are some points I just sent as feedback... I ask you to do the same... hopefully they'll be quicker.
1. Please provide an option (as gmail does) to always show html images for a given email address.. right now, you just have 2 options: always showing html images or never showing them.
2. Please implement search folders like we have in Mail.app... It's not that difficult I guess because you just have to assign search criteria to a folder
3. It's great to be able to flag messages but right know we don't have any way to actually see flagged messages together... I guess this suggestion is the same as point 2
4. Please make the interface more snappy... right now I'm at work, using IE7 and webmail is quite slow when compared for instance with gmail... specially when using arrow keys to move from message to message
5. This is what I would like the most to see implemented: please give us threaded messages! we already have it in Mail.app, but I think the perfect way to implement it on webmail would be the way gmail does it
6. This is a minor bug I think it will be easy to correct... when composing a new message, if you write someone's name and then press enter when the menu appears you don't get a comma right away, i.e. you have to manually put in commas before being able to insert other mail addresses from your address book
7. What happened to the junk folder that appeared on the preview? .Mac's junk server does a good job, but I still get junk messages in my Inbox... there should be a way of identifying them as junk and not simply deleting them
8. Is webmail checking for new messages automatically? I think I read somewhere that it does but it doesn't seem like it... I only get new messages whem pressing on "Get Mail"
9. There should be some way of customizing the size of fonts on the message pane... it seems a little small to me
10. How come we can't search inside messages??? I couldn't believe this when I found it out... it's so 20th century...
11. Another bug... in IE you can't flag messages using the icon next to the message itself, you have to go to the "Actions" menu
12. How come there are no rules? Mail.app already syncs that so you could use it in webmail I guess... or at least give us an option to define some separate ones (like moving certain messages into folders...)
13. Please put a "Next x Messages" option at the top
14. The shift key for multiple selections is working with the mouse, but not with the keyboard
15. Please let us create groups just like in address book... or better still, sync them from address book...
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J.J. said 12:20PM on 10-27-2006
What I don't like about Address Book is that it shows me only 1 primary phone number whether in List View or Grid View. Most all my friends have both a land line and a cell phone. Address Book only shows me one of their #'s, without the ability to add the other in the Preferences section.
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D said 12:50PM on 10-27-2006
I agree with above. Where is the spam filtering!!!
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J.V. said 1:32PM on 10-27-2006
I like the new look and and feel...
But is it just me or why can´t I get the grid view for the address book on Safari? It won´t show me the bar where to choose this! When I open up the new Firefox everthing is fine. But without the article and the pictures above I wouldn´t even know about this feature! Already tried resetting Safari and deleting caches!
Anyone else experiencing this?
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Mike said 1:34PM on 10-27-2006
For what I'm paying PLEASE give me some SPAM filtering. I get so much spam on my .mac account, that it's practically unusable.
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Victor Agreda Jr said 2:08PM on 10-27-2006
Not having some elementary spam filtering (from what I can tell) is hugely disappointing. Apple is looking like Microsoft before they took "the web" seriously. Yahoo and Gmail do so well in this area, yet Apple flaunts their security record... anyone see a PR nightmare coming around the corner?
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J.G. said 4:36PM on 10-27-2006
.Mac does use server-side spam filtering. I get more spam in my gmail account than my .Mac account. If you're getting a lot of spam in your .Mac account, just imagine how much they are already filtering out for you.
#7 Since when do you represent all gmail users? How is .Mac pointless for gmail users? I hate the fact that gmail is POP only. I work on mulitple macs and pcs and love having to only read/organize my .Mac email once and have it synced to all my mail clients. However with gmail, I have to mark a mail as read in Trillian, then mark it as read in Mail.app, then mark it as read in gmail.
As far as smart folders, I would imagine they're working on it. True, I would prefer to have them now though.
I have to disagree with people that say $99 is too much. I think it's totally worth it for IMAP, iDisk, a webpage, and all the various sync abilities (keychain, addressbook, mail settings, bookmarks.. ) Heck just being able to pop up my personal address book from my work PC is worth the $8 per month.
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