Filed under: Software, Beta Beat
TUAW First Look: Postbox Public Beta
Postbox, the email client built for heavy email users, entered Public Beta on Sunday. Postbox is designed to allow you to search, organize, and manage your email more more efficiently.
Postbox includes a powerful search tool that lets you use Gmail-style search terms (like "from:Steve" or "before August 2008") to easily find messages. The Gmail-like features don't end there: Postbox automatically organizes threaded emails by subject. Messages can be tagged with one or more topics for easy recall later.
Perhaps Postbox's greatest feature is its ability to recognize what's in your email, and keep it front-and-center. For instance, if you're composing a new message, you can use the Compose sidebar to find attachments in other messages to drag into your new message. The inspector panel on the preview window highlights links, addresses and attachments in the message so you can get to them easily.
For me, I use my inbox like a to-do list. Thankfully, Postbox has a built-in Archive utility that lets you specify an archive folder for each account (which I already had set up). Once you're done with a message, clicking Archive or pressing A moves that message (or many messages) right into your archive.
Add to this to-dos, integrated search, social network integration, message annotation, tabbed browsing, and a high-security Mozilla foundation, and you've got an amazing Swiss Army-knife tool for hard-core emailers.
To make these features work well, though, Postbox must index your mail. If you have a lot of mail, indexing the mail for the first time does take a little time. I have over 72,000 messages (thanks mostly to TUAW's delightful content management system) and it's about half done after about two hours on my ca. 2006 MacBook. While Postbox indexes, you can't do anything else, but you can stop and restart the indexing process where you left off. After that, though, I hope search functionality returns instant results.
One thing people may not like is the lack of a unified inbox. Each account is separate in Postbox, and shows up in the Accounts pane. Luckily, you can fake a unified inbox by creating a saved search that pulls in messages from any mailbox you like.
I participated in the private beta program, and the software has grown immensely over the last several months. While it's still a little rough around the edges, email users with mostly IMAP accounts (that is, most of their email is organized and stored on the server) can easily give this beta a try without too much commitment.
The Postbox team has not mentioned pricing for the software once it reaches 1.0. The public beta includes integrated Google search, which most likely generates some revenue for the software (much like Firefox and Safari). The beta is free to download and install.
The beta (for both Windows and Mac) is available from Postbox's website, and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. For now, Postbox is available only in English, but the team is interested in help with localization.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
John00john said 5:55PM on 2-10-2009
I'm going to give this a chance. I've always wished Apple Mail was a little more full featured, but always have disliked Entourage. But no unified inbox? Why not include this basic feature?
http://www.woopid.com/
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Yazdgerd said 6:12AM on 2-11-2009
Not a match for Mail.app, just a bunch of M$ style panels and absolutely far from Mac OS X GUI guidelines. Similar to QUALCOMM Eudora, made for those who want to prove that it's possible to suffer and not use Mail.app with any possible price.
Nice try.
Mike said 6:27PM on 2-10-2009
Does it include functionality to import from an existing Mail application? If I switch over, I want to be able to still see the existing email that I have.
Mike
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Jash Sayani said 3:58AM on 2-11-2009
This is exactly what I was concerned about. I have been using Entourage from over 5 years now and if I switch, it should have a migration tool to import my current database.
I have sent a mail to the developers asking them to add the feature in the next version.
Michael said 6:42PM on 2-10-2009
I just wish this was a true cocoa app... and not some java hybrid c-thingy :(
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Joe said 9:07PM on 2-10-2009
Oh man, I totally hate those fake Cocoa controls they really bug me. The same is true of Firefox, they're nasty.
ianlive said 9:38PM on 2-10-2009
I just downloaded this app after reading the TUAW review and really like that there is another option out there for Mail on OS X. I think tabbed mail is brilliant and more powerful searching than Mail.app seems encouraging, however....
It really frustrates me to see a Mac app that looks like a Windows port. Things like not having a unified preferences/settings section frustrates me, just like Thunderbird. I know cross platform developers pride themselves on a unified look on multiple OS, but it just doesn't work in my opinion. It feels like a wolf in sheep's clothing. All the power to them to do their own thing, but I won't likely stick with this as I really like how Apple unifies settings and features.
G Suscryst II said 6:28AM on 2-11-2009
It's all very well for small-brained losers to badmouth us diehard Eudora users. But the day Mail.app copes with the sheer volume of my email (c.1000 per day, going back to the early 1990s) is the day I'll be preached to by some idiot newbie.
Roll on the day someone develops a stable, fully-featured, Mac-styled app that works. I'd love to move to something better. From the comments here is seems this one's not ready yet. But I'll be keeping an eye on it.
tuaw,com said 8:55AM on 2-11-2009
@G Suscryst II: I get about 1500 e-mails/day on a typical day, and Mail.app handles it just fine.
The Mail Act-On plugin helps a lot, admittedly.
giogio.bacardi said 7:53PM on 2-11-2009
G Suscryst II,
To suggest that those of us opposed to Eudora are "idiot newbies" is amusing, since the only people I know who actively use Eudora are clueless old farts who are unwilling to adapt at all.
But, by all means, stick to your ancient mail program. Just don't bother asking the rest of us to help you out when your .toc file gets corrupted once again. Don't ask for my help when messages arbitrarily disappear because the index needs to be rebuilt for the fifth time this year. Don't ask for my help when Eudora suddenly decides that the Eudora.ini file can't be found. When your mail provider's SSL certificate is renewed, don't ask for my help tricking Eudora into accepting the new cert.
Seriously. Keep using your decrepit mail program quietly, while us "idiot newbies" use real mail programs and silently wish that you would finally just retire to Boca Raton.
Robert Palmer said 6:48PM on 2-10-2009
Yes, it will import from Mac OS X Mail. I wouldn't be able to use it otherwise. :)
(And sorry about the comment post earlier -- I had the wrong thing on my clipboard.)
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WarnerO said 2:49PM on 2-11-2009
How did you do the import? When I try it just comes up with a blank screen that says "import from:" and nothing. Looking here (http://getsatisfaction.com/postbox/topics/postbox_import_capabilities) they don't have it yet.
Robert Palmer said 3:21PM on 2-11-2009
Ah, yes. I remember that now -- you have to select "Mail" instead of "Import Everything." HTH!
Miles said 7:14PM on 2-10-2009
I've been using this since the earliest private beta and it is amazing when you have it fully set up and running.
I would never go back.
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kenners said 8:02PM on 2-10-2009
How does this differ spectacularly from the Thunderbird nightlies (Shredder)?
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Brian E said 7:47PM on 2-10-2009
What is their business model? I don't trust startups bearing gifts. Even the most well-intentioned business eventually discovers that the only option between "Give neat toys away for free" and "Profit!" is "misuse the personal information of our users".
If they're going to be selling this client, I'd be happy to try it out, as I'd be happy to pay for a good cross-platform mail client. If it's open source, I will take a look, because it will at least survive the eventual failure of the company. If it's just free, I'll pass.
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James said 7:56PM on 2-10-2009
I've been testing it for about a week now. It looks pretty, but to be quite honest - it's just too much "work" to use.
I'll stick with Mail and try MailTags and Mail ActOn.
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Yazdgerd said 6:25AM on 2-11-2009
I hate any "Postbox" that wants to be the only postbox of my system:
"Always check to see if Postbox is the default mail client on startup".
Microsoft style tricks to cheat users. No thanks, go directly to trash!
lazyj said 8:14PM on 2-10-2009
I was really liking Postbox (it's essentially Thunderbird with a better GUI) ... BUT ...... the database format is stored the same way as Thunderbird is (each folder INBOX, SENT, TRASH, ETC) is stored as a single monolithic data store. Which basically means if you're using Time Machine (or anything that does versioning) it'll have to back up the entire database again every time it changes.
NO THANKS.
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EsquireMac said 8:38PM on 2-10-2009
It will be free. The founders said so at TC50. Check the video at this link. at 14:50 he says it's free: http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=75
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