Series: App improvement discussion - App: Mail

[Diatribe]

Last threads in this series:

iTunes
iPhoto

This time it's all about Mail.app

Here are my requests:

- scheduled sending of emails

- let mail recognize nicknames from adressbook for autmatic email adress completion

- prevent mail from changing my adressbook entries

- show me an overview of unanswered emails that I received or wrote that I can edit(throw out mails out of) easily so I can see what replies I am awaiting or need to write or who wrote who last (this sounds a bit confusing, tell me if that's hard to understand)

And as always: Send Apple feedback please.

 

[chameeeleon]

1. Hotmail/Gmail, etc. support.
2. Colour the backgrounds of the e-mails listed blue and white, like in iTunes list mode - much easier to visually separate things in a list.
3. Build Address Book right into Mail.
4. Add an option to send an iCard right from Mail.
5. An easy way to record and e-mail videos from an iSight camera in Mail (without iMovie's help).
6. Add some sort of keyword system into Mail, ala the Labels in Gmail. If Gmail support was added, sync the two of them.
7. I like the new interface MUCH better. Keep it!

 

[thecow]

I recently switched email addresses and I still get some emails on my old one. My mom uses mail on my family's main computer and I have a rule that forwards any messages on my old account to my gmail account. For some reason mail sends the text of the original message as a MIME attachment. Also it would be nice if it could make it appear as if it was from the person who sent it to my old account, not from my old address.

 

[~Shard~]

- scheduled sending of emails

Yep, agree with you on that one.

- let mail recognize nicknames from adressbook for autmatic email adress completion

In what way? When i start typing in a recipient for my message, it accesses my AddressBook and starts auto-filling a name or provides me with a list of possible names I might mean. Do you want something further to this?

- prevent mail from changing my adressbook entries

I didn't even know Mail could do this...

And as always: Send Apple feedback please.

Always a nice feature...

Perhaps another request would be the inclusion of some "bulk mailer" type of functionality, for people with groups/distributions lists who need a little more than what Mail can offer, i.e.e personalizing of names in the e-mails, etc.? I suppose this could aid spammers who would misuse it, but there are probably some people out there who would find benefit in it....

Otherwise, iCards directly from Mail would be handy as well.

 

[~Shard~]

2. Colour the backgrounds of the e-mails listed blue and white, like in iTunes list mode - much easier to visually separate things in a list.

This would be nice in a way, but is it really necessary? Plus, some people filter their mail in various ways by color-coding it - this might add some confusion - especially when the color blue is already specifically used to represent threads...

3. Build Address Book right into Mail.

I find the 2 integrated enough as it is....

7. I like the new interface MUCH better. Keep it!

Agreed!

 

[frank5050]

Add the ability to selectively remove attachments, not all or none like you currently can. This is a feature I miss from MS-Outlook.

 

[~Shard~]

Add the ability to selectively remove attachments, not all or none like you currently can. This is a feature I miss from MS-Outlook.

I don't know if I've ever needed this feature, but it probably would be handy for some people - might as well add it to the list!

 

[Diatribe]

In what way? When i start typing in a recipient for my message, it accesses my AddressBook and starts auto-filling a name or provides me with a list of possible names I might mean. Do you want something further to this?

Yes. As of right now it only looks for the main name not for the nicknames. But some people I only use the nicknames for but want to keep their real names in the adress book. Hence my need for mails lookup of nicknames.

I didn't even know Mail could do this...

Me neither. But it has happened to me now a couple of times when I send an email to my dad, who I put in as "dad" for his first name, after sending the email it puts his last name in the last name field... very weird. (admittingly his last name is in his email adress but still...)

Always a nice feature...

Just not used widely

Perhaps another request would be the inclusion of some "bulk mailer" type of functionality, for people with groups/distributions lists who need a little more than what Mail can offer, i.e.e personalizing of names in the e-mails, etc.? I suppose this could aid spammers who would misuse it, but there are probably some people out there who would find benefit in it....

Otherwise, iCards directly from Mail would be handy as well.

Yep, agree on those two. Those would be nice.

 

[Diatribe]

I recently switched email addresses and I still get some emails on my old one. My mom uses mail on my family's main computer and I have a rule that forwards any messages on my old account to my gmail account. For some reason mail sends the text of the original message as a MIME attachment. Also it would be nice if it could make it appear as if it was from the person who sent it to my old account, not from my old address.

You should set a rule not to forward but rather to redirect the email. This should take care of your problem.

 

[caveman_uk]

Otherwise, iCards directly from Mail would be handy as well.

That'd be good and also the ability to colour mails from your different .mac aliases like the webmail browser does (I know I could set up rules to do this but it'd be nice if mail sync'd these rules like the Safari bookmarks are)

 

[Zaty]

I miss two things in Mail:

Scheduled sending
Vertical preview pane (as in Outlook 2003/Entourage 2004)

 

[wrldwzrd89]

None of the features suggested would be of any use to me. I don't know what "new interface" you're referring to. My Mail.app version is 1.3.9 (v619) on Mac OS X 10.3.6. I don't have any suggestions either - I like Mail.app as it is right now, and I don't see anything obvious that needs changing. I didn't post in the iPhoto thread because I don't use iPhoto.

 

[chameeeleon]

I don't know what "new interface" you're referring to. My Mail.app version is 1.3.9 (v619) on Mac OS X 10.3.6. I don't have any suggestions either - I like Mail.app as it is right now, and I don't see anything obvious that needs changing.

We're referring to the new interface in Mail 2.0, found in Tiger - seen here.

 

[DJY]

Whilst I hear it is coming in Tiger... better handling of html emails!
As in we can view them - but not forward them or or create them it seems?

When I forward html emails to friends on PCs it stuffs up! Attaches content as images rather than allowing them to via the email as we see it in Mail!

Would also love to be able to "forward" an email as an attachment.
One of my email's SPAM client requires SPAM to be sent to a 14spam@email.address ... or notspam@email.address ... but it needs the suspect email to be attached in order for it to be effective, and learn.

So there are my two cents (and two comments) worth. Have been trying to hold out with Mail - and avoid Entourage.

Oh yeah P.S. the ability to edit subjects of received emails... for better filing / recogition... and

the ability to easily change (zoom) fonts when reading emails. Occasionally it seems Mail makes test in certain fonts / styles quite small... so being able to largen them to ease reading them would be great too.

 

[~Shard~]

Yes. As of right now it only looks for the main name not for the nicknames. But some people I only use the nicknames for but want to keep their real names in the adress book. Hence my need for mails lookup of nicknames.

Ah, okay, I see - never realized this before, that probably would be handy for some people then.

And I see that you're in Berlin - too bad I didn't realize that about a month ago when I was there for a few days, we could have hooked up!

 

[WinterMute]

Add the ability to selectively remove attachments, not all or none like you currently can. This is a feature I miss from MS-Outlook.

You can do that already, simply highlight the messages you want to delete the attachments from and select "Manually remove attachments".

 

[calhobbes]

Having the option of after deleting a message, bringing up the next message instead of going back to mailbox view.

 

[~Shard~]

You can do that already, simply highlight the messages you want to delete the attachments from and select "Manually remove attachments".

I think he means from a message he has received, not one he is composing. Of course if you're composing a message you have complete control over the attachments. If you receive a e-mail with several attachments though, how do you select which ones you want to detach? I don't believe there is a way to do it, someone correct me if I'm wrong... Or am I misunderstanding you?

 

[howard]

i think a 3 pane view like outlook 2003 and entourage 2004 would be great. I love that view.

i made a terribly bad mockup..

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/82610/

keep in mind right now on the mockup the mailbox drawer is closed

 

[WinterMute]

I think he means from a message he has received, not one he is composing. Of course if you're composing a message you have complete control over the attachments. If you receive a e-mail with several attachments though, how do you select which ones you want to detach? I don't believe there is a way to do it, someone correct me if I'm wrong... Or am I misunderstanding you?

You can select a message in any mailbox via the viewer pane, it highlights, then select "remove attachment" in the Message file menu. You can remove multiple attachments by highlighting multiple messages. The email then contains a message that says "Attachment manually removed"

Removing multiple attachments is a problem, you have to save the ones you want to keep by draggging or downloading to a folder, then deleting the whole attachment. There doesn't see to be a way of deleting individual attachments.

 

[coconn06]

I haven't used Mail.app in a few years, but I switched to Entourage because Mail was incapable of handling large email databases (At that time I had probably ~3000 emails).

Has this problem been solved? If so, I would like to switch, given the integration with Address Book (Entourage uses it's own address book, which is annoying when using other apps that integrate with Apple's Address Book). If not, this is a feature I'd like to see added.

 

[Mr_Ed]

...
- let mail recognize nicknames from adressbook for autmatic email adress completion

This is a big one for me! As an example, my dad and I have almost identical email addresses (1 character difference) and when I type his name, I end up mailing myself instead half the time. If I could type "dad" (which is his nickname in AddressBook) instead, there would be no ambiguity.

...
- show me an overview of unanswered emails that I received or wrote that I can edit(throw out mails out of) easily so I can see what replies I am awaiting or need to write or who wrote who last (this sounds a bit confusing, tell me if that's hard to understand)

I like this too. Sort of an "Outstanding Replies" view where you could track messages where replies (to you or from you) are important to you.

 

[wordmunger]

I haven't used Mail.app in a few years, but I switched to Entourage because Mail was incapable of handling large email databases (At that time I had probably ~3000 emails).

Has this problem been solved? If so, I would like to switch, given the integration with Address Book (Entourage uses it's own address book, which is annoying when using other apps that integrate with Apple's Address Book). If not, this is a feature I'd like to see added.

I've got at least 10,000 messages saved in Mail (anyone know an easy way to count?), with no slowdowns, even on my (soon to be scrapped) Ti400. I believe there's a pretty easy way to import all your messages from Entourage as well (it's been a while)....

 

[johnnyjibbs]

I have to say that Mail is, in my view, one of Apple's most complete Mac OS X apps. There's not much I'd like to change with it. In fact, I can't really think of any

About the new Tiger interface... I ridiculed it to hell when I first saw it, but I think I was a little quick to react - and it's growing on me

 

[Diatribe]

Ah, okay, I see - never realized this before, that probably would be handy for some people then.

And I see that you're in Berlin - too bad I didn't realize that about a month ago when I was there for a few days, we could have hooked up!

One month ago I was in Madrid
Next time. How did you like it?