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macOS Monterey to Support All-New Mail App Extensions, Plug-Ins Will Stop Functioning in Future Release
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Gmail manhandles the imap protocol to do things it was never intended to do. Questionable how much effort apple should put into supporting it, especially given the obvious privacy issues.
In my company, some people, particularly with outside facing roles, such as regulatory compliance or external customer interaction, have signatures, but the dev staff mostly doesn’t. Helps we’re on Outlook and Exchange and thus have a telephone and email directory of the whole firm, which eliminates the need for basic contact info for internal roles. I understand the value of signatures in providing communication in a corporate context and for providing a simple CV in a mailserv context, though I’m not sure about HTML.
But, on a technical level, I’d assume that an Exchange server, for instance, could tack on HTML signatures, so long as the email isn’t encrypted or cryptographically signed. That said, while the Mail app probably wouldn’t support HTML signatures out of the box, I’d imagine that the composition extension API could probably enable an HTML signature.
Adapt, sure, but the content blocking and action APIs are probably broad enough for SpamSieve to be able to do its thing.
Gmail needs all those custom nonstandard IMAP calls to read your email.
not really snarking here.
not really snarking here.
You do realize that Mail.app is a direct continuation of the NeXTStep Mail.app, yes? Which means that it’s nearly 40 years old. Most of the original team is probably retired by now.
But this is also a change that needed to occur. Previously, mail bundles would break between point releases. Not major releases, mere patches. Every time Mail.app got updated, these bundles needed to get updated, too, and, until they did, the bundles wouldn’t work. Now we have a stable API guaranteed not to break on point releases and that will likely be stable across multiple major releases. We’ll probably see more mail extensions as a result of this, while previously, it was only worth the effort to devs who were absolutely serious about email extensibility. This API could also be ported to MobileMail.app, which, until now, hasn’t had any extensibility (except maybe for jailbreaking, but even then, I don’t think Mail was a common target for jailbreakers looking to tweak the system).
Not to mention that the current plug-in (bundle) architecture for Mail is undocumented, complicated, fragile and needs to be maintained for almost every significant macOS update.
This reason, as well as snoozed emails is why I have to use Google email in a browser as they are such amazing features I can't work without it.
Actions: Extensions that apply custom rules to incoming emails, such as an email being color coded, moved to a separate inbox, marked as read, or flagged
These are all existing actions, Rules, including alert sounds, that have been broken in Mail.app since macOS 11.
Does this mean that instead of Apple fixing them in Big Sur we'll have to pay for an extension from a third party developer for these features to work in Monterey? 🤔
These are all existing actions, Rules, including alert sounds, that have been broken in Mail.app since macOS 11.
Does this mean that instead of Apple fixing them in Big Sur we'll have to pay for an extension from a third party developer for these features to work in Monterey? 🤔
No, I’d assume this means that this would be a way for third party apps to extend what Mail already does, such as adding new conditionals to the rules (think “is this email encrypted?”, which would enable you to perform a different set of tasks provided by an extension).
I seriously would like to see Apple work harder on improving the Apple Mail app as email is still one of the most used apps ever.
Like I've said, Mail already does, or at least did prior to Big Sur, all of those actions listed. "Custom Rules" are already part of Mail.app, so is encryption and digital signing.
It seems to me that Apple plans to remove these existing features and encourage developers to create extensions that simply fix bugs that have appeared in Mail.app since the release of Big Sur.
I'm missing something. If you don't like the way the native mail app works, why not just use the application you like, there are a lot? Personally, I'm fine with Mail and how it interfaces with gmail. What particular features are you concerned about?
Slightly separate though maybe related issue: any understanding or speculation why Apple has not implemented tags in Mail.app? Arbitrary tagging was introduced in the Finder way back in MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks (2013). Ever since then an obvious next step would be enabling the same, extremely useful functionality to help manage and organize email.
Gmail added support for arbitrary tagging about a decade ago (a quite excellent, flexible implementation, albeit completely non-standards-based). And just last week Apple announced support for arbitrary tagging in the upcoming macOS 12/iOS 15 versions of Notes and Reminders. But still Apple is apparently holding off on tagging for email — there appears to be no attempts to either work with Google, collaborate with email standards bodies to make this possible, or roll its own, proprietary solution.
* correction: Apple introduced arbitrary tagging into the Finder in 10.9, not 10.7 as I originally thought.
Gmail added support for arbitrary tagging about a decade ago (a quite excellent, flexible implementation, albeit completely non-standards-based). And just last week Apple announced support for arbitrary tagging in the upcoming macOS 12/iOS 15 versions of Notes and Reminders. But still Apple is apparently holding off on tagging for email — there appears to be no attempts to either work with Google, collaborate with email standards bodies to make this possible, or roll its own, proprietary solution.
* correction: Apple introduced arbitrary tagging into the Finder in 10.9, not 10.7 as I originally thought.
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all snark aside. There is a good reason for a lot of restrictions. I have an iPhone X, not Intel, and some functions are not supported due to not having a fast enough SOC. My 2014 MBP is also not capable of running Monterey, but I can see why, it is simply not fast enough for a lot of the new features. While the CPU and graphics are fine, I cannot Airplay a 4k video to Apple TV without butter (seriously, that was autocorrect, s/b jutter, but its funny). I can direct connect fine to a 4k TV, but my Mac has too little bandwidth. So, instead of making it a bad experience on Monterey, it is left out. I suspect the same is true for features left off of Intel Macs, the software needed to make it work simply isn't there for intel (someone might be able to write it, I have no idea what the limitations would be)
surprise, surprise. If a third party application wants to exist, it has to have better or more features than the native, free application. I don't need any of that you mentioned, but it is great for those who do, that it is available. Good for Spark
Oh so funny. Or it could be that it is being switched to a more modern and secure framework. Nah, that won't happen
What... like.. your name and email address... Maybe some genius could work out a way to have the mail client automatically show that information to someone in a consistent place...
Seriously dude, they work fine for me. If you turn on notifications, you get alerts, simple as that. all my rules continue to work. I have noticed though that if I open Mail on my iPhone (which does not have rules), they are not applied on Mac until I manually apply them, not a biggie really, but you could put n a feedback request
Yes they are, all of them plus custom alert sounds which ceased to work in Big Sur, along with erratic display of Notifications.
That is my point.
Is Apple suggesting that in Monterey they will only be available via third party extensions rather than fixing whatever bug has caused them to not work as advertised currently?
Perhaps somebody running the Monterey beta can tell us if Mail has changed, if those options are still there as part of the app?