Mail.app frustrations!

[blackpeter]

OK, so in my attempt to renounce all that is Microsoft, I've moved from Entourage X to Mail. I LOVE the junk-mail features, but I'm getting frustrated by it's sluggishness.

Sometimes I get a spinning beachball just for trying to look at a piece of mail. It can take 10+ seconds just to open mail containing HTML. This never use to happened with Entourage.

Can anyone explain this? What's going on here?

 

[MacBandit]

Re: Mail.app frustrations!

Originally posted by tfaz1
OK, so in my attempt to renounce all that is Microsoft, I've moved from Entourage X to Mail. I LOVE the junk-mail features, but I'm getting frustrated by it's sluggishness.

Sometimes I get a spinning beachball just for trying to look at a piece of mail. It can take 10+ seconds just to open mail containing HTML. This never use to happened with Entourage.

Can anyone explain this? What's going on here?

Not enough information. Please let us know what model of computer, what version of OSX you have, how much ram, etc..

Mail didn't work slow even on my old B/W G3 400 with 10.1.5. So we need to find the culprite.

 

[blackpeter]

OK...

G4/533
768MB RAM
10.2.1

Mail didn't act this way in 10.1, so (to day the least) Jaguar is really frustrating me. I'm convinced that they changed the beachball to make it prettier because we'd be seeing a lot more of it...

 

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by tfaz1
OK...

G4/533
768MB RAM
10.2.1

Mail didn't act this way in 10.1, so (to day the least) Jaguar is really frustrating me. I'm convinced that they changed the beachball to make it prettier because we'd be seeing a lot more of it...

Yea that's funny. You know as well as I do that 10.2 is faster and more stable.

Have you ever repaired permissions or ran fsck -y?

 

[blackpeter]

Originally posted by MacBandit
Have you ever repaired permissions or ran fsck -y?

Repaired permissions? Yes. But haven't done a fsck-y. Can you explain how to do this?

Thanks!

 

[Rower_CPU]

fsck -y

Reboot your machine into single user mode (hold down command + s). Once you get a command prompt, type "fsck-y" without the quotes. It will flash up some text as it performs tests on your boot disk. When it finishes, it will give you one of two messages: "DiskName appears to be OK" or "File System was modified". If you get the latter, you need to rerun it until you get the first message.

Type "reboot", without quotes, when you're done to restart the machine.

 

[RBMaraman]

Re: fsck -y

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Reboot your machine into single user mode (hold down command + s). Once you get a command prompt, type "fsck-y" without the quotes. It will flash up some text as it performs tests on your boot disk. When it finishes, it will give you one of two messages: "DiskName appears to be OK" or "File System was modified". If you get the latter, you need to rerun it until you get the first message.

Type "reboot", without quotes, when you're done to restart the machine.

I tried to run "fsck-y" on my iBook (specs are in my signature), and when I pressed enter it said invalid command. I looked at some of the text on the screen, and one option was to type "/sbin/fsck-y". Should I run that?

[EDIT] I'm an idiot...I just figured out that I forgot to put a space between the k and the -. It worked fine. Sorry! [EDIT]

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Re: fsck -y

Originally posted by RBMaraman
I tried to run "fsck-y" on my iBook (specs are in my signature), and when I pressed enter it said invalid command. I looked at some of the text on the screen, and one option was to type "/sbin/fsck-y". Should I run that?

Yes, go ahead and type the full path.

There is also some debate as to whether you should add the "-y" option. It simply represses any error messages or user queries that fsck encounters. If you want to watch every little thing that it's doing, don't add the "-y". Personally, I think it's fine, but that's your call.

 

[blackpeter]

Still having Mail problems. Here's the issue:

-When opening mail that contains large picture files or html, it takes sometimes 10-15 seconds while "Getting Message:"

This happens after I've already viewed these messages, so it's not taking that long because it's getting it from the server. The message should already be on my drive, but mail.app takes forever to pull it up. The same messages come right up in Entourage.

I called AppleCare and explained the issue to them, and they had me send them test emails. They experienced the exact same problems when using Entourage and Mail. Entourage pulls the message right up (imbedded pictures, html, and all) while Mail gave them a 10 second spinnng beachball before pulling up the same message.

Has anyone here experienced the same problems?

PS: When asked what email program she used, the AppleCare tech told me: Entourage X!

quote: "Well, you have to remember that the Mail app is our free software. We're always trying to improve it. But Entourage is just a much more sophisticated program. It's a lot better than Mail."

...wow. I've never heard an Apple rep talk down about one of their own apps. Maybe I should "switch" back, to Microsoft Entourage!

 

[alex_ant]

I love how fixing permissions is treated like the magical elixir that will cure all Mac ills. The fact is that Mail.app just doesn't have a terribly great HTML rendering engine, and the bigger and more complex the page, the longer it will take to render.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by alex_ant
I love how fixing permissions is treated like the magical elixir that will cure all Mac ills. The fact is that Mail.app just doesn't have a terribly great HTML rendering engine, and the bigger and more complex the page, the longer it will take to render.

Since you can't rebuild the desktop anymore, and zapping the PRAM doesn't do much, we need to have a new "ace-in-the-hole" that we can do to make us feel like we're fixing our machines.

 

[blackpeter]

Originally posted by alex_ant
I love how fixing permissions is treated like the magical elixir that will cure all Mac ills. The fact is that Mail.app just doesn't have a terribly great HTML rendering engine, and the bigger and more complex the page, the longer it will take to render.

There. Finally something that makes sense. Thank you Alex!

 

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by alex_ant
I love how fixing permissions is treated like the magical elixir that will cure all Mac ills. The fact is that Mail.app just doesn't have a terribly great HTML rendering engine, and the bigger and more complex the page, the longer it will take to render.

It's just that fixing permissions HAS fixed so many problems that it is always good to check that someone has tried it. Always do the basics first.

Where did you get your info about the HTML rendering in Mail?

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by MacBandit
It's just that fixing permissions HAS fixed so many problems that it is always good to check that someone has tried it. Always do the basics first.

Where did you get your info about the HTML rendering in Mail?

Mainly first-hand experience with HTML spam. Obviously no one outside Apple has seen the Mail.app source code, but it just seems a lot more likely that the rendering engine of Mail.app is inefficient than that there is a mysterious interaction with the permissions of a few files on disk... I mean, I know OS X is quirky, but it's not THAT quirky... usually.

 

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by alex_ant

Mainly first-hand experience with HTML spam. Obviously no one outside Apple has seen the Mail.app source code, but it just seems a lot more likely that the rendering engine of Mail.app is inefficient than that there is a mysterious interaction with the permissions of a few files on disk... I mean, I know OS X is quirky, but it's not THAT quirky... usually.

I know where your coming from and based on what I have seen I would have to agree that there is something wrong with Mail.

On the other hand you can not deny that it is always good to cover the basics if they are easy to perform no matter how unlikely they are to cure the problem.