Mozilla Thunderbird or Mac Mail?

[qacjared]

On my Mac's I have Mac Mail.
On my Linux Box I have Thunderbird.
On my iPod Touch I have MoblieMail.app.

They All use Gmail IMAP and they all sync their contacts together with Plaxo.

I do the filtering on the server.

Everything is great and works together perfectly.

Well there was that one month before leopard when Gmail added IMAP support and Mail keep crashing but all in all I like Apple Mail best.

 

[vandlism]

the thing is,,,, with all kinds of reasoning, its Thunderbird, who "JUST WORKs".

Too bad it's still a PC app that happens to run on the Mac. Come back and talk to me when Thunderbird implements Sync Services so that I can use iCal and Address Book. Also look into Spotlight support. Mail is fast, light weight, and has no problem juggling my Gmail accounts. I won't begin to get into the interface.

 

[clevin]

Too bad it's still a PC app that happens to run on the Mac. Come back and talk to me when Thunderbird implements Sync Services so that I can use iCal and Address Book. Also look into Spotlight support. Mail is fast, light weight, and has no problem juggling my Gmail accounts. I won't begin to get into the interface.

pc app. oh, whats wrong with pc app? and what is a pc app? what is a mac app? integrating with ical is a standard for mac app?

interface, which part of thunderbird's interface is non-mac-ish?

did you actually used thunderbird in any serious sense?

making statement w/o experience is, IMHO, pointless.

 

[ifonline]

pc app. oh, whats wrong with pc app? and what is a pc app? what is a mac app? integrating with ical is a standard for mac app?

interface, which part of thunderbird's interface is non-mac-ish?

did you actually used thunderbird in any serious sense?

making statement w/o experience is, IMHO, pointless.

What's wrong with a "PC" app is that it doesn't follow Apple design standards, per se. Integrating is standard for a Mac app when we are talking about Mail.app integrating with iCal, Sync Services, and other native Mac apps. Information on Leopard (don't remember if Tiger did this stuff or not) can make a round trip from Mail.app to iCal to Safari to iPhoto... on and on. Tunderbird currently doesn't fit into this tidy package. There has been discussion, from a few years ago if I recall correctly, to have Thunderbird integrate better with OS X, but it still hasn't happened. Very similar to OpenOffice... there is work being done to make it OS X compliant, but it still hasn't been finished.

But then I don't use iPhoto, or iWeb, or GarageBand. I use Lightroom and Expression Media (although I really want to get away from that program as quickly as possible), Dreamweaver, and Logic Studio. I chose them for their functionality, but lost some integration in the process. I accept that, as do those that use and like Thunderbird.

Everyone has their own set of needs and wants and will find the software that fits those needs and wants. But, wow! You really get defensive regarding Thunderbird. Why? It's just software. You make such broad, sweeping rebuttals when anyone dare say anything bad about Thunderbird.

 

[clevin]

i don't see why 3rd party apps have to be able to integrate with OSX to be a mac app. Is photoshop a mac app? M$ Office a mac app?

Thunderbird does NOT integrated with windows neither, what leaves it then? a mozilla app?

You sure can have your own personal preferences, but no need to elevate that to a universal definition.

Face a reality: a pc app is an app run under windows, a mac app is an app runs under OSX, an linux app is an app runs under Linux. Personal preference do not constitute an definition.

 

[kaiwai]

I've given Entourage 2008 and Thunderbird both a go, and I keep coming back to Apple Mail - why? because it is simple, light weight, and does everything I need without a massive amount of fanfare.

 

[ifonline]

i don't see why 3rd party apps have to be able to integrate with OSX to be a mac app. Is photoshop a mac app? M$ Office a mac app?

Thunderbird does NOT integrated with windows neither, what leaves it then? a mozilla app?

You sure can have your own personal preferences, but no need to elevate that to a universal definition.

Face a reality: a pc app is an app run under windows, a mac app is an app runs under OSX, an linux app is an app runs under Linux. Personal preference do not constitute an definition.

I think you missed my point. Oh well...

 

[Bobbi Flekman]

You need to change the port settings and it should work fine

Interesting... Are you saying the SMTP isn't written properly? Wouldn't Thunderbird use the same code? I know that my ISP's SMTP port is the default one (25). I would have figured Mail to use 25 as a port... As I said, interesting; I'll look into it.

 

[Bobbi Flekman]

Almost all of the "smtp problems" and the "IMAP problems" mentioned here are nothing to do with Mail being a good or bad client. They are way more likely to be problems with the servers implementation of the same protocols.

Most of the smtp problems I have personally seen are to do with SSL and the fact that Microsoft products use a completely "broken" non-standard implementation of it. As a result, a great deal of servers in corporations are set up for the "broken" Microsoft SSL. The same sort of thing goes for a whole bunch of mail server related issues.

It's impossible to diagnose all the things mentioned in the thread, but I would bet money that if you looked into them the failures would all be related to poorly implemented protocols and ports on the server end more than they are on the client, regardless of whether it's Mail or Thunderbird.

This looks like a tirade on MS. I do know that all the servers from my ISP are Linux ones, and as Linux programmers normally follow the standards I find that strange. Then again, I am not interested in going through the sources of Linux or their mail server program so you could be correct.

Mail uses a completely standard IMAP implementation as far as I am aware and I have never seen any problems with it (at least since some of the earlier Tiger based versions.) It's an excellent, stable, non-nonsense Mail client IMO.

I don't use IMAP. So, as far as that goes, I don't really care. I will look into it when I get an email from my provider that tells me POP/SMTP will be dead in xx months.

 

[ifonline]

I don't use IMAP. So, as far as that goes, I don't really care. I will look into it when I get an email from my provider that tells me POP/SMTP will be dead in xx months.

I'm curious... why stick with POP? IMAP has so much more flexibility that POP. For me, I am getting away from e-mail provided by my ISP because it isn't IMAP.

 

[Mac-Dragon]

I use Mail

 

[HLdan]

Apple's Mail all the way

For me, it's all about integration. I tried out Thunderbird when I was using Tiger and I liked it. What I liked most about was the ability to change the color of my text for outgoing messages and it retained the color for future emails, Apple's Mail can't do this.

What I hated about Thunderbird is the inability to integrate with Address Book and sync services with .Mac and I was not about to download a haxie that would force this because Apple's Mail already does this.

 

[Bobbi Flekman]

I'm curious... why stick with POP? IMAP has so much more flexibility that POP. For me, I am getting away from e-mail provided by my ISP because it isn't IMAP.

No reason, just never looked into it. It all works, my mail gets sent, it gets picked up. No problem... Never change a winning team, so as long as it works (in other words: as long as my ISP doesn't get the jitters and switches to IMAP) why change?

 

[Kalkas]

I prefer Thunderbird for three reasons:

1) you have more options with configurations of mail servers, e.g. specifying ports for both pop and smtp settings, specifyig the type of secure connections (tls, ssl), etc.

2) it seems that Mac Mail lacks the option of choosing whether one wants to dsiplay html content or not for a particular message. It is either or, while on thunderbird one can choose to be asked for each messsage if one wish to display images and other html content.

3) it takes too long time for MacMail to verify pop and smtp settings when creating a new account, and sometimes it simply cannot create a new account because the verification procedure failed. I haven't experienced such issues in Thunderbird.

Kind regards,
Kalkas

 

[jive turkey]

The only real problem I have with Mac Mail is that the IDLE command refuses to work with my mail server, but works beautifully on Thunderbird. I would use Thunderbird except for two things: 1)It has a nasty habit of sending me invisible emails, and has in every version on every machine I use; 2)You can't search message content yet.

Thunderbird keeps improving, which is nice to see.

 

[jmxp69]

I've been using Mac Mail since I got my MBP 6 months ago. I have 4+ years of IMAP mail with TLS and haven't had a single problem.

That said, prior to switching to Mac from Vista, I used thunderbird without issue either. I stuck with Mail after switching just for something new and so far--no problems.

 

[Winni]

Mail is fast

Since when? I currently only have a bit more than four thousand emails in Mail, and whenever the program now fetches new messages, it's unresponsive for half a minute or so when it adds the new mails to its storage file. And my machine is Mac Pro with plenty of RAM.

The only reason why I am not using Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 exclusively is that I don't want to go through the pain of training my spam filter again from scratch.

But Thunderbird also is not the real answer. I don't think that there is any good eMail - or News - client for the Mac (with RitLabs The Bat! for Windows being the measure here). I think that sooner or later I'll go and write one myself.

 

[doug in albq]

Thunderbird!

I like it much more than Mac Mail. I like the address book much more than the Apple's, also.