From Thunderbird to Mail.app
I made the switch earlier today. I was a little nervous about it since I have been using Thunderbird for nearly 2 years and have become accostomed to some of its features and quirks. Not that the move is complete I feel a lot more happy with my email client. This blog entry discusses the reasons to why I made the move, and some of the problems that Thunderbird has as a mail client.
Why the move?
Many people might find me crazy, “You moved away from Thunderbird for Mail.app, why?!”. There are many reasons really, I just find that Mail.app is better suited for the Macintosh platform. I would just like to point out that before I moved to the Mac platform I loved Thunderbird, but now it just feels a bit clunky, and it shows that Mozilla have sadly been neglecting it recently to concentrate on Firefox.
Contact management
I have become fustrated recently with the contact book in Thunderbird not integrating with Address Book.app which is where I keep all my contacts. Mail.app does this beautifully. I really do not understand why Thunderbird doesn’t do this, at least now I no longer have to keep maintaining two identical lists.
Batten down the hatches, an alert war is a coming!
I have, hold on, let me count them… 8 email accounts associated with Thunderbird. All my email addresses are for different projects I have, and some for members of my family. When a server goes down, for whatever reason, and you click ‘Get Mail’, you get 4 popups for each email account. One prompts for the email address password, two inform you that it could not connect, then another one tells you the connection could not be established. That’s 32 alerts! Oh, did I mention they are Modal? That’s right, you can’t just leave the room for a couple minutes then come back and have them all pilled up. No, no, no. You need to click “Cancel” or “Okay” then wait 5 second for the next to popup. Mail.app does it all in the background, and displays a little exclamation mark (!) next to the mailbox with problems. I can click that exclamation mark and see the problem.
Zzzzzzzzoooom
I assume that Mail.app is made in carbon, cocoa, or whatever the latest one is. That’s because it is fast! 5x faster than Thunderbird to open, and much faster whilst inside. The Apple guys did a great job. Give yourself a pat on the back. As I stated above, Thunderbird is a bit of a beast and is sometimes quite slow.
It’s all about the calendar, baby
Thunderbird has a calendar, yes. But it makes the application look, lets face it, ugly, and a wee bit slower. I have always used iCal for my calendar, and I love it and do not want to change, and now I can handle all of my todo’s through Mail.app as well.
Visually stunning
I agree, Mail.app looks stunning. It’s the same as Thunderbird but everything looks… better. I think it’s because of the smart folders, they save so much room. I’m really into my smart folders at the moment, Spotlight really is a great technology, so much packed into such a quick little app. Apple just thinks of everything and implements it beautifully.
For those poor few who don’t know what a “smart folder” is, it is a folder which doesn’t actually contain aything. You give the folder instead properties which it then references your data and pulls it all together. For instace, if you wanted all your emails from John in the past month, but only those containing the word “evolution”, then you create a folder with those properties and instantly you can see the results. No more searching your inbox.
Roundup
I haven’t used all the features in Mail.app just yet. I haven’t even mentioned all the benefits over Thunderbird (the connection doctor, mail activity, todo’s, and sweet templates to name a few).
There are a few things that I think Mail.app would do with, being able to label, or “tag” messages stands out in my mind. This is such a simple, and basic, feature that I can’t believe Apple overlooked it. Sometimes smart folders cannot handle everything you throw at it, and would be easier to have a smart folder dedicated to tags. I have tried a few plugins for this, but frankly they either don’t do the job well enough or are simply OTT.
The second thing Mail.app needs is alternating colours for messages. It just makes things far easier to read. If you are reading Apple, then these two points would make Mail.app even better.
1 Patrick Mosby wrote
27th January, 2008
Have a look at www.hawkwings.net
It’s an ideal resource for all Mail.app related stuff.
Greetings