Advice plz -- Reliable Mac Email Client

[Soln]

Folks, can someone please provide suggestions on a reliable Mac email client?  Thunderbird died again on me and rebuilding my local folders is a really, really, big PITA. 

I need a POP/IMAP client that stores messages locally in a format I could retrieve with a text editor if needed without too much trouble.  I'm looking for this because of the trouble it takes to rebuild folders and messages from your mbox with Thunderbird.  But I'd give up this requirement for a client that was ultimately more reliable and/or allowed rebuildign profiles easily.  Thx!

[Viin]

gmail.com?

And then you can pull it in via IMAP in thunderbird.

[Surlyboi]

What's wrong with Apple mail?

[Soln]

re. gmail I want local storage and thus backups for IMAP. 

Apple mail requires a subscription I thought.

[Viin]

So really you want the world handled to you on a silver platter, I see now ...

[Lounge]

re. gmail I want local storage and thus backups for IMAP. 

Apple mail requires a subscription I thought.

No... you can use the Mail.app client with any POP3/IMAP provider.

[stray]

yep i used mine with gmail/imap. ical can sync gcal with a little add-on as well.

[Sky]

Entourage is better these days.

[naum]

re. gmail I want local storage and thus backups for IMAP. 

Apple mail requires a subscription I thought.

No. Works fine with any POP/IMAP provider. I use it for several email accounts, though I've been moving accounts to gmail.

Maybe Entourage is better, but I've banished MS Office from my home macs and on the Office 2004 version I have, Entourage is quite craptacular.

But soon, we'll all be in the Google Wave 

[Soln]

thanks -- I do want it all.  But I think this is justifiable -- some mail is too important to leave with Google alone.  Need backups.

That said, I'll expand my Gmail and revisit Entourage.  Thanks.  Oh, and avoid TBird. 

[stray]

tbird and even firebird have some probs on the mac, i think. mail is simple and nice, but i use it interchangeably with gmail. works fine. i've cut off ms office too. i'd go opensource on all office stuff, but the iwork apps are pretty nifty, i think.

[Morfiend]

Go with the built in Mail.app. Its simple and works good, and isnt weighed down by all the extra crap in Entourage.

[Chimpy]

The built in mail application in OSX is one of the things I miss the most about not having my Mac functional anymore.

[stray]

i think entourage's only real selling point over mail.app is exchange server support. but then, snow leopard will have that too.

[Oban]

mail.app

[Pennilenko]

I thought a mac was supposed to be super easy?

[Surlyboi]

I will stab you with a USB key.

[naum]

I thought a mac was supposed to be super easy?

It is but people crossing over from the dark side carry with them expectations and tendencies that just go against the grain of "it just works".

For example, the deed of installing or removing applications — windows users puzzle for the correct incantation at times, when all a Mac user does is drag onto /Applications folder or drag onto trash bin (or tap cmd-delete).

Though in dumping firewire on the new Macbooks, Apple stepping away from the "super easy" mode. With firewire, just plug your old mac in, and your new mac is set to go pronto, with all your apps and accounts setup as such on the old machine. Users attempting to do this via WiFi or even ethernet are experiencing issues…

[Soln]

mail.app is sexeh -- thanks for the obvious 


Mac is not particularly easy when things go sideways.  At least on the dark side I can locate the files I need to salvage and repair more easily -- just my experience. 

[stray]

i can always help, if something in particular is stumping you. i'm sure many here can help, of course. really easy to reset/repair things, i think. hell in most cases, you just remove a preference file, and that's it. i think the only real glaring prob with macs is the same one it's always been... app options. maybe not even that. just game options 

[Trippy]

Mac is not particularly easy when things go sideways.  At least on the dark side I can locate the files I need to salvage and repair more easily -- just my experience. 

Yes when things go wrong on the Mac you tend to lose the help of the nice shiney UI and need to bust out the command line.

[Prospero]

I'll take the command line any day over regedit.

[Tarami]

I'll take the command line any day over regedit.

Regedit got a command line mode.

[squirrel]

Mac is not particularly easy when things go sideways.  At least on the dark side I can locate the files I need to salvage and repair more easily -- just my experience. 

Yes when things go wrong on the Mac you tend to lose the help of the nice shiney UI and need to bust out the command line.

Yeah cause a full POSIX compliant terminal sux azz. AM I RITE?

Maybe I'm missing some green text but OS X's term is awesome. Comparisons to regedit are retarded.

[Trippy]

No because the people Apple is trying to attract to the Mac (i.e. those that find the PC too difficult to use) are not the kind that would feel comfortable using the command line to futz with their machine.

There is of course a large subset of Mac OS X users that are Unix hackers who don't have this problem (some of whom even prefer the command line) but I wasn't talking about those people.

Also, OS X's Terminal app sucks shit, though they did finally put in tabs in Leopard.

[naum]

Also, OS X's Terminal app sucks shit, though they did finally put in tabs in Leopard.

Why?

I spend a lot of time in Terminal.app and it works fine for me — can easily swap sessions, have different themes setup for external servers, can search buffers, copy + paste, etc.… …compared to Cygwin or Hummingbird (or whatever Windows users are using these days to "emulate" the *nix experience…), is light years ahead. And I like anti-alias monospace text for my terminal sessions.

[fuser]

i think entourage's only real selling point over mail.app is exchange server support. but then, snow leopard will have that too.

There is some exchange support in leopard at the moment. It still requries POP/IMAP access but it does work with an exchange server.

[stray]

^ah didn't know that


as for the term app, yeah, it leaves a few things desired compared to linux counterparts imo. still prefer it to registery though. unix behavior is altered through simple preference files, just like mac guis always have been. in a way they they are similar.

[naum]

i think entourage's only real selling point over mail.app is exchange server support. but then, snow leopard will have that too.

There is some exchange support in leopard at the moment. It still requries POP/IMAP access but it does work with an exchange server.

I am connected to exchange server at work in mail.app — just a settings toggle in preferences pane and you're git to go…

[Prospero]

Mail.app is amazingly respectable. I thought I was going to miss Thunderbird, but I haven't looked back.

[Trippy]

Also, OS X's Terminal app sucks shit, though they did finally put in tabs in Leopard.

Why?

I spend a lot of time in Terminal.app and it works fine for me — can easily swap sessions, have different themes setup for external servers, can search buffers, copy + paste, etc.… …compared to Cygwin or Hummingbird (or whatever Windows users are using these days to "emulate" the *nix experience…), is light years ahead. And I like anti-alias monospace text for my terminal sessions.

On Windows I use (Secure)CRT which has had these features long before Terminal ever did.

With regards to Terminal, we already had a similiar discussion back here:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8258.msg636952#msg636952

Besides the color issue, Terminal lacks the "bookmarks" feature of iTerm and the CTRL-click launch URL feature. There's also some issues with Terminal's "Emacs on foreign" system support which iTerm can better handle because it can send an Esc for Meta if you tell it to. If you never use Emacs on remote systems you wouldn't care.

[Righ]

If I never use Emacs (on remote systems) it will be too soon.

[stray]

haha, i can see why you guys got on my ass a little in that thread though. must've been hopped up on caffeine.


Just to revisit, iTerm is a good alternative though. It's just a little slow compared to terminal.app. That was my only gripe there. I'd prefer iTerm's features in terminal.app, but for the time being, iTerm is probably the best way to go.

[Trippy]

It is a little slower on the refreshes but there's a setting you a fiddle with to see if it helps.

[naum]

Also, OS X's Terminal app sucks shit, though they did finally put in tabs in Leopard.

Why?

I spend a lot of time in Terminal.app and it works fine for me — can easily swap sessions, have different themes setup for external servers, can search buffers, copy + paste, etc.… …compared to Cygwin or Hummingbird (or whatever Windows users are using these days to "emulate" the *nix experience…), is light years ahead. And I like anti-alias monospace text for my terminal sessions.

On Windows I use (Secure)CRT which has had these features long before Terminal ever did.

With regards to Terminal, we already had a similiar discussion back here:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8258.msg636952#msg636952

Besides the color issue, Terminal lacks the "bookmarks" feature of iTerm and the CTRL-click launch URL feature. There's also some issues with Terminal's "Emacs on foreign" system support which iTerm can better handle because it can send an Esc for Meta if you tell it to. If you never use Emacs on remote systems you wouldn't care.

What does CTRL-click give me that "open $url" (or curl) does not?

I don't use Emacs, I long ago jumped ship to vim…

The only gripe I have against Terminal.app is that I can't seem to get mine to support more than 16 colors, though I've tinkered and understand that there's a way to get it to work like a good Linux terminal session — but that's mainly for syntax highlighting, and for heavy duty text editing (scripts v. programs/frameworks), I'll be using TextMate, so it's not that much of a show stopper…