I’ve been doing this for almost a month now. So far, it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be. Not perfect, but horrible either. I have only come up with 2 things that I think could be better.
- Organizing. I’m a folders/labels kinda guy. Doing that in Mail is less than intuitive and takes too many steps. Bonus is there aren’t any keyboard shortcuts for making new mailboxes, and it’s a chore to get to filters. This should be easier.
- Restoring focus. When Mail is running but closed, there isn’t an elegant way to restore using the keyboard. Most apps work well with a cmd-n, but in Mail that starts a new message _and_ restores the app. Great if I wanted to send a message, bad if I only want to see what’s new.
Using it to collect Gmail via POP has actually been a great experience. Gmail filters out the crap and I get a nice clean stream of email delivered to my desktop. Bonus, all my rules are still running on Gmail, so when I need access via my phone or another computer, I can and all my organization is still in effect. I do still check the spam box about once a week for false positives, but I never find any.
So, overall, I give it a C. Not the greatest (c’mon Mozilla…update Thunderbird already!) or the worst (:cough:Outlook Express:cough:) but it does the job just fine.
I’ve searched the goog, but not to extensively. If any of you have any great Mail.app tips or tricks you would like to share, by all means please do! They would be appreciated.
Quick updates on a few things I have mentioned here at w(t)f over the last week or so.
Mail.app
Been using this for a solid week now with Gmail POP3. It’s been pretty good I must say but there are a few things I think could be a little better.
- Setting up rules and mailboxes could be more streamlined or at least have a keyboard shortcut
- Flagging a message needs an easier keyboard short cut, or someone at Apple needs to stop with those rediculous symbols that I don’t understand.
- Restoring the window from the dock needs to be more elegant/easier to figure out, but this is a problem I have with most Mac apps. cmd-n works, but then I have to close the new message window.
- Better keyboard navigation in general would be keen. Arrow and tab keys are my friend
Next will be getting my address book and iCal current. I’m really excited to see how well they integrate.
Something that I have been wanting to do for quite awhile is move my email back to the desktop.
I’ve been using gmail exclusively since ‘05 to collect all of my email, and it’s been doing a bang up job! I love me the gMail. But, there are times when I’d rather open an app, or compose an email offline (like when travelling) or I would just like to have that information under my control 100%.
At first I thought I would try iMap with gMail. In theory, a great idea. All of the email lives on gmail, and your labels and mail is replicated in your email client. In practice however it doesn’t work that hot, at least not with Gmail. Maybe I have too many rules or labels. Maybe I get too much email. Whatever the reason, it works poorly at best. I was missing emails, or they wouldn’t show up at all in my client. Oh, and the client would almost always crash.
Back to the drawing board I went. Started using Fluid for Gmail and it kinda made it feel like I was using a desktop app. It’s a great app and I highly recommend it especially for Gmail. Watch for a write up that soon.
Let’s hide some of this, since I’ve got a fair amount more to say. (Read on…)
Back in January, I issued a challenge to myself and all of the readers of w(t)f. My big one this year was to get Mom to use Flickr.
Mine will be getting Mom to use Flickr. She just bought my camera (her first Amazon.com purchase) and she really digs seeing my shots on the webernets. And she is a bit of a tech junkie. So Flickr is a perfect fit. Keeping in mind that I couldn’t get her to switch, I think I’ll be able to pull this one off no sweat.
The other night I’m sitting around with teh Lad watching Transformers again and my phone rings. It’s Mom. She’s trying to figure out how to setup an account at Yahoo! so she can use Flickr! Of course I helped her and about 1/2 hour later I had an email from her Flickr account saying she had pictures for me to view. Of course, I couldn’t see them since she had them marked Friends and Family and didn’t add me as a contact. I called her back and got that part sorted out and voila!
Mom is using Flickr. Sweet!
Time to come up with another challenge. Maybe a switch from AOL to Gmail?
