
Mail Pilot – The State of Email on the Mac - schneidmaster
http://blog.schneidmaster.com/mail-pilot-or-the-state-of-email-on-the-mac/
======
coldtea
> _Let 's face it: email on OSX sucks._

Compared to what? Since, you know, it can run most apps other platforms can
(and most people use), from mutt to Thunderbird and Outlook.

> _For all of Apple 's skill in crafting beautiful hardware (and as much as I
> like OSX as an operating system), Mail.app is outdated and still has limited
> support for Gmail labels_

Labels? Why should it support a proprietary technology -- and much more from a
competitor, and much more one that might kill IMAP at any time?

Labels aside, I never had much problems with Mail.app. And, spam aside, I get
around 200 mails per day.

~~~
stephenr
> Labels? Why should it support a proprietary technology -- and much more from
> a competitor, and much more one that might kill IMAP at any time?

Because 90% of tech nerds are fucking obsessed with google and think
everything that comes from them should be immediately adopted by the entire
industry.

As I've said before - IMAP has a spec for "keywords". People always piss and
moan about it not being supported by mail clients, and conveniently forget
that Google's labels weren't supported either, when it was introduced - and
yet some clients have added supported for it.

What are the chances that a) more competing email providers and b) more mail
clients would support IMAP keywords today, if Google had used the existing
standard instead of inventing their "labels" system?

~~~
pilif
_> As I've said before - IMAP has a spec for "keywords"._

That's just because IMAP has a spec for everything.

That's the huge problem with IMAP: it can do too much and it's one of the more
complicated "classic" protocols (from the area where RFCs were much more
concise and bare-bones).

There are so many implementation bugs in various clients and servers that IMAP
feels like being kept together by duct tape.

As such, people are very reluctant to add more protocol features to their
implementations and even if they did, with some likelihood, the feature would
only work in very specific client/server combinations.

In case of labels, the incentive for Google was to produce the implementation
that works best with the existing clients (use pretend-folders for labels),
and the incentive for client is to implement labels the google way (the only
widely-deployed server that currently supports them)

Email is such a mess.

~~~
coldtea
> _That 's the huge problem with IMAP: it can do too much and it's one of the
> more complicated "classic" protocols (from the area where RFCs were much
> more concise and bare-bones). There are so many implementation bugs in
> various clients and servers that IMAP feels like being kept together by duct
> tape._

IMAP does much because we have many needs. And HTML does even more, but we
still have several top notch browsers competing.

In any case, if IMAP development is so difficult, have people join ONE IMAP
library project that tries to be as complete as it can, instead of each mailer
creating its own IMAP client libs.

Like we have Webkit/Blink which is used across multiple browsers.

------
michaelsbradley
Mail.app in 10.9 seems slightly less crappy than in 10.8, but the overall
experience has been going steadily downhill for years now. I've been using Mac
OS X + Mail.app since the public beta was released in Sep 2000.

Having tinkered around with other mail clients for the Mac, I'm starting to
believe that something in the vein of mu4e[1] holds the only truly brighter
future for me, but it will be such a radical break after years with Mail.app
that I'm hesitant to take the plunge. On the other hand, I am "living" in
multi-term[2] now rather than iTerm2, so it probably won't be all that jarring
to emacs-ify another element of my daily computing experience.

[1]
[http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html](http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html)

[2]
[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MultiTerm](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MultiTerm)

------
skierscott
I've been using Postbox[1]. It's the power of Thunderbird with the clean GUI
look of a native Mac app. It has emails in a conversation-y view and includes
gmail.com shortcuts. It also has powerful smart folders.

Plus, I can use Markdown-Here[2] to compose my emails in Markdown.

[1]:[http://postbox-inc.com](http://postbox-inc.com)

[2]:[http://markdown-here.com](http://markdown-here.com)

~~~
Groxx
I think I've been happiest with Postbox, but holy cow, that periodic re-
indexing is painful. Hooking up ~500k emails means it grinds away for minutes
on a HD, something like once or twice every hour.

That aside, it handled those 500k emails way better than e.g. Mail.app (whose
performance routinely falls off a cliff somewhere back between 200k and 300k),
synced quickly, etc and all without the normal annoyances that keep me away
from Thunderbird. A very solid, cheap option.

That said, the re-indexing eventually got annoying enough that I disabled a
bunch of IMAP folders in Gmail and switched back to Mail.app. I'd love to find
a real alternative, but everything else I've touched has been _awful_ in
absolutely-critical ways (usually one or more of: can't handle a couple
hundred thousand emails at all, can't display HTML emails, can't stand the UI,
or useless/nonexistent filtering tools).

~~~
chao-
What "normal annoyances" keep you away from Thunderbird?

~~~
Groxx
The UI has always rubbed me the wrong way, which I haven't really quantified.
Not "wtf, no gradients? fail", but just a preponderance of small things like
weird defaults, chunks of menus / screens that are inconsistent with the rest
of the application (so you end up checking 10 places for a simple thing), and
minor inconsistencies with other applications that I keep re-discovering after
using it for a few months that I have to go back and fix.

------
x0x0
we could all really use a better email client, but as discussed to death in
the sparrow threads, the app store has reset software pricing perceptions.
People will now bitch endlessly about having to pay the princely price of $10,
which theoretically comes with free perpetual upgrades. This is down from the
$50-$100 people used to pay for each major _version_ of an email client in the
90s. While this may be good for pocketbooks, it has also probably destroyed
desktop mail clients for non-enterprise as a market for a software company
that wants to pay landlords or mortgages in something besides appreciation.

~~~
interpol_p
I don't think many people complain about the $10 price tag of these clients.
Looking to replace Sparrow, I just purchased both Mail Pilot and Unibox
(hadn't heard of either until this article).

The reviews of both apps don't contain complaints about price — unless the app
is not working for the customer, which is a pretty reasonable complaint.

~~~
milesskorpen
People don't complain ... they just don't buy the app. It is astounding the
level of quality & support expected from low-cost apps.

~~~
interpol_p
I sell a $10 app on the App Store and have provided three years of free, major
upgrades and dealt with many thousands of support emails. I never really felt
like I was giving too much to people who paid $10.

Although I have never sold software at a higher price in the past, so I have
nothing to compare with.

~~~
milesskorpen
My impression is that the expectation for software quality and support is the
same for a $1.99 iOS app and a $99 desktop app. Given that upgrades are always
free in the App Store (unless you go the Omni route), the cost different is
probably even more skewed, and if your popularity continues (which is hard in
the app store), your support burden will grow without additional revenue from
those users.

It sounds like you're an indie dev. You probably could charge more than
$1.50/minute for your time ... so if you spend even five minutes supporting a
customer, you're wiped out all your revenue (not even counting development
time!).

------
cgtyoder
Mail.app is near perfect for me - however, Apple REFUSES to fix its IMAP
support. If you access your email from more than one device (hey, that's why
I'm using IMAP), Mail does not properly query header counts, so folders get
out of sync. If you restart Mail, then it does the right thing. I've resigned
myself to doing that 10 times a day. Bleah.

~~~
dchuk
"near perfect" and "[restarting] 10 times a day" seem like incompatible
notions to me.

~~~
coldtea
Near perfect = it does everything I want to they way I like it.

[restarting] 10 times a day = it has a bug that needs restrarting 10 times a
day to do so.

He didn't say it was perfect as in bug free. Just as in "does what I want".

------
ubernostrum
So, the thing that scares me is this:

[http://www.mailpilot.co/bestuseguide.html](http://www.mailpilot.co/bestuseguide.html)

The repetitive "Finding messages outside of Mail Pilot" sections make me think
that it's not going to play well with other clients -- unless it means that
it's storing some sort of metadata/copies in those other places, which is not
the impression I get (it seems to be saying it will actually make a bunch of
folders and move your mail into them, which is Not OK).

~~~
josho
Personally I do not want my mail client to be my task manager. I use a Todo
list app (Things by Cultured Code) that does a smooth job of linking a todo to
an email. I simply create a task linked to an email set for 3 days from now, I
delete the email from my inbox and have 1 'inbox' for my actions. I believe
the various other todo apps on the mac handle this just as easily.

Seeing workflow wrapped into an email client strikes me as wrong—I want my
mail client to be for communication, not for managing my next actions.

------
rll
OS X and iOS qualifies as cross-platform these days?

~~~
schneidmaster
Maybe that wasn't the most precise term, apologies. I assumed the immediate
clarification of what I meant by "cross-platform" was sufficient.

------
james33
I've tried every Mac mail app under the sun, and Mail Pilot is the only one
I've actually enjoyed using. I've been using it as my exclusive e-mail client
since the early preview and it has truly revolutionized how I handle e-mail.
I've committed to their to-list idea of keeping up with e-mail, and I actually
get to inbox zero almost daily (I hadn't reached true inbox zero in years).
Mail Pilot still needs some more polish, but the updates are frequent and it
already surpasses everything else out there in my opinion.

------
interpol_p
I purchased Mail Pilot and Unibox because of this article — with the intent
for one of them to replace Sparrow (which is amazing, but there are bugs that
will never be fixed).

I liked Unibox more. It has a way of minimising the complexity of my inboxes.
Being able to see all the attachments to and from a particular person is very
nice.

Mail Pilot feels a little less polished and less smooth. It also makes a very
strong effort to educate me (popups and explanations are attached to
everything, intro tutorials and videos) but I still found it a little
confusing to navigate. Initially the "New Message" button simply did not work
until I restarted the app.

Unibox did not make much effort to teach me. And despite completely rethinking
my inbox I've found it straightforward to use. Unibox seems to place the
information you are looking for right where you expect it (for example, dates
fade in and attach to the scrollbar as you swipe through your emails, changing
as you scroll). It's very cleverly designed to show and hide information as
you navigate, without showing too much.

If you don't mind switching to a people-centric interface, I'd recommend
Unibox. Mail Pilot seems aimed more at people who like to organise their email
(the reminders system, completion checks, sorting). I just like to read my
email and write, and Unibox does a great job of it.

~~~
schneidmaster
I really want to love Unibox. I used it full-time for a week or so. But I just
seriously cannot get over the way it deals (or rather, doesn't deal) with
folders and labels. If I put something in a folder or archive it, it
disappears from the people-centric UI, and there's not an easy way to
drilldown through folders. Also, things like group messages are super awkward
with the people-centric thing.

If you like the interface and concept, I would definitely recommend Unibox
over Mail Pilot- it's more polished in general. But it's a very opinionated
mail client and I really couldn't get over its opinions.

~~~
interpol_p
Yeah I never use folders (or labels) — I am just not organised enough to
actually use them. I tried for years. So Unibox really meshes with the way I
deal with email.

------
egypturnash
Mail.app, smart mailboxes for everything in the past month, past week, and
past month's unread. Mark stuff as unread if you need to deal with it later.
Screw inbox zero, screw a zillion folders and a zillion rules.

Though I do sort junk from social sites into their own folder and filter them
out of those smart mailboxes.

No other mail client supports smart folders. They all want me to make a
bazillion folders and a bazilljon rules to support them. It all seems so
primitive.

------
codezero
I know they say this on their site, but can someone very clearly confirm that
this is purely a client and uses IMAP/SMTP and doesn't send anything to Mail
Pilot (the company).

~~~
alexobenauer
CEO here, can confirm. Mail Pilot runs IMAP and SMTP directly to your email
server and back; nothing in the middle. Our first client, released in 2012,
did make use of a 3rd party server, but it made too many people uncomfortable,
so we found ways to implement the advanced functionality of Mail Pilot without
needing a 3rd party server (here's the blog post of the announcement that we
were moving away from using a 3rd party server:
[http://mindsense.co/blog/6-major-
announcements/](http://mindsense.co/blog/6-major-announcements/)).

~~~
codezero
Awesome, thanks for confirming this and sorry for being overly paranoid.

~~~
alexobenauer
No problem & don't apologize - I too would be paranoid about giving a random
company my email credentials. That's why we moved away from it.

------
gizmogwai
Ok. So I did give it a try, and it was the worst 3 hours I could spend with a
mail client before asking for a refund.

I tried it both with a GMail and a classical IMAP accounts. Both were a total
disaster. Two years of development for THAT?!

Dates were messed up. Some mails would never appear, some would, but with
another sender! Gmail labels were not properly managed, Lists cannot be
deleted, even when emptied. And those new MailPilot.* folders are just plain
wrong, it breaks your flow in ANY other mail client.

What a waste of time.

------
tunesmith
Just bought it because I heard a few recommendations, and ran into a couple of
sloppy bugs. An email that arrived on January 2nd is showing up as arriving
January 21st - that's a basic sorting bug. And lines that wrap on other email
clients aren't wrapping, without letting me scroll - so there are some lines
in my emails that I can never read.

------
sdegutis
I haven't found a mail client that integrates cleanly with Gmail yet. Mail.app
never respects my settings/preferences and is still quite buggy (on OS X
10.9.1). So I'm eager to find a good mail client replacement for it. But in
the meantime, I'm still using gmail.com. Fortunately with keyboard shortcuts
enabled it's not that bad.

~~~
bitcrusher
I've had pretty good luck with Airmail, which happily supports Gmail keyboard
shortcuts. Might be worth a look.

~~~
daveove
I agree - Airmail is a good choice. Also, I like MailMate and it also supports
Gmail keyboard shortcuts.

------
freshyill
This looks fairly nice, but useless for me without Exchange.

This prompted me to finally just break down and spend the $2 on AirMail. What
surprises am I in for, both good and bad?

~~~
schneidmaster
Good: It's a fairly decent mail app that does all of the things you'd expect.

Bad: Still get bugs and crashes that I'd expect from a beta, not a production-
ready app.

~~~
jkmcf
I've been running the Airmail beta version. Overall it is very stable, plus it
gets bug fixes faster. One great feature is that it supports Exchange, and the
most recent beta overhauled the whole Exchange engine.

One exchange oddity, the contact lookup only appears to work from a "Global
address book" drop down under Window.

~~~
freshyill
The exchange overhaul sounds good, since when I just tried to set it up, it
wouldn't auto-discover my company's server.

I guess I'll give it a shot with gmail in the meantime.

------
Argorak
I would really like to try Mail Pilot, but it doesn't have S/MIME-support.
Some people actually use that actively :(.

------
gallerytungsten
Eudora still works. That's pretty good for a program that came out in the late
1980s.

------
webwielder
For me, Unibox is incredible. Hard to believe I ever used email any other way.

~~~
Spiritus
I hate that Unibox grouped together all my Github emails. I want separate
threads for every issue/project.

