The Mac mail program sucks. Mac sucks.

For all the praise that Mac gets about how user-friendly and friendly its software is, the fact remains that several of its core applications are underdeveloped, even childish in their function.

Recently in this thread I asked and complained about the folder function in Mac. The opinion of one experienced user was that you need to use extra software in order to use the folders effectively and conveniently.

The trouble with Mac software is not the general crappiness and overprogramming one tends to see with MS apps. Rather, there are one or two no-brainer things that either you want the software to do or not to do, but which it doesn’t do or does.

In Mac mail, woe betide you if you have more than one account set up. Because you will use the wrong sending address, which can lead to embarassment and other problems.

You cannot make the damn program prompt you for which account you wish to use when you compose a message. Rather, you can select which accout you prefer to use. BUT the program won’t stick to that account. For example, if I am “in” my inbox, the program always chooses the one address that is linked (somehow) with the inbox.

If I respond to a message that is itself a response to a message I sent using a particular account, the machine chooses that account automatically.

Because of the above and similar instances in which the comp gets “smart” on you, you must be forever on guard not to use the wrong account. My friend, who considers himself a power Mac user, said that you pretty much have to use separate mail programs in order to prevent the problem. How convenient.

There are other stupid things about the program. It would be easy to make the paperclip icon show up in the list of e-mails in the inbox to show you have an attachment, but no: you have to click on the e-mail to see if there is anything attached. The program also spits out icons for attachments that can gunk up e-mails for those users whose systems can’t handle them (almost all Windows users?).

I could go on about Mac–not just this program but many others. The Office software for Mac is, in general, inferior to Windows versions. I prefer WordPerfect, but Corel no longer makes it for Mac.

OSX is nice and has many convenient features. But Mac always seems to give with one hand and take with another. I goddamn fucking HATE the autofill function that pops up in Address Book (a really shitty, underdeveloped program if ever there was one) and just about everywhere else.

I’m quite sure that my next machine will be a Windows machine. Mac just kinda lays one.

I’ve never had a problem with the Mail program like the ones you describe. Maybe you just had some defective software?

The worst complaint I’ve ever had about my Mac is that I don’t like that you need a seperate program to organize bookmarks in Safari. But then, I rarely use Safari. Mostly Firefox.

The multiple account behaviour you describe sounds exactly as it is in Outlook, to be perfectly honest with you, and that’s not even free with the OS. If you’re replying to an email sent to one address, it makes perfect sense to have the reply default to using that address. In Outlook, too, you specify a default account unless it’s able to determine automatically which one you’re using. There is no way I can recall to make it pop-up and ask you which you want to use each time. There is, however, a drop-down menu at the top of the compose window which lets you select the account to use. Is this not the case with Mail?

I use multiple accounts in the one inbox in Outlook, and yes, it’s a breeding ground for the occasional cockup, which is why I set my default to be the email address I’m happy to use for (say) job applications. But there’s no computer so clever that’ll save you from being a wally, and I’ve yet to see an email app that specifically prompts you for an account every time you click “compose” (which would drive me nuts, pers’nally). There probably is one, somewhere, but I don’t particularly see what it’s got to do with Windows vs. Mac.

Do you use more than one mail account?

We’re not same-paging, I guess. Safari has a book-marks page that just comes up when you hit on it. It’s not a separate program.

Safari is OK, but I’ve come across many sites I need to use for work that aren’t Mac-compatible (gis/map modules for real estate, mainly). You can trade bookmarks with another Mac user pretty easily (just toss the folders into Mail), but you can’t export (without separate software) for a Windows user (and can’t import, either).

Let’s face it: The real advantage to Mac right now is that they don’t write viruses for it. Otherwise, Windows is pretty much the way to go.

Yeah, I wasn’t comparing Mail to Outlook. I was just saying that Mail sucks absolutely.

What I really want is a complete partition of the accounts so that they appear in different windows. Different inboxes, different outboxes, and when you’re in that window that’s the account you compose with. Cockups no more. It needn’t be inconvenient to use, either: just have a color-coded toggle of some type at the top of the page, etc. etc.

Yes, that’s true; it’s the best way 99% of the time. But if you’ve mistakenly used the wrong address in the first place, then it’s another opportunity to redo the error.

And it’s just another element of the confusion. At the very least, I want to tell the machine, “Don’t fuckin’ use anything but the default address unless I tell you to.” Why? Because then I can get in the habit of making sure I’m using the other address when I need to. As it is, it helps me out correctly most of the time, which makes me too lazy to check when I really need to.

Yes, that’s the way it is in Mail, too.

The partition idea would save me from being a Wally and would make e-mail for me a cleaner and neater experience. Being promoted every time would not make ME in my circumstance nuts, since I use both accounts almost equally. I guess what I am asking for here is software customizability and flexibility.

My real point in the Windows vs. Mac debate is that Mac isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Often it’s not smarter and more sophisticated than Windows; rather, often Windows has more features (see Address Book for an example of Crayola software).

View menu -> Columns -> Attachments

Even shows how many attachments there are. And yes, I do use Mail with multiple accounts and have never had a problem.

You might like Thunderbird. It has a Mac version and lets you do the partitioning thing you want (it also has a global inbox option too.) Damn fine piece of software, imo.

It’s got most of the features of Outlook’s email program too but no built in calander. But like its sister-program Firefox there are extensions for Thunderbird, including one that ties in with iCal.

[QUOTE=Aeschines]
In Mac mail, woe betide you if you have more than one account set up. Because you will use the wrong sending address, which can lead to embarassment and other problems.
I switched from Eudora to Mac Mail. I had the same problem with Eudora with multiple accounts. You have to remember, before sending each e-mail, to choose the right account. For someone like me who uses several accounts in almost equal proportions, there is not an easy answer. If you have one account that you use almost all the time, then the “default” account behaviour would be good, but for the way I work, I find that Mac Mail “guesses” right most of the time, and it works better for me than Eudora.

As someone has already said, this is easy to do. Spend a few minutes to look in the menus and learn the features.

Thanks, that’s a good tip.

If you want to really separate stuff, another option could be to use different user profiles. I don’t know how well Mac OS/X supports this, but on Windows XP it’s easy to switch between them. Software and account settings are then separate for each user. I have one option where I want to log onto work completely with the same username and everything when I connect through VPN to the Office, and for certain hardcore things I will switch to that account.

In general, that works quite well with the simplest of software.

Does Mac OS/X allow fast switching between multiple logged in users?

I did, before my husband got his computer. He checked his account through Mail as well. As long as we were logged on to the computer itself under our respective profiles, there was never a problem.

Yes, I know there’s a bookmark page in Safari - that wasn’t what I was referring to. Safari saves bookmarks just fine, but if you have a lot and you want to re-organize them - say, in alphabetical order, it won’t do that. I had to download a program called SafariSorter so I wouldn’t have to search through a jumble of bookmarks to find a certain one.

It all depends on what you’re using your computer for that determines which system is best. I’m a graphic designer, and Mac is still the design standard. I did design work for about a year on an IBM system and had problems all the time, especially with Photoshop - it was really unstable. When I switched back to Mac I had zero problems. So Windows is not the way to go for everything.

I think this is another good example of how Mac software is underdeveloped (yes, I know IE is no great shakes either). You are right that bookmark management in Safari is quite unsophisticated.

I believe you. Mac and those graphics programs go way back.

I guess with Mac, the way people tout it and all, you are set up for disappointment. Both Mac and Windows have their poor spots, but people tend to have lower expectations for Windows.

There is more experience within design with Macs. But the main problem always comes from Mac people using unstable PC Ports of Mac software. I personally think that a program like Paint Shop Pro, for instance (recently bought up by Corel), has always performed better (in pure raw speed) than Photoshop, has always been cheaper, and I daresay is at least as user friendly, if not more so.

What, and ruin a nice ignorant rant? :wink:

What’s nice about it?

It’s a well-crafted example of ignorance. :smiley:

Top 10 Reasons To Use OSX over Windows
[ol]
[li]Stability (OSX 10.2+) and security.[/li][li]Ability to run GNU/* and most common *nix apps natively or with a simple recompile instead of abstraction layers or messy ports[/li][li]Ease of networking[/li][li]HFS+ filesystem and Spotlight (OSX 10.4)[/li][li]Display PostScript-analog Quartz display engine/specification.[/li][li]Comprehensive scripting/autoscripting support and implicit support for perl and *nix shell scripting languages.[/li][li]Autoconfiguration (analogous to Mircosoft’s “Plug’N’Play”) that actually works[/li][li]Slightly cheaper (although as a continuing oversight, it does not have the words, “Don’t Panic” inscribed in large, friendly letters on the cover.)[/li][li]The OpenDarwin and FreeBSD open source developer bases which contribute both hacking expertise and stability/vulnerability testing the components (Mach and BSD) of the Darwin kernel[/li][li]Apple CEO Steven Jobs doesn’t bounce around stage like a chimpanzee on methamphetamines.[/li][/ol]

It sucks, of course, that the machines are so much more expensive for (roughly) comperable performance (though generally higher build quality), but that’s lumps.

Stranger

::raises hand in acknowledgment::

Since you (the OP) are not posting to extoll the virtues of Outlook ::gag:: …

Yeah, Mail kinda sucks. Wanna know a secret? Every email program that isn’t named “Eudora” kinda sucks.

Seriously, I kid you not. Eudora is to email what Unix is to servers. There’s a little bit of learning curve on some of the complex features, but…would you perhaps care to manage 19 incoming and outgoing email identities, each sending from up to 5 different SMTP servers apiece (but always fetching from the same POP servers, of course), and have your outbound email all appropriately organized by email identity regardless of SMTP server used, except for the replies to a certain type of message which, of course, you want files separately?

Eudora, baby.

Sometimes need to find an email you sent from Og knows what account to JoeBlow on the SDMB back in '02, whose real name and/or email address you do not recall, which was about either whales or dolphins or the fishing thereof and the legality thereof, and which had a .jpg file attachment?

Eudora, baby.

Want to create a virtual mailbox of all email mentioning SDMB or Straight Dope without actually moving the incoming or outgoing emails from their real folders, and sort by date and read through them in consecutive order (inbound and outbound alike)?

That’s Eudora.

Mail is OK. Kinda, sorta. As freebie mail software from a major OS vendor goes. But I wouldn’t wanna use it.

I have to say that, for all Macs are touted for user-friendliness, they take a hell of a lot of basic knowledge.

For example, I have to deal with Macs at work. Usually I have to go rescue some poor guy who’s just trying to get to his CD and the Mac for whatever reason isn’t reading it. So first thing I try to do is eject it. What? No eject button? Well, how am I, an iggernt PC user, supposed to do? Oh, that’s right, put the icon in the trash. Except that the CD isn’t being read, so there is no icon. Well, I’ll just go to My Computer and…what? No simple, easy-to-read master file for all of the various drives? Crap!

And so on. As far as I can tell, Mac’s idea of computer navigation is a massive list that you’re supposed to memorize so you know where the hell everything is, or suffer from major aggravation. Heaven forbid you want to look at the cleverly concealed hardwear. And don’t even start with the one-button mouse. I know, I know, you can get a two-button mouse and download the appropriate program, but why bother when I can get a GUI that’s designed with idiots in mind, besides being a hell of a lot cheaper? Sure, it’s hard to break a Mac, but it’s also damn hard to use one. Macs assume a level of intelligence in their users that PCs don’t, and that’s bloody well fine with me.

Whenever you have to go out of your way to turn on or off a standard or reasonable feature in Windows, then it’s Microsoft’s stupidity. When it comes to Mac, you’re a lazy and neglectful computer owner who hasn’t bothered to go through all of the menus.

[Barry Manilow]You’ve got to show your computer some love, baby![/Barry Manilo]