><i>Let's face it: email on OSX sucks.</i><p>Compared to what? Since, you know, it can run most apps other platforms can (and most people use), from mutt to Thunderbird and Outlook.<p>><i>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</i><p>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?<p>Labels aside, I never had much problems with Mail.app. And, spam aside, I get around 200 mails per day.
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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MultiTerm" rel="nofollow">http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MultiTerm</a>
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.<p>Plus, I can use Markdown-Here[2] to compose my emails in Markdown.<p>[1]:<a href="http://postbox-inc.com" rel="nofollow">http://postbox-inc.com</a><p>[2]:<a href="http://markdown-here.com" rel="nofollow">http://markdown-here.com</a>
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 <i>version</i> 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.
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.
So, the thing that scares me is this:<p><a href="http://www.mailpilot.co/bestuseguide.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mailpilot.co/bestuseguide.html</a><p>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).
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.
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).<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Though I do sort junk from social sites into their own folder and filter them out of those smart mailboxes.<p>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.
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).
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.<p>I tried it both with a GMail and a classical IMAP accounts. Both were a total disaster. Two years of development for THAT?!<p>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.<p>What a waste of time.
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.
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.
This looks fairly nice, but useless for me without Exchange.<p>This prompted me to finally just break down and spend the $2 on AirMail. What surprises am I in for, both good and bad?