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I have a minor obsession with email clie…

Friday 2 April 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

I have a minor obsession with email clients. I’m fascinated with how people use email and how clients have (and haven’t) evolved over the last 40 years.

So, I started a separate blog on Tumblr to explore email clients, called mike checks mail.

The idea is to look at clients available now on OS X, and discuss their features and their flaws. It’s basically very focused app criticism.

The first few posts have focused on the three free apps I use daily – Apple Mail, GMail and Thunderbird. Eventually I want to explore the other major mail clients currently on the market, including Entourage, Postbox, Eudora, and Outspring. I’d also like to dive into other platforms, to avoid reinventing something smart that’s been in (say) emacs for 30 years.

Take a look, and send me questions and suggestions for topics. Let’s geek out on mail clients…

Tagged:

2010-04-02  »  mike

Talkback x 2

  1. ssp
    2 April 2010 @ 4:04 pm

    Interesting idea, I’m looking forward to reading this.

    Points I find interesting are:

    • groupings of e-mail (by person, by event?) and how to do them well (Apple Mail just stinks in that respect, even though it does in theory integrate with both your calendar and your address book)
    • search results, particularly the question why so many e-mail clients love sorting them by ‘relevance’ when I can’t remember situations in which I didn’t want to sort by date (special blame to Apple Mail once again)
    • good ways to handle signatures/encryption
    • pine: whenever I use GUI clients I keep thinking that pine may have been more efficient back in the days
    • import/export: how good are applications at that? because your e-mail is there to stay and the day on which you switch clients will come.
  2. mike
    4 April 2010 @ 2:27 pm

    Sven – thanks for the ideas, I’ll add them to the list. I’ll definitely add Pine, since I do occasionally use it, too.

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