04-23-2011, 04:04 AM

Most of what I do on the junkyard G4 (yeah, really -- 400 mHz, panther) is email. I had been using TheBat on my Windows machine but there isn't a version for Apple and several other mail clients didn't work out for one reason or another.

Apple mail, however, does all the essentials pretty well and like everything else I've seen in the Mac world, it works. No crashes, no can't install that part, no feature is documented but nothing happens ... it just works.

However there are a few things I'd like to use/have that I haven't been able to locate in Apple Mail. I'd appreciate being told "You're right -- that's not there" or whatever the truth is, for each of the following:

1. Read incoming emails as plain text regardless of how they were sent. The sender should have the right to use aqua script or yellow on violet if she wants; I'd like to see it in black on white and in a font I've chosen for readability.

2. Queue outgoing messages for sending at a later time. Maybe the connection is down, maybe I have to use the house phone line and don't want to tie it up ...

I don't want a dialog for this; just a button (or keyboard shortcut) 'queue this for later' and a way to say (later on) 'send it all now.'

3. Reply to a specific address in an email rather than to the sender thereof without having to create a new message and fill in the subject and text I want to quote. In TheBat you can right click any address and get a list of options that includes 'reply to this address'; something like that would be ideal.

4. Set the length of time until a message is marked 'read.' As things stand a small fraction of a second after a message is selected, it is marked as read. Meaning that if I scroll down to get to a message that needs priority attention I lose the info about what I've read. Two seconds or something like that would be appropriate.

5. Send personalized emails to a list of addressees. Sometimes called 'bulk email.' I don't do much of this but when I do there's no choice. As in 'if I can't get it on this machine than I have to keep a Win machine in operation.'

6. A way to get rid of the 'this is a blank message -- are you sure you want to send it' warning. I send a lot of blank messages; I'd like to be able to do it without a discussion.

Thanks for any help!

04-23-2011, 08:22 AM

I used The Bat also when I used Windows. When I first got a PowerBook several years ago, I eventually settled on Mailsmith. At the time it was ridiculously expensive, but it had one critical feature nothing else had: forcing all emails to plain text. I can't recall if it meets all your criteria (I now use Postbox), but that's easily your best bet for the Mac you have. It's now free. Its major handicap, and the reason I no longer use it, is lack of IMAP support.
mailsmith.org | Mailsmith Updates

You will need one of the older versions.

04-23-2011, 08:32 AM

Originally Posted by Walt_Hutchens

1. Read incoming emails as plain text regardless of how they were sent. The sender should have the right to use aqua script or yellow on violet if she wants; I'd like to see it in black on white and in a font I've chosen for readability.

Here's an option.

2. Queue outgoing messages for sending at a later time. Maybe the connection is down, maybe I have to use the house phone line and don't want to tie it up ...

I don't want a dialog for this; just a button (or keyboard shortcut) 'queue this for later' and a way to say (later on) 'send it all now.'

Sure. Save the message as a draft.

3. Reply to a specific address in an email rather than to the sender thereof without having to create a new message and fill in the subject and text I want to quote. In TheBat you can right click any address and get a list of options that includes 'reply to this address'; something like that would be ideal.

Not sure about this one.

4. Set the length of time until a message is marked 'read.' As things stand a small fraction of a second after a message is selected, it is marked as read. Meaning that if I scroll down to get to a message that needs priority attention I lose the info about what I've read. Two seconds or something like that would be appropriate.

I agree with you here, the current setting is a little aggressive and it would be nice if they had a simple setting in preferences for it. But apparently not. Here's one suggestion.

5. Send personalized emails to a list of addressees. Sometimes called 'bulk email.' I don't do much of this but when I do there's no choice. As in 'if I can't get it on this machine than I have to keep a Win machine in operation.'

Easy one. Open the Address Book app and create a new group. Add your addresses to the group and you've got a distribution list. When the time comes to send your email, just type the name of the DL into the TO: field.

6. A way to get rid of the 'this is a blank message -- are you sure you want to send it' warning. I send a lot of blank messages; I'd like to be able to do it without a discussion.

I don't believe so. Apparently you're not the only one who is annoyed by it.

Thanks for any help!

No problem and welcome to Mac-Forums.

04-28-2011, 03:30 AM

Since posting my problem trying to do fairly complex (and a lot of) email in a Mac environment and not finding good answers to a number of issues, I've been on a quest to find another mail client. I've tried perhaps a dozen and frankly most of them have become a blur; the general picture is that they all had interesting features but none were better able to address even most of the problems listed above.

EXCEPT for Outlook Express. There is a Mac version from Microsoft that will run with panther and it covers all of those issues.

Unfortunately, it's from Microsoft. Which means (a) crippled (presumably so I'll buy Office or something like that), and (b) buggy.

'Crippled' includes the spelling checker and several useful options have been taken out. Really ... a recent and generally serious email client with no spelling checker.

Buggy is more interesting. If you create a mailbox that's a subsidiary of the In Box then you can never get any messages into it via rule, although they DO disappear from the In Box. If you then delete that subsidiary mail box and the rule, the messages STILL disappear.

A clean reinstall and creating mailboxes at the same level as the In Box fixed that. A more serious problem is that you cannot get text from an HTML message into a plain text message. Plain text to plain text you just highlight the desired text and hit 'reply' and it shows up there. HTML to plain text, NOTHING. And you also cannot use the clipboard -- you get the former contents of the CB when you do the paste.

Possibly switching to writing mail in HTML would get me by this but I'm not willing to do that.

An additional issue is that OE for Mac runs only in the classic environment.

There doesn't seem to be a successor to OE for Mac. Office for Mac contains something called Entourage that includes a mail client but it ISN'T Outlook and I'm not willing to buy a product costing upward of $100 in the hope that it might do the job.

It appears that Pegasus has been brought back from the dead and there was talk of a Pegasus for Mac. I have tried to sign up for that listserve list but the list is said to be 'closed' and whether that means 'gone' or 'private' I don't know. I used Pegasus several years ago and would certainly expect a Mac version to meet my needs. Does anyone know more about this?

As much as I like the Mac and the Apple environment -- 'software and hardware by grownups' -- I probably would have stayed away if I'd known how difficult the mail client problem was going to be.

04-28-2011, 10:39 AM

Originally Posted by Walt_Hutchens

As much as I like the Mac and the Apple environment -- 'software and hardware by grownups' -- I probably would have stayed away if I'd known how difficult the mail client problem was going to be.

Well now in all fairness, you are using a rather old version of OS X on old hardware that can't run more current email clients. It's even possible that there "was" something you could have used, but has since ceased development and left the market while clients that would meet your needs have taken over but can't run on your hardware. I currently use Postbox, though I can't state with certainty that it would have met your needs (there is a Windows version you could always try out). Worst case scenario, on an Intel Mac, you could use a virtual machine running Windows just to use the email client of your liking, though admittedly I would find that rather undesirable.

I wish we could be of more help, but ultimately you need to use whatever works for you, and if sticking with Windows is what it takes, then no one can really fault you. I do think it's peculiar that finding an email client that matches what Outlook can do has been a challenge, but this is not the first time I've heard this here. It sounds like a great opportunity for a developer to seize on.

04-29-2011, 09:19 PM

First, I'm increasingly pleased with OE for Mac 5.0.6. The intentional crippling is beyond annoying (NO SPELLING CHECKER!) but it does all the stuff I do many times a day very well indeed. Except for the bulk mail requirement I think it covers every item in the list above and it does a couple of them better than TheBat.

If I could pay now for a full version of OE and that full version had a pathway to more modern hardware I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I have spent some time reading about both Entourage and Outlook for Mac 2011: You want to see some unhappy users read the reviews of O for M 2011. Wow ... my screen is still smoking.

Other than bugs most of what they're complaining about wouldn't bother me, but I'd have a very hard time spending money on something that got such generally bad reviews without playing with it for a while first to see that it did what I needed. Those guys didn't get features that seemed obvious to them ...

Among other issues that would be a red flag for me: The user interface isn't faithful to either Outlook for Windows OR Entourage.

Originally Posted by lifeisabeach

Well now in all fairness, you are using a rather old version of OS X on old hardware that can't run more current email clients. It's even possible that there "was" something you could have used, but has since ceased development and left the market while clients that would meet your needs have taken over but can't run on your hardware. I currently use Postbox, though I can't state with certainty that it would have met your needs (there is a Windows version you could always try out). Worst case scenario, on an Intel Mac, you could use a virtual machine running Windows just to use the email client of your liking, though admittedly I would find that rather undesirable.

Your points are well taken. While I know why I got here, I also know that this is a self inflicted problem.

I wish we could be of more help, but ultimately you need to use whatever works for you, and if sticking with Windows is what it takes, then no one can really fault you.

The reasons I decided to try a Mac remain valid and I like the environment enough that I'm not eager to go back to Windows. I've reached the point with OE/Mac on my G4 that it's okay for now and I will continue investigating other mail clients. I'd bet that I can nail down an Intel Mac not too far in the future, although that may reset this whole process to square one.

This has been the conversion from ****, but I've been there before and success eventually came along.

You've been a considerable help. Most 'new user of ...' problems are simple ignorance and that's as true of me as anyone else. Knowing that there isn't an obvious answer that I've overlooked has kept me from wondering if I was totally wasting my time.

I do think it's peculiar that finding an email client that matches what Outlook can do has been a challenge, but this is not the first time I've heard this here. It sounds like a great opportunity for a developer to seize on.

It is peculiar. It seems that two things may be in play: (1) Macs are most often bought for other kinds of applications -- not mainly for Internet communication. Apple Mail would be fine for most users, as would several other mail clients. (2) The Internet communication marketplace is developing most rapidly in other regions -- mobile/portable devices, social media, and such -- so that's where a developer would look for the growing market.

Another way to say it: Email, like the written paragraph generally is becoming obsolescent. I don't see how it can be good for civilization to reduce our powers of thought to the Twitterizable but that is the direction things are heading.

Again, thanks.

04-30-2011, 01:32 AM

Originally Posted by Walt_Hutchens

First, I'm increasingly pleased with OE for Mac 5.0.6. The intentional crippling is beyond annoying (NO SPELLING CHECKER!) but it does all the stuff I do many times a day very well indeed. Except for the bulk mail requirement I think it covers every item in the list above and it does a couple of them better than TheBat.

Spell checking is built into OS X. I think it's changed a bit since 10.3, but it's an option either in your context menu, or in the Services menu (go to the menu bar, app-name, scroll down to Services. Actually it may be the Edit menu. The Services menu can be an incredibly powerful tool. Here's some resources on the things you can do. Remember… these are available typically in any app.
Random Tech: Mac OS X Services (the menu you never go to)
Why does Apple bury spell checking? - AppleInsider

You can very easily create your own Services items using Automator, which was first introduced in OS 10.4.

Oh yes, here's one package of Service menu items that I suspect you will find a must-have…. WordService. It offers a lot of text-formatting options, some of which are useful with email (like fixing quote levels).

Here's the developer's page describing it and some others they have:
Needful Things: Services

Here's the direct link to the legacy version for Panther:
http://www.devon-technologies.com/fi...ervice_2.7.zip

The reasons I decided to try a Mac remain valid and I like the environment enough that I'm not eager to go back to Windows. I've reached the point with OE/Mac on my G4 that it's okay for now and I will continue investigating other mail clients. I'd bet that I can nail down an Intel Mac not too far in the future, although that may reset this whole process to square one.

On the plus side, if you do get an Intel Mac, your options will explode. You can use the OS of your choice, emulated or not. And Snow Leopard is massively improved over Panther, much in ways that aren't obvious. Apple has really refined OS X over the years in a lot of ways. It's a world of difference from Windows where it just seems to get more bloated and features piling on without any real thought to overall usability. Apple's legendary attention to detail and the overall user experience is what makes OS X shine.

It is peculiar. It seems that two things may be in play: (1) Macs are most often bought for other kinds of applications -- not mainly for Internet communication. Apple Mail would be fine for most users, as would several other mail clients. (2) The Internet communication marketplace is developing most rapidly in other regions -- mobile/portable devices, social media, and such -- so that's where a developer would look for the growing market.

Another way to say it: Email, like the written paragraph generally is becoming obsolescent. I don't see how it can be good for civilization to reduce our powers of thought to the Twitterizable but that is the direction things are heading.

It may be as simple as someone having a patent on the things you want your email client to do. *shrug* You do have a point about email. Instant messaging and Facebook is taking over. I suppose Twitter is to some extent for some people or uses… I don't get the appeal of it myself. Anywho, glad to be of help.