Email goes to either Mac Mail or iPhone email, not both

So I have a bit of an odd problem that never occurred before, that is until I got my new Macbook Pro and decided to combine all of my email into one app, the Mac (Apple) Mail.app. The issue is that I have my gmail, hotmail, and university mail all coming into Mail.app. I also have those 3 email accounts coming into the mail app on my iPhone. Separately they both work like a charm. Never had issues with my iPhone email (except Google's stupid 2 step notification). Except now that I have the accounts on my Mac mail (Mail.app) as well, I've noticed that when a new email comes in, it either appears in my iPhone inbox or in my Mac mail inbox, but not both. Usually, if my computer is on, the mail always goes to the mac mail, not the iPhone. Once i shut down my computer or put it to sleep, the mail returns to my iPhone email once again. I have even noticed a few times that for a few seconds, both my computer and my iPhone will show the new message; then after a few seconds, the new message will disappear on my iPhone, but remain on my computer Mac mail.

Is it possible to have my iPhone and my computer using mac mail (Mail.app) both sync with all my email accounts, and both sources will operate smoothly together? As in if a new email comes in, my computer and my iPhone will show it. If i delete a message on my iPhone, it will delete it on my computer, and vice versa. You would have thought all this would have worked in tandem by default, but obviously it's not. I do not like that the email applications work with either my mac mail or my iPhone mail, but not both, and not together.

Tyr0n3, have you found a solution for this? I have the same problem.

JDL, sorry I have not found a 'real' soction to this. I realized that the problem only seemed to occur on my Hotmail account on the MacMail application, so I eventually just removed that account from my MacMail. It seems to work correctly with Gmail and Outlook, just not Hotmail. So back to the browser based Hotmail.
However, Hotmail still work correctly with the iPhone mail app. So it's all a bit confusing to me still. Seems to me like a bug in the Mail.app on mac computers. I'm hoping with the release of OS6 that will incorporate notifications much like the iPhone, they will release a new mail.app that mirrors the iPhone mail app. That could potentially solve the problem entirely.

If you setup your email accounts to use IMAP rather than PoP that problem will not occur. I know GMail offers a free IMAP account but am not sure Hotmail and other providers do.

chscag said:

If you setup your email accounts to use IMAP rather than PoP that problem will not occur. I know GMail offers a free IMAP account but am not sure Hotmail and other providers do.

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Agreed.

This is down to Hotmail not offering IMAP (a two way protocol which will give you the synchronicity you're after) . It's POP only on desktop. They get around this on iOS by using an Exchange server but for whatever reason neither IMAP or exchange is offered for email.

mrplow said:

Agreed.

This is down to Hotmail not offering IMAP (a two way protocol which will give you the synchronicity you're after) . It's POP only on desktop. They get around this on iOS by using an Exchange server but for whatever reason neither IMAP or exchange is offered for email.

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Thanks for the explanation. Hopefully Mountain Lion addresses this when it comes out next month.

Tyr0n3 said:

Thanks for the explanation. Hopefully Mountain Lion addresses this when it comes out next month.

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There's nothing that can be done in the mail client or the operating system. Microsoft have to offer IMAP or exchange on Hotmail for the desktop platform