Why Does Apple’s Mail.app Rock And Suck?

I seriously doubt that anyone who reads the Dojo is unaware of my deep and abiding love of Apple and its fantastic products. You may, however, be unaware of my deep loathing for some things Apple manages to screw up, even when they are “teh shiz”. In this particular case I speak, as I make so well known in this posts title, that I am very, very, very peeved at Apple’s at once brilliant, then horrendous Mail.app application. Those of you who are stuck in Windows will never know the joy of Mail.app (when its working) and, at the same time, will never know what fear and hate is truly like. To love something so much that you continue loving it when it treats you like crap is a special feeling.

So, what makes Apple think this is okay? To be honest, I’m not sure. Mail.app is a special application which treats multiple email account with the respect they deserve, granting the user the ability work with all email as if it were one giant account. It does this because it applies simple smarts which any one of the hundreds of email clients which have ever come out could have applied at any time and chose not to. Every email account has an Inbox, a Sent folder, a Drafts folder, and a Trash folder. Does it not make sense to combine the contents of all accounts into one folder called Inbox? Of course it does.

Does anyone else do it? No.

I hear all of your Windows folk out there screaming your heads off about how Outlook does this, but I’m here to tell you it doesn’t. Not the same way. I’m no Apple-only nerd who touched a Windows 95 in DOS mode back in 1996 and consider myself in the know. I’ve been actively working with Windows and Microsoft technology based servers for years. I’m very, VERY familiar with this kind of stuff, and Apple walks through it like a hot coals walker handles temperate pavement. What Apple doesn’t do, however, is reliability.

I’ve had my issues, but I’m not the only one. Right now I can’t send mail. I even went through the trouble of setting up a single outgoing account for all messages since late last year Mail.app couldn’t remember how to login to several different accounts at the same time (if you tell me that having more than one account is breaking it, I’ll freak… comprende vous?). Its so bad that I’m actually using Entourage, which is a horrible kludge of an application. One of the issues that amazes me, though, is that when Mail.app is thinking hard to cause the spinning beachball to appear, all you need to do is click a half dozen times in the window to crash it.

Like I said, though. I’m not the only one. I have reports from people very close to me as well as dozens of strangers and semi-acquaintances that they are also having issues with Mail.app. They have lost mail, watched Mail.app practically eat itself, crash over and over again, and many other unpleasant behaviors. Why Apple continues to allow this is beyond me, especially when Steve Jobs and Co. are so rabid about user experience. If Apple could just make it work, make it more responsive, stop it from crashing and eating email, fix up the SMTP (postfix or sendmail, anyone?), and make the filters easier to create a manage (TIP TO APPLE: Don’t put it in the freaking Preferences panel and add a Create Filter From Message button!!!).

I’m just saying!