Using Apple Mail instead of Thunderbird
Posted by lyle Thu, 01 Jul 2004 17:01:25 GMT
Recently Thunderbird switched it’s preferences or some such, so to use the new Thunderbird I would have to re-train my SPAM filters. Instead, I decided to switch over to Mail….
I have been using Thunderbird as my personal email client for a while now – it’s a great app with a very good spam filtering system (Bayesian analysis). Thunderbird also has a fairly rapid development cycle for an open source application. So, improvements are released all the time. My work machine is a Macintosh PowerBook. For work I use Apple’s built in “Mail” application which comes with OS X. This is a wonderful app. Like Thunderbird Mail allows the checking of multiple accounts and supports SSL Auth SMTP and IMAPs.
Things I like about Apple Mail over Thunderbird:- Mail’s SPAM filers work seamlessly with the OS X built in Address Book – which I use as my primary address application – creating a white list from all of the contacts in my Address-book.
- Mail displays an image of a person with the message (assuming the address book has a picture in it)
- Mail has a great “View -> Organize Messages by Thread” – which is just yummy.
- Mail’s SPAM filter colors the line in list view to a shade of brown – this makes ignoring and going through spam very easy. (I’m still in training mode.
- Mail has a wonderful Spell Checker; as you type and simply a great “algorithm”. Mail’s spell checker is so good that when I was using Thunderbird I use to compose the message in Mail and then copy it over, but then again, my spelling sucks.
- I like my mail inbox to be sorted by recive date. When set up this way Thunderbird goes to the wrong message (the one below) when I delete a message.
- Both clients allow you to block loading remote images in html messages, but Mail has a “Load Images” button for messages that contain images hosted somewhere else. This is very useful, because I sometimes get html messages that I want to see the images in. Viewing that message with the images in Thunderbird requires me to change preferences and then change them back when I am done.
- Thunderbird is available on multiple operating systems. So at home I will still be running Thunderbird.
- In Thunderbird even in training mode I can have a message deleted when I mark a message as junk. In Apple Mail in training mode the mail is marked as Junk but is not moved – and a manual mark doesn’t move it either.
So for now I am using Apple Mail but I will definetly keep an eye on Thunderbird, I’m sure it will get better.
