Overall OS X is excellent. Leopard is going to rock.
I guess because everything seems so thought out and logical (and great!) that when they have missed something it contrasts sharply. It’s only been through the use of Windows at work where I can see these differences. For all of the flack that Microsoft gets they have managed to get some things right. Outlook is great at managing large amounts of email.
The one feature I would add to OS X Mail: clicking on the unread or flagged columns modifies that setting.
If you look at the first screenshot on that page you may notice a column that is headed by a dot. This column shows a blue dot next to a message if the message is unread. Clicking on the dot does nothing. I think it should toggle the unread status of the message.
More important is the flagging functionality. It isn’t shown in that screenshot but you can add a column that shows a little flag so important messages can be kept highlighted. I use this all the time in both Outlook and Mail. However in mail to add and remove a flag I can use a keyboard shortcut (shift + apple + L) or right click on the message, get a contextual menu - select mark which pops up a sub menu, and finally select flagged. I actually use the latter because the shotcut has no meaning to me, and it’s hard to type. In Outlook I can just click on the empty flag and it is automatically flagged. Outlook takes this flag idea further and has multiple flags of different colours. Both mail clients have smart folders where all flagged messages end up.
Outlook is so much better in this regard! I guess it’s the difference between a home user and a business persons email. Outlook is targeted to a different market.
That aside, I don’t think it would be hard, and I don’t think it distracts or detracts from the simple, elegant interface in any way so that clicks on the flag column toggle the flagged status of the mail message. If I get the time I’m going to have a look into the Mail plugin format and / or have a look at SIMBL to make the necessary modifications to Mail.
Anyway, everyone should know I’m a major Macintosh fan. I’ve been tied with many conversions from Windows to OS X. Normally I’m blowing Apple’s trumpet - and I still do, but I think for a bit I’ll discuss what I don’t like or think they should fix.
Can I send suggestions to Apple? I had a little look but couldn’t find any email address or form.
Does Outlook still take like 10 seconds to open and 30 to close? Because that was reason enough for me to never even try to use it. Though I guess everyone else has really fast machines and it seems almost reasonable. But what on earth could require that sort of intensive processing when closing a program?
On my computer at work it takes around 20 seconds to load (alongside other startup items), and a around the same time to close. So yeah… it’s a bit slow but I’m used to that on the PC.
Ah, you have it as a start-up item? So you only have to wait for it to load once, but then it makes everything else slower!
I generally use Gmail. Then most of it’s running on someone else’s machine. And when that’s not behaving, I have the slightly annoying webmail interface for my domain.
Why do you need to flag your email by the way?
It’s kinda like a ‘todo’ list. The emails I’ve flagged I still need to do something before it’s finished.
I guess once Leopard comes out I will be able to use the built in todo server that syncs up to iCal… but I still like flags.
Another awesome thing about Outlook: Word. It uses word for writing emails.
Another awesome thing: Msn… it shows msn status within Outlook… but if you want to install a new version of msn you need to shutdown Outlook as well.