IW: Leopard Mail is Improved, Still Doesn’t Address Fundamentals

November 4th, 2007 at 2:00 PM - News by John Martellaro

There are some great new features in Leopard Mail program, but there are also some things that just stink, according to InformationWeek on Monday. Moreover, it doesnit address the fundamental issues that have broken modern e-mail.

Given the fact that the core principles of e-mail are broken, there are still some things that Leopardis Mail does very well, wrote Mitch Wagner. Namely,

• Linking from applications back to individual mail messages.
• Data detectors that allow link to Address Book and iCal.
• Built-in RSS reader.
• Better search, including limiting search to specific mailboxes.

However, Mr. Wagner was not happy with the Notes, ToDo Features, and IMAP integration. [This reporter could not duplicate the problem with ToDo management that was reported.] He was especially annoyed with the prospect of a future filled with visually cluttered e-mail based on Mailis templates.

The bottom line, however, was that while Leopardis Mail has improvements, Mr. Wagner remained lukewarm because Leopardis mail does nothing to solve the fundamental problems faced with e-mail. "Weive gotten pretty good at filtering out spam and viruses, but weire still inundated with messages about things weire just not interested in, which overwhelm the few -- but important -- messages about things we are interested in. Apple Mail [version] 3 does nothing to help with information overload, and thatis the fundamental problem of e-mail today. Still, for what it is, Apple Mail 3 does a really good job," the author concluded.