Mail and the Mac

When I first switched to the Mac, I wasn't used to using a native email app. Years of using PCs and trying to endure Outlook, Windows Live Mail, and more just made Gmail seem all the nicer. Consequently, I tried out Mail.app, but pretty much went back to using Gmail online. That is, until I tried out Sparrow.

Sparrow didn't click for me instantly, but once it did, I was hooked. Sparrow was the best of Gmail mixed with the best of a native Mac app, and I was hooked. Its clean interface and native labels support, combined with CloudApp - my favorite file sharing tool - made it the perfect email tool for me. As someone who gets dozens - if not hundreds - of emails per day, Sparrow ended up being one of the apps I use the most.

Then, Google had the bright idea to buy out Sparrow and stop developing it. Sparrow still works great today, but odds are that won't last forever. A future OS X update that breaks it would mess my email workflow up entirely. Plus, it has a few odd bugs - like showing a blank white window if you open a new email in a new window without previewing it in the main app window first, or the not-so-infrequent search failure - that seem to bug me more every day they're not fixed.

Today, the options are basically Mail.app (Apple's built-in email app), Postbox (a spinoff from Thunderbird), and Outlook (Microsoft's … wait, don't even go there). There's also a number of promising new mail apps coming soon for the Mac, including the Sparrow-inspired .Mail, but I really need something new today.

That's why Mail.app is going to be my next email app. My colleague Pierre Wizla just wrote a brilliant article at Mac.AppStorm about how he uses Mail.app, including ways to customize it to make email less of a time-drag. Go read it, I'll wait.

Now you see why I'm sold on using Mail.app. Just the CMD+[number] trick to switch between smart mailboxes - incidentally the same shortcut that works in Safari to trigger bookmarklets in your bookmarks bar - is enough to make me think that Mail.app will integrate better in my workflow than any other email app has so far.

Here's to hoping that'll work out.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.