Part of the success that Safari has become is WebKit, the open source API that’s a by-product of Apple’s web browser development. By using WebKit, developers can more quickly develop a feature rich web browser without worrying about developing a fast, complete web rendering engine. Back in the day, one of the reasons that OmniWeb fell behind was its lackluster web rendering (and in particular its Javascript engine). They managed to turn it around by using WebCore and later WebKit. Thanks to WebKit, not only do we have a renewed OmniWeb, but Shiira and solid web browsing in other products such as NetNewsWire.
More recently, desktop email client development has left many users with diverse requirements out in the cold. Brent Simmons identified several problems he found when trying to choose an email client. In particular, Mail.app fails rather spectacularly when it comes to heavy use of the keyboard. Filing using the keyboard is nigh impossible and the text editing in Mail.app leaves much to be desired. There’s something wrong when webmail (Gmail) beats a desktop client when it comes to using the keyboard to perform actions.
The problem is that while this leaves plenty of opportunity for someone to create a superior third party client, it’s a largely futile effort without some kind of support mechanism built into the hosting OS. If Apple were to make MailKit, we could see a pro version of Mail.app that addresses many concerns of users that aren’t dead in the center of Apple’s bell curve user.
For the record, I use Mail Act-On to make a few filing keyboard shortcuts. Because I have a few filing locations that are oft used, it works, but it doesn’t help all my filing, forcing me to fumble for my mouse fairly regularly. Who else wants just a bit more from Mail.app?
I would settle even for a better AppleScript implementation: the present one seems to be very uneven, if not plainly flawed. From time to time, I try again to concoct a script that, on the basis of a rule:
1- sets up a reply message quoting the original
2- adds some boilerplate text
3- takes the attachments of the original message and attachs them to the reply
4- sends the reply.
Up to now, I wasn't able to find a convenient way to do these few things.
Actually one thing I'd love Apple to work on is a more efficient spam filter. Compared to other programs it's very thin.
Core Data?
How about you correspond with Simmons, Gruber, Siracusa, and others and write an open letter to Apple?
Thanks for this post.
-John
Great idea. I just filed a BugReporter enhancement request for MailKit.
I have to say that I haven't been too happy with Mail. I'm using it for my personal email only, as I have to use entourage at work.
A big frustration for me was that I wanted to do a simple mail merge with Address Book the other day, and I couldn't do it (or at least figure it out for the life of me). A relatively simple thing to do in Entourage or Outlook, and was impossible in Mail (or so I believe). Just wish a couple basic features like that were more readily available.
You might just be onto something there.
I remember how mail worked on the Be OS, which was similar to how mp3 files were handled, too; no one application had ownership over the actual resources, they simply edited and / or appended file attributes.
Maybe that could be a direction for Apple to pursue?
I switched from Entourage to Mail w/ 10.4, mostly because I could never find any archived messages with Entourage. My major gripes about Mail are:
1. It often 'pauses' and thinks for up to 20 seconds when I am replying to or forwarding quite small messages. This is not because I have a huge number of messages (my Inbox at present has only 43 messages in it), nor because my system is overloaded (Core 2 Duo MBP 2.33GHz w/ 2GB RAM).
2. Not great spam filter (compared to, e.g., GMail)
3. Terrible import/export interface/co-ordination with Address Book