News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 31, 2006

internet

Attack of the Mail zombies!

Posted May. 31, ’06, 8:05 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Internet

.Mac mailThe last few days, I’ve been experiencing some strangeness with my .Mac account. Mail messages that I read show up as unread in my mailbox a few scant minutes later (sometimes three or four times!). Messages I delete or junk reappear in the inbox, as if they’d never been removed. The shambling remains of the undead walk, moaning aloud for brains.

Well, maybe not that last one.

Anyway, I checked out Apple and .Mac support, but found no existing info documents about this problem, so I delved into Apple’s discussion boards and, sure enough, came across a variable trove of people with the same issue. Apple’s released no official word, some on the boards seems to think that it’s a problem with OS X’s Mail program; nobody knows for certain though, and since the majority of cases reported are from .Mac users, there’s a definite belief that there’s something wonky with the online service. Some people have suggested running cron maintenance scripts, repairing permissions, while others think that you’re liable to get just as much of a result from running stark naked through the light of the full moon.

One point I do agree with: when you pay a hundred dollars a year for a service that you can get from elsewhere for free, well, you expect things to work smoothly. Hop to it, Apple.


11 Comments

Alie said:

This would appear to be a Mail issue, since I use mail with a different e-mail account, and have similar issues.

May 31, 2006 8:25 AM
Piff said:

I think it is not a .mac problem.

I do have the same beaviour of Mail.app with an imap server.

It think is a problem of the 10.4.6 upgrade.

May 31, 2006 8:41 AM
Jesse said:

I have the same issue!

May 31, 2006 8:47 AM
B.J. Ray said:

Glad to hear that this isn't just happening to me!

May 31, 2006 8:58 AM
Scott Hughes said:

I'm having the same issue but only with my .mac account, not my pop3 account. I wonder if it is a .mac issue or an imap issue.

I've had enough though. I am transitioning all my email to my non .mac account and will probably not renew my .mac account this year.

May 31, 2006 9:00 AM
Matt Hoult said:

I am using a .Mac account with Apple Mail and everything has been fine. I get between 20 and 100 e-mails a day and I have had no issue at all. I also use Gmail accounts, domain accounts, ISP accounts and others with Apple Mail.

May 31, 2006 9:06 AM
RTOlson Author Profile Page said:

This problem has cropped up on my Mail program at work (running on OS X.3). Restarting the program seems to address the symptoms for a few weeks.

May 31, 2006 11:42 AM
Piff said:

It is definitly not a .mac problem.
The same account works fine with thunderbird.
The problem is Mail.app used with imap.

May 31, 2006 11:52 AM
florian said:

i've had this, too, in the last couple of days. also random mail got sent several times for no apparent reason.
i'm using gmail and mail.app on 10.4.6.

June 1, 2006 1:04 AM
Tim Author Profile Page said:

It started happening after I upgraded to that last sec. update with OSX 10.4.6 or whatever. The last major update I installed, since then, I've had several problems. Network problems (getting kicked off all the time), the mail issue everyone is talking about, and some other issues, having to force quit a *lot* of programs all the time. Driving me insane!

June 1, 2006 7:48 AM
artMonster said:

Considering all the email "bottlenecks" with a number of services reported elsewhere, maybe the NSA just can't keep up with the flow.

June 5, 2006 8:04 AM

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