"The Great Debate" - POP vs IMAP (fork of Mail Problems)

[John Labovitz]

On Oct 5, 2006, at 7:32am, Jim Witte wrote:

> it sometimes says it's syncronized, and then I get nothing - I  
> don't know if it's because there really is nothing there, or if  
> it's because something screwed up  with the client -

I've been using Michael Rothwell's IMAP-IDLE plugin for Mail, which  
has really helped out the syncing problems.  It's little module that  
opens a separate connection to the IMAP server(s) and issues an IDLE  
command.  This lets the server tell the client whether there's new  
mail, instead of the other way around.  Granted, you're using  
slightly more resources (a socket) on the server, but it's probably  
less resource-intensive in the end since Mail doesn't have to poll.

IMAP-IDLE seems to work quite well for me.  In fact, I've completely  
turned off Mail's timed mail-checking; now IMAP-IDLE finds new  
messages, and pokes Mail to go get them.

Available here:

	http://fivepoundsflax.blogspot.com/2006/09/imap-idle-103-for-apples- 
mailapp.html

--John