Mail read status "too quick"

[Glenn Carnagey]

On Oct 17, 2006, at 5:17 PM, Scott Stevenson wrote:
>
> On Oct 17, 2006, at 2:11 PM, Glenn Carnagey wrote:
>
>> Personally, I've given up.  We're not ever going to get a decent  
>> mac mail client
>
> I think this might be the "perfect pepsi" problem:
>
> http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/09/malcolm_gladwel.html
>
> The problem is people take their personal preferences about email  
> very seriously. Not that it's unreasonable, just that it's very  
> difficult to make the perfect client for everyone.

True, and there's no economic payoff for tackling it.  there are at  
least three sizable groups with somewhat conflicting needs: 1.) those  
somewhat new to the concept, or don't get all that much mail 2.)  
those that've been using it for decades and get and already have  
enormous amts of it, and 3.) those that have to interact with  
Exchange as part of their employment.   Servicing all those groups  
with the same client is a tall order, if possible, and most vendors  
don't even try.

I fall into 2.) and 3.), and I really have given up, it only bothers  
me now and then when it gets in the way in some large and painful  
fashion.  I just assume it's going to have lots of inefficient and  
counter-productive flaws, don't even think about it.  Apple is  
developing their client faster than anyone else as far as I can tell,  
and pays some attention to usability and customer demand.  it's what  
I use except in those few cases where Outlook has me trapped.    
Still, I will pull up pine or procmail or Eudora for some tasks they  
happen to make a lot easier.

On the other hand, every client I'm familiar with including Mail.app  
has a lot of obvious glaring problem areas, they don't even live in  
the same universe as perfect.  Not only have they not kept pace with  
the rapid development of of electronic communications, they're  
getting lapped.  I don't think any of them are very good.   If I  
found one that excelled, it conceivably would save me a lot of time  
and money, I wouldn't really care what platform it ran on.

g./