On 19 May 2015, at 6:36, Andreas Jung wrote:
I have been using Mailmate for three weeks now - with very mixed
feelings.
Thanks for trying out MailMate and providing feedback in the process. I
know it may feel like feedback is some times going into a black hole,
but it really doesn't. (I know I haven't replied to all tickets you have
created.) I hope you might return to MailMate some day and find that it
lives up to your requirements.
As a longtime Postbox user I've been pissed lately by the bad support
of Postbox
Inc and some painful bugs in the stability of Postbox - so I came to
Mailmate.
To be fair, I think Postbox is pretty clear about support only being
provided when explicitly paying for it.
However Mailmate also has tons of minor and major issues. Ok, no
software is
bugfree. But the density of minor flaws in Mailmate (that I would not
expect
from a 1.9 version) is annoying.
Fair enough. The trial period exists to make sure that show stoppers can
be found before buying.
Some of my highlight bugs:
- invalid counters for unread mails for *some* folders
Yes, that one annoys me too, but it was my impression that there was no
longer a debug opportunity:
https://freron.lighthouseapp.com/projects/58672/tickets/1119
- "default columns" do not work as expect, reverting the default
columns
for a folder is not persisted properly
Yes, this does not work well for certain standard folder types (sent,
junk, ...). Unfortunately, improving this most likely requires a
fundamental redesign of how it works and I cannot promise that'll happen
soon.
- being unable to remove an imap folder containing message without
prior
removing all mails manually (major usability pain in the ass)
As I stated in [the
ticket](https://freron.lighthouseapp.com/projects/58672/tickets/1157-unable-to-delete-imap-folders#ticket-1157-1)
I am willing to prioritize this if it's very important to you. I don't
see this as a “major usability pain in the ass” since I don't think
a lot of users frequently delete IMAP mailboxes containing emails. As
also stated in the ticket, it's not a quick fix, because MailMate has
multiple checks to ensure that non-empty IMAP mailboxes are never
deleted.
There is a hidden preference to enable the “Empty Mailbox” menu item
for all IMAP mailboxes. That might reduce some of the pain:
defaults write com.freron.MailMate MmEmptyMailboxMenuItemEnabled -bool
YES
(I think it only works in the latest test release though.)
- incomplete and half-baked implementation of the "mailboxes"
tree...being
unable to arrange mailboxes as needed using drag & drop
There is certainly potential for improvement in this area.
- fragile rule engine...hard to debug why email rules work sometimes
and sometimes
not
For debugging, I recommend creating a smart mailbox with the same
conditions as used by the rule. That should make it easy to see what is
matched and what is not matched.
- usability issues with the signing and encryption UI where the
signing/lock icons
are set or enabled when it does not make sense (e.g. no key available
for a recipient)
Yes, this could be more flexible. Currently, it simply errs on the safe
side. It would be worse if it silently did not sign/encrypt when the
user expected to be warned if it was not possible.
Most of the issues have been reported as feedback or as bugreports.
And thanks for that.
What is my point?
Mailmate is not a bad application and I appreciate that the maintainer
cares more about productivity and power-user features than
implementing
useless features that nobody needs. However Mailmate has a serious
quality assurance problem. A lot of features are only half implemented
and not stable or usable. What is the point? Mailmate costs 45 EURO
compared to 15 EUR for Postbox compared to nothing for Mail.app.
Well, you already stated what your problem with Postbox is. I wrote this
(and many other replies) for free. Getting the same number of responses
from Postbox support would have cost you a fortune ;-) As an added
bonus, I've spent time ignoring the use of words such as “ass”,
“stupid”, and “suck”. That's not as easy as one might think.
(Oh, and good luck getting feedback replies from Apple.)
I guess feedback should be a two-way street: I don't know about other
developers, but I think you would get both more and better responses by
toning down your language a bit. I'm certainly not motivated by being
told how much this or that suck. I'm perfectly aware of all the bugs and
short-comings of MailMate. I am, by far, its worst critic and I have no
idea why *anyone* would want to use MailMate. That is also why I
continue to work on MailMate. I want it to be good enough to deserve *my
own* praise.
The conclusion is: all mail applications for Mac suck in their own
special
way - only the price differs.
I really don't know how to respond to that. If you are in a situation
where you need a discount then let me know. I'm not going to lower the
price in general. And don't get me wrong. If I was working on MailMate
for the money then I would be more stupid than the shortcomings of
MailMate are.
Again, thanks for sharing your trial experience with MailMate.
--
Benny
_______________________________________________
mailmate mailing list
mailmate@lists.freron.com
http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
