Mail (application)

Mail

Mail 5.0 under Mac OS X Lion
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Stable release	6.0 (July 25, 2012 (2012-07-25)) [±]
Operating system	Mac OS X and iOS (Apple) (Mobile)
Type	Email client
License	Proprietary
Website	[1]

Mail For iOS

Mail app in iOS 6, showing unified email folders
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Stable release	iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S iPad 2, 3 and 4 iPad Mini iPod Touch 4th and 5th generations 6.1.3 (Build 10B329) (March 19, 2013 (2013-03-19)) [±] iPhone 5 6.1.4 (Build 10B350) (May 2, 2013 (2013-05-02)) [±] Apple TV 2nd and 3rd generations 5.2.1 (Build 10B329a) (March 19, 2013 (2013-03-19)) [±]
Operating system	iOS
Type	Email client
License	Proprietary
Website	[2]

"AppleMail" redirects here. For the piece of System 7 software, see PowerTalk.

Mail (also known as Mail.app or Apple Mail) is an email program included with Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system. Originally developed by NeXT as NeXTMail, a part of their NeXTSTEP operating system, it was adapted to become OS X's Mail application following Apple's acquisition of NeXT. The current version of Mail utilizes the SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols, and supports Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, Gmail, MobileMe and Exchange. iOS features a mobile version of Apple Mail with added ActiveSync support, though it is still missing the functionality of attaching files to reply emails. Mail has often been praised for its combination of simplicity and extensive functionality.

History

Mail 3, with WideMail plugin installed.

Mail first shipped as NeXTMail, the email application for the NeXTSTEP operating system. NeXTMail was innovative for its time, supporting rich text formatting with images and voice messaging. It also supported MIME emails, along with plain text to allow for backwards compatibility. The default message found in the inbox when the user first opened NeXTMail included a voice recording of Steve Jobs.

When Apple began to adapt NeXTSTEP to become Mac OS X, both the operating system and the application went through various stages as it was developed. In a beta version (codenamed "Rhapsody") and various other early pre-releases of Mac OS X, Mail was known as MailViewer. However, with the third developer release of Mac OS X, the application had returned to being known simply as Mail.

Version 1

Included in all versions of Mac OS X up to and including Mac OS X v10.3, Mail was integrated with other Apple applications such as Address Book, iChat, and iCal. Some of its features that remain in the most recent version of Mail include rules for mailboxes, junk mail filtering and multiple account management.

Version 2

Included with Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" on April 29, 2005, updates to Version 2 included a proprietary single-message-per-file format (with the filename extension .emlx) in order to permit indexing by Spotlight.

Some of the new features in Version 2 also included:

• "Smart mailboxes" that used Spotlight technology to sort mail into folders.
• The ability to flag messages with a low, normal or high priority and to use these priorities in mailbox rules and smart mailboxes.
• Tools for resizing photos before they are sent to avoid oversized email attachments.
• The ability to view emailed pictures as a full-screen slideshow.
• Parental controls to specify who is allowed to send email to children.
• HTML message composition.

The new version also changed the UI for the buttons in the toolbar. Whereas previous buttons had free-standing defined shapes, the new buttons featured shapes within a lozenge-shaped capsule. According to many users, and even Apple's own human interface guidelines at the time, this was worse for usability. An open-source third-party application that reverted the icons to their former shapes was available. Nevertheless, Apple updated their guidelines to include capsule-shaped buttons, and the new UI persisted.

Version 3

A Mail compose window, displaying the "Get well" stationery template.

Introduced with Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, Version 3 included personalized stationery, handled in standard HTML format. In addtion, Mail 3 offered Notes and To-dos (which can be synced with iCal) as well as a built-in RSS reader. Mail 3 also introduced IMAP IDLE support for account inboxes.

Version 4

Introduced with Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard, this new version of Mail gained Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 support. The iCal and Address Book applications bundled with OS X 10.6 also support Microsoft Exchange Server.

Version 5

Introduced with Mac OS X v10.7 Lion, Mail 5 features a redesigned iPad-like user interface with full-screen capabilities, an updated message search interface, support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Yahoo! Mail (via IMAP). Also added was the capability to group messages by subject in a similar fashion to Mail on iOS 4. The bounce function, where unwanted emails can be bounced back to the sender, was dropped in this version, as was support for Exchange push email.

Issues

Plain text format when message is sent

Mail has a unique feature in which messages are automatically sent in plain text format unless action is taken to format the email with rich text editing options. This aspect of Mail can be misleading, as the default font for new messages is not what will show up on the recipient's side unless the email is manually RTF-formatted.

Problems with IMAP accounts when upgrading from Apple Mail 4

Many users upgrading from previous versions of Apple Mail reported problems with the latest IMAP client implementation under certain circumstances. The problem seems to occur when the authentication in Mail's preferences is set to PASSWORD and the server is signalizing that it supports SASL PLAIN.

See also

• NeXTMail
• GNUMail
• Comparison of email clients
• Comparison of feed aggregators

External links

• Apple Mail: plug-ins and tools
• Mail.app 3.0 screen shots
• Mail.app 3.5 screen shots