I use Thunderbird, because it is the best e-mail application for writing e-mail with – in my view.

Mutt is infinitely configurable, much like EMACS. And while I'm sure being a text-mode interface would not match the Mac GUI well (Apple does user interfaces wonderfully), it is very responsive, and if you "do" email a lot during the day I'm sure those fractions of a second add up. Check it out, there's tons of info on the web about it… You can use fetchmail to download your IMAP email, process it with procmail, deliver it to a Maildir folder, and then use mutt to read it and respond.

i was complaining on some apple forum a while back about how badly threading sucks. the tech that works there told me they actually do so-called 'real threading' since panther or something, based on the References header.

he also told me that this problem, like many problems, comes from users behaving badly. instead of initiating new messages (which References: ), many people compose e-mails by replying to old messages from the desired recipient, and manually clearing out all of the fields.

the result is a totally unrelated message showing up as part of the same thread.

i don't see an obvious resolution for this, except maybe imposing the restriction that threads must have the same subject or 'Re: ' + the same subject as the original subject.

just some thoughts. if anyone could write a mail application to slaughter mail.app, it would be macromates. but i hope that you write remote editing for textmate first :-)

-N

Mulberry's back and now available for free, as you probably know by now.

1. You can turn off auto checking for each account you have configured. It's in the Advanced tab under Accounts.

2. You can also have different SMTP servers. But, I wonder if I understand your problem correctly, because with the many varied email accounts I've used, the SMTP server for that account worked regardless of where I was connected from: home, work, Starbucks, library, airport terminal, Ukraine, Rep. of Georgia, Russia, Germany, etc. It's the rare occasion that I need to worry about SMTP servers and that's only when the connection is down.

Creating a folder on-the-fly, either while executing a Move To, Copy To or while creating a rule which uses same.

1) users should be able to define a workgroup – a circle of people that share access to a common repository. Attachments should then only move the link to people within the workgroup, allowing shared access to that file. People outside the workgroup would receive the file.

This would significantly reduce bandwidth requirements over the network, and reduce problems with configuration management (revisions) of the data.

Eudora does this, to some degree, but is a difficult sell in the corporation.

2) Connectivity to Exchange – even if this product is a dog, it is prolific in the corporate environment, and integration needs to exist.

I too am a longtime Mulberry user. I still use it as I didn't understand the need to jump ship just cause the company filed for bankruptcy. The program still works and it meets my needs better than the other IMAP clients I've tried in the last year.

http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/06/15/kiwi-new-imap-e-mail-client-in-the-works/