5 ms·

It feels like fastmail.fm owe Apple an apology for calling out the client as bugged when it was doing exactly what the user asked it to.

0x0 13y ago
It's pretty obvious that Mail.app 7.0 is incredibly buggy, it's just a shame that they had to be called out on this particular case which wasn't their fault.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Mail.app has been buggy since its NEXTSTEP days. Especially with multiple accounts. I have to admit I haven't tried it recently, the older versions were just too awful to forgive.
  - 0x0 13y ago
    To be fair, the osx 10.7.* and 10.8.* versions of Mail.app have been almost flawless for me.
  - gilgoomesh 13y ago
    But you're more than happy to accuse Apple of bugs you presume are still in Mail? You realize that exactly the type of reckless casual accusation that is to blame here. Anecdotally, I use Apple's Mail.app for 5 different accounts containing over 50 GB of email without problems. Last problems I remember having were importing from Leopard to Snow Leopard – since then it's been smooth sailing. Admittedly, I use POP, not IMAP, so I'm not prone to the sort of bugs in the article.
- zw 13y ago
  Mail 7.0 is buggy for Gmail. Every other indication I've seen is that it is designed for and complements plain, real, compliant, standard IMAP perfectly fine, including Fastmail, to the extent where you can shoot yourself in the foot with it.
  - 0x0 13y ago
    I'm getting crazy random unread-mails badges on both dovecot imap servers and gmailimap...
    - aroch 13y ago
      This happens to me in Thunderbird / Postbox on Win7 and OSX, leading me to believe it's some old edge-case IMAP bug
  - smackfu 13y ago
    And since Gmail is a very popular mail service, with a special account type in Mail, you would think it would be well tested.
    - sbuk 13y ago
      Why? Shouldn't it be the case that Gmail uses standards?
      - smackfu 13y ago
        Fundamentally, the problem is that the IMAP standard does not support the concept of tagging, just folders. And GMail supports tagging but not folders. GMail does a pretty good job of mapping tags to folders, but it ends up leaving edge cases that are hard to handle. Like how all emails will still be in the All Mail folder, even after you "move" them to another folder (tag). I'm not sure there is any real solution, other than making mail via IMAP read-only.
  - kbd 13y ago
    Mail is buggy with Exchange as well.
    - objclxt 13y ago
      I don't think it's any more buggy than Microsoft's own mac desktop implementation (Outlook). I tried using Outlook with a work exchange account on my Mac, and ended up switching to Mail. Mail was, in my opinion, marginally better (...although still buggy).
- ketralnis 13y ago
  It really is, I've been fighting with it all day to get it to move mails from one folder to another. They reappear in the original folder immediately. It's driving me crazy.
  - speleding 13y ago
    I had this. For me enabling the "All Mail" folder in Google's IMAP setting fixed this after a lengthy resync.
    - ketralnis 13y ago
      Unfortunately I've had that enabled the whole time :(
- spotman 13y ago
  And its even funnier that cyrus-imapd (which is what fastmail.fm runs, and contributes heavily too) is what I think (please correct me if wrong) is what is shipped with OSX Server. So the one IMAP server that apple likely uses for their own things, was potentially well tested, and its the one company thats running it has called them out, and now has to bite their words. I use/run cyrus-imapd for years and have never had an issue with mail.app. But it is pretty frequent that I hear people with other imap providers (especially gmail) that have issues with it.
  - brongondwana 13y ago
    They switched to Dovecot a while back actually.
    - spotman 13y ago
      Ah, interesting, did not realize that. Seeing people like yourself in the git stream made me think otherwise:)
smosher 13y ago
I don't think so. With their track record it would take a devout optimist not to think "oh, Mail is bugging out again." At least that's my impression from maintaining dozens of servers with many thousands of customers running this client.

0x0 13y ago

It's pretty obvious that Mail.app 7.0 is incredibly buggy, it's just a shame that they had to be called out on this particular case which wasn't their fault.

ams6110 13y ago
Mail.app has been buggy since its NEXTSTEP days. Especially with multiple accounts. I have to admit I haven't tried it recently, the older versions were just too awful to forgive.
- 0x0 13y ago
  To be fair, the osx 10.7.* and 10.8.* versions of Mail.app have been almost flawless for me.
- gilgoomesh 13y ago
  But you're more than happy to accuse Apple of bugs you presume are still in Mail? You realize that exactly the type of reckless casual accusation that is to blame here. Anecdotally, I use Apple's Mail.app for 5 different accounts containing over 50 GB of email without problems. Last problems I remember having were importing from Leopard to Snow Leopard – since then it's been smooth sailing. Admittedly, I use POP, not IMAP, so I'm not prone to the sort of bugs in the article.
zw 13y ago
Mail 7.0 is buggy for Gmail. Every other indication I've seen is that it is designed for and complements plain, real, compliant, standard IMAP perfectly fine, including Fastmail, to the extent where you can shoot yourself in the foot with it.
- 0x0 13y ago
  I'm getting crazy random unread-mails badges on both dovecot imap servers and gmailimap...
  - aroch 13y ago
    This happens to me in Thunderbird / Postbox on Win7 and OSX, leading me to believe it's some old edge-case IMAP bug
- smackfu 13y ago
  And since Gmail is a very popular mail service, with a special account type in Mail, you would think it would be well tested.
  - sbuk 13y ago
    Why? Shouldn't it be the case that Gmail uses standards?
    - smackfu 13y ago
      Fundamentally, the problem is that the IMAP standard does not support the concept of tagging, just folders. And GMail supports tagging but not folders. GMail does a pretty good job of mapping tags to folders, but it ends up leaving edge cases that are hard to handle. Like how all emails will still be in the All Mail folder, even after you "move" them to another folder (tag). I'm not sure there is any real solution, other than making mail via IMAP read-only.
- kbd 13y ago
  Mail is buggy with Exchange as well.
  - objclxt 13y ago
    I don't think it's any more buggy than Microsoft's own mac desktop implementation (Outlook). I tried using Outlook with a work exchange account on my Mac, and ended up switching to Mail. Mail was, in my opinion, marginally better (...although still buggy).
ketralnis 13y ago
It really is, I've been fighting with it all day to get it to move mails from one folder to another. They reappear in the original folder immediately. It's driving me crazy.
- speleding 13y ago
  I had this. For me enabling the "All Mail" folder in Google's IMAP setting fixed this after a lengthy resync.
  - ketralnis 13y ago
    Unfortunately I've had that enabled the whole time :(
spotman 13y ago
And its even funnier that cyrus-imapd (which is what fastmail.fm runs, and contributes heavily too) is what I think (please correct me if wrong) is what is shipped with OSX Server. So the one IMAP server that apple likely uses for their own things, was potentially well tested, and its the one company thats running it has called them out, and now has to bite their words. I use/run cyrus-imapd for years and have never had an issue with mail.app. But it is pretty frequent that I hear people with other imap providers (especially gmail) that have issues with it.
- brongondwana 13y ago
  They switched to Dovecot a while back actually.
  - spotman 13y ago
    Ah, interesting, did not realize that. Seeing people like yourself in the git stream made me think otherwise:)

smosher 13y ago

I don't think so. With their track record it would take a devout optimist not to think "oh, Mail is bugging out again." At least that's my impression from maintaining dozens of servers with many thousands of customers running this client.