Google Mail + Mail.app + IMAP not playing nicely since 10.5.6

This is not just Gmail.
I also have a me.com account, which is not updating as read after reading from my iphone.
This is most certainly a mail.app bug which needs to be fixed.

I'm not using Gmail either. I have an outside IMAP server (Dreamhost) same problem.

I've been having the same exact problem. A friend of mine said he had the same issue but if you close/restart Mail.app it instantly works. Tried it and sure enough.

Apple: You need to fix this bug. Very tough to have multiple Macs (home and work/office + iphone) with a single email account the way things are.

Still no fix, so I'm bumping this up.

Nope, it's not "standard" at all... It's more like "just enough to get by"

The guy who invented IMAP said that if he were to rate the implementation it would be "quite damning." (see http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/10/imap )

Also see http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-imap-implementation for more information on some of the specific deficiencies.

To be fair, GMail IMAP has gotten better than it was when they first rolled it out (my early experiences were that sometimes it wouldn't even download complete messages), but the way they are doing things is definitely not in full compliance with the IMAP RFC, as they've had to take several shortcuts to try to make it "fit" with the way that GMail otherwise works.

As others in this thread have mentioned, I've been using Apple's Mail.app with a half-dozen other IMAP accounts for four years now, including MobileMe, GroupWise, MS Exchange, and Cyrus IMAP servers, and I've never had the kind of weird little idiosyncratic problems I've had with GMail's IMAP implementation.

I'm not suggesting it's entirely GMail's fault, mind you.... Other IMAP clients seem to be able to deal with it more successfully, but at the same time there's something between the two that is causing problems. Also, bear in mind that many other software developers frequently deliberately program around buggy IMAP implementations to provide the widest possible range of support (I was a beta tester for a Palm IMAP app a few years ago, and we went through about a dozen beta releases before we got it working right with GroupWise's IMAP, which was abysmal back then).

Just want to chime in to say I have had the exact Gmail/IMAP same problem, seemingly since the 10.5.6 update. IT has gotten to the point where I don't use Mailapp for anything other than to archive mail with the occasional restart. I do all of my mail work in Mailplane for now.

Dave,

Yes, I've been getting the same problems on two IMAP accounts (one is Gmail). I opened Mail.app and sent myself email. THe inbox showed a "1" to indicate there's new mail. But I can't see the new message at all. I go to my webmail interface, and I can open my new message from there. I go back to Mail.app and I still can't read the new message.

However, when I move the message to another folder (using my webmail), I can now read it from Mail.app (inside the corresponding folder in Mail.app). Weird.

Again, this is not just Gmail. It happens to my other IMAP server as well.

I have just deleted all my Mail.app plist files and re-setup Mail.app exactly as you describe and the problem still exists.

[snip]

Would love to hear other peoples findings with this.

Dave

Why are Apple not addressing this ? This is surely a bug ????

As of a few days ago, the problem seems to have cleared itself up. I have been keeping mail and Mailplane open at the same time, and they are pretty much staying in sync, though it takes a few minutes for Mail to catch up with Gmail.

I know that non-Gmail users are having the same type of problem, but I suspect something changed on the Gmail servers, since I changed nothing on my machine.

Hmmm, not seeing any evidence of that on this end. Mind you, I've only ever had the problem with GMail itself, despite using numerous other IMAP servers (as I noted earlier in this thread).

The problem I've had, however, only concerns the updating of read status on messages. Moves and deletes from GMail (or Mailplane, the iPhone, or another IMAP client) propagate just fine, and only take a few seconds. Further, once you do a move or delete of a message, the whole mailbox usually refreshes and the read status updates as well.

It's only when you do nothing other than read messages from another client that Mail.app seems to refuse to update until you actually restart Mail.app.

Actually, it looks like you are right, I spoke prematurely. As I said, things are staying in sync, except for "Read" items. This is actually an improvement for me, since before, moved/deleted items were not updating until I restarted. Oh, well . . .

Bump for another person with this problem!!

I do not think that bumping it here will have as much effect as reporting it to Apple's feedback page, if you have not done so already.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


Again, I would also report it to Google, as I think the issue really is their lack of adherence to complete IMAP standards. Apparently other e-mail clients use other ways to get around the issue - though, as I said before, the sam exact issue happens with Thunderbird (in other words, when the read status of a message changes in Google's in box, it does not change in Thunderbird, either.)

see below

Message was edited by: skotty

I'm having the same problem in that mail.app doesn't recognize that I've opened the mail on either my iPhone or online.
I just set up my Gmail IMAP account on entourage and it works perfectly! It's def' an APPLE PROBLEM, and not a Google problem as suggested.
Looks like I'll be going back over to the purple world of Entourage for the meantime.