A MobileMe account is accessed as an IMAP account with the Mail.app on your Mac and with the iPad's Mail application.
A Yahoo account can be accessed as an IMAP account with the iPhone's and with the iPad's Mail application only. When selecting/using the Yahoo account preset when creating a Yahoo account with the iPad's Mail application, the account is created as a IMAP account with the iPad's Mail application, but Yahoo does not support accessing a Yahoo account as an IMAP account with any other email application on your computer or with any other device.
Although it is possible to access a POP account with more than one email application, a POP account is designed to be accessed with a single email application only.
An IMAP account is specifically designed to be accessed with more than one email application with all server stored mailboxes kept synchronized with the server automatically with each email application used to access the account. This is not possible with a POP account.
Email account mailboxes and messages are not included with the iTunes sync process. There is an option to transfer email account settings for an email account or accounts from your computer to the iPad via the iTunes sync process which is selected under the Info tab for your iPad sync preferences so you don't have to manually create the account or accounts on the iPad, but this is a one way transfer process only from your computer to your iPad for email account settings only.
Regardless, this would have no effect on a POP account. Mailboxes and messages with a POP account are not kept synchronized with the server.
Yes but sorta no, Allan especially because the iPad is working opposite to the default behavior of the iPhone which is rilly screwin' some of us up.
Yes POP retrieval doesn't fully sync folders and isn't capable of changing msgs on the server and creating/saving things back into different folders like IMAP, but most POP clients DO re-read the message list on the server every time to see if the messages have been downloaded by another client, SO in fact the iPhone will mark POP messages as 'read' if they've already been downloaded elsewhere.
The proof is in back to back - I have right in front of me one iPhone 3G, one iPad. Bother are configured meticulously identically to retrieve 2 different POP accounts, which are also sync'd with a PC.
The iPhone, *as it has for 2 years*, will check messages and if they have been downloaded by the PC already, new messages appear immediately as READ. If they have NOT been downloaded by the PC, then they show up as UNREAD. So at least emulation of 'read' marks if you will. The identically config'd iPad just always dumps them in as unread. Very irritating.
Now I know this isn't exactly the same as IMAP unread marks but it is functionally the same for most people. Yes in my case I could set these accounts up as IMAP but IMAP tends to be slower and clunkier in retrieval for whatever reason and I prefer the speed and simplicity of POP (for Gmail in particular Google has done something hideous so IMAP is a complete slow performance disaster, although my main 2 accounts are actually NOT gmail).
So while i recognize you are technically right, there still is a change in behavior with the iPad which kinda sugz for us long time iPhone users expecting to get the same functionality. Anxiously awaiting an OS update... maybe all the bug fixes and advanced features are holding out for OS4.0...
POP retrieval with an email client doesn't sync mailboxes fully or otherwise, which is the account's Inbox mailbox only.
but most POP clients DO re-read the message list on the server every time to see if the messages have been downloaded by another client, SO in fact the iPhone will mark POP messages as 'read' if they've already been downloaded elsewhere.
Baloney.
A message being downloaded by an email client with a POP account DOES NOT equate to the message being read. Even if a message downloaded by an email client with a POP account has been read with an email client, the message IS NOT marked as read at the incoming mail server. The ONLY setting with an email client for a POP account that affects messages at the incoming mail server is removing messages from the server when downloaded. There is NO setting with ANY email client for a POP account that affects the READ status for messages at the server - NONE, ZERO, ZILCH, NADA.
Well make yerself a sandwich Baloney-man! I'll bring the cheese AND the mustard!
Hey I don't know what's happening in the background, but absodefinilutely that is exactly what happens. I can demonstrate it all day and all night.
Basically for as long as I've used an iPhone, iPhone "knows" if an email has been downloaded by my PC client. If you're niggling about "read" vs. "downloaded", maybe you can calm yourself a bit and re-read my message which says exactly that I recognize it might not be true 'read' marks but a 'downloaded' mark at least... (I say this right in the quote that you quoted).
So sure, I'll grant you it's not a true 'read' mark - but nonetheless, it somehow is able to identify if a message was previosuly downloaded, and then it "roughly translates" that to unread marks.
Now maybe you'd like to say "RFC POP3 specification DOES NOT BLAH BLAH BLAH! IETF! EFF! GPL!" And to that I say bully for you sir for knowing interwebs acronyms! Yay!
But something is happening. Maybe if you want to be a little more open minded you could instead suggest "well maybe there's an unofficial extension in operation, OR, some other function that is being used somehow to emulate these 'sorta-downloaded-translated-to-read' marks"
To just blindly guess, maybe something like the iPhone client can retrieve a 'last downloaded message number' or something like that from the server? The it compares that to the last message it downloaded itself. Either way it gets all the new messages. If the 'last downloaded' message number is greater than it's own, then it assumes those messages were read elsewhere, and it tags them read. Any messages greater than the 'last downloaded' number could then be marked unread. That's all just supposition brainstorming, maybe its totally something else.
But. It. Does. It. Fact. End. Of. Story.
Would be nice if both devices from Apple did it in the same way. Is all I'm saying.
Well, I see the same behaviour as platevoltage and I can only report what I see. I have a POP account with Yahoo Mail, with the option to keep messages after download. I open Yahoo Mail in Safari. Unread messages are marked in bold. I open the Mac Mail client in a window positioned side-by-side with the Yahoo Mail window. I execute Get Mail and the unread messages download to the Mac. Immediately Yahoo Mail changes the messages to plain font indicating they have been downloaded.
I also see the behaviour noted in earlier posts. iPhone will download messages and mark them as read immediately if they have already been downloaded on Mac Mail. iPad on the other hand downloads them marked as unread regardless of whether they have been downloaded to Mac Mail or not.
Keith, what you describing is different than what Platevoltage is saying. Keith you are accessing the mail server when you use Webmail. You are only viewing messages not downloading them. After you read a message on webmail the message is marked as read and if you then access that account via the iPad's Mail program it will know it is read.
What Platevoltage is saying that if you have two different clients mail clients such as Mail on the iPad and Mail on a Mac. You first download on the iPad but do not delete. When you then download the same mail from the Mac the Mac does not know that the message has been read.
OK, but I am saying that as well. I have 3 mail clients, Mail on Mac, iPad and iPhone. If I download first to the Mac, the message is marked as read on the server, and a subsequent download to the iPhone flags the message as read but the iPad flags it as unread. If I haven't downloaded to the Mac, then downloads to both the iPhone and iPad mark the message as unread, and the message stays marked unread on the server.
My account is hosted by Exchange my Mail and I use the service on both my phone and my mac book air and my mac book pro - my mac book pro tends to syn mail very quickly and does not appear to have issues, while my mac book air tends to stall and tends to be slow at responding and when I check activity monitor it says it is not responding - not exactly sure what that means but when I force quit and start over it responds.....
