In the new Mac osX CataIina I cannot find a way to change the columns viewed in Mail. You used to be able to change the field widths and add columns from the View/Columns menu. How can I accomplish this now?
Also, what does the black background TO next to the email title mean?
It seems this is falling upon deaf ears at Apple. Maybe we should email our concerns and comments about this "upgrade" to our favorite tech newsletter/newsgroup, and perhaps they'll publish it in one of their posting and it'll prompt change. I sent a note to Forbes Technology, but can think of many others that might be equally or more useful (CNET, Engadget, Wired, PC Mag, bloggers, YouTubers, etc.).
As I said in an earlier post, this is NOT an unintended change by Apple, I got this directly in an email communication with a very senior Apple executive.
On a minimally related note, is anyone else in this discussion group finding significant battery drain if they leave their MacBook unplugged and in Sleep Mode overnight? I'm seeing drops from 100% to 85-90% over 7-8 hours of Sleep.
Great idea DemosResponse, flood the reviewers. Perhaps that is the only forum Apple will notice.
I’ve reported via the official channels several times with no response.
Also, I would agree, this was not an unintended change. As with many of the baffling changes over the years, there was no clear public explanation of why an unbroken feature was “fixed” for the worse. I suppose they count on the huge number of apathetic or unconcerned customers to be okay with these moves to mediocrity.
tsentsai wrote:
do the right thing Apple...fix Catalina mail...it is truly pathetic and you ate forcing us to go find alternatives...really stupid
Apple is not reading here for suggestions. The more people who submit feedback to the appropriate place, the more likely Apple is to make a change:
Getting really important now, with all this working from home business. So many windows open on a small screen, I don't want to have to put up with fixed column widths. I want the information that I want to see displayed where I want it! If someone sends me an attachment, I need to see that. I need to see more characters of email addresses if my mail window is scrunched up on the left of my screen rather than which mail box it's in, or an inch of whitespace. (Nice feature with the left and right pinning of any window by the way - only 12 years after Windows 7 had it).
My Bookmarks For Quick and Efficient Web-based Solutions:
Google : search, translate, flights, gmail, maps, browser, keep, ads,
Amazon: shopping, warehouse, zappos, abebooks, other
Yahoo: stocks, news
Ebay, Walmart.com, others: shopping
Apple: - ?? ?? - your software is second rate, so there's nothing there. Search is adequate, translate (don't bother), flights (don't bother), mail (moving more toward MS Office 1.0 with non-intuitive, non-GUI based restrictions), maps (horrible, still! ... try to search on a slightly misspelled name or unique name of a restaurant near you and see what pops up, or try to scroll through directions a couple steps ahead of where you are), browser (it's okay, but I use Chrome). That doesn't include Google Photos vs. Apple Pictures. It's not even close. Apple provides confusing directions and forces you to create albums that aren't quite intuitive or easy to share, Google makes it simple, easy, and fast. Oh, Apple you win on privacy.
All this on top of the recent "improvements" to Mail and it makes me hate Apple. I still love their hardware and phones, but just very frustrated. The company that made it easy has made it difficult.
The world is in a much worse state than our issues with Apple/Catalina/Mail and wish all out there to be safe and healthy....
....
Sad, that Apple will NOT admit to or fix this problem. Been a discussion list subscriber for 15+ years and have never seen so many posts (17,000+) about this problem.
****PLEA FROM BUSINESS OWNERS****
I don't know why they haven't fixed, or haven't at least told us they aren't going to. Archived sent items no longer show the recipient. So if you are using Apple Mail for business, and are in an industry such as law, medicine or real estate where record keeping is a legal requirement, you can no longer use Apple Mail in your business. Apple might say, just use a third party email program in Mac OS--but some businesses use, or have made, custom software to interface with Apple Mail in their record keeping. That is now useless. It's been 6-7 months and these are serious issue. I don't understand how they haven't fixed or acknowledged this yet. Mac OS took a giant hit in usability for enterprise users with this mail "update".
It is unbelievable arrogance, ignorance, or both from Apple to remove this major functionality from Apple Mail. I just upgraded and immediately ran into this. While the current view may work fine on an IOS device, on my MBP this unacceptable. Call me old fashioned, but at least and luckily I have the choice.
I was actually hoping for an improvement in their support for Gmail, which is really flaky. Because of this serious issue, I was already tempted to use another mail client and this is the limit. I am going to switch right now. Already started the download.
Agreed. But I don't think Apple cares if we change our mail client. The problem for some of us is that the archive function also removes who a sent item was sent to. So those of us in a record keeping industry can no longer use Apple mail because we can no longer prove an email was sent to a certain person on a certain date. Although this affects businesses in law, medicine and real estate (just to name a few) the reality is that Apple probably doesn't care--and doesn't even seem to realize this is a problem. They don't even seem to notice this has happened. But we also invested in 3rd party apps that sync and use Apple mail, and those are also now worthless to us. The larger issue for us as an enterprise user is that this is so sloppy--7 months into Catalina and this hasn't been fixed or acknowledged. Our issue as an enterprise user goes beyond this specific problem. We are asking ourselves: "What is Apple going to do next that may impact our business like this did, not fix it, and not advise on it? What else is Apple going to do that costs us money?" That's where we are at. It's been 7 months and they haven't fixed this. They haven't acknowledged it. They haven't provided a workaround. They haven't explained why they did this. They haven't addressed this in any way. This isn't an issue over viewing preferences for us. We may not like the change from a UI perspective but we can find a way to move forward if that's all it was. The issue is that this change was made with apparently no good reason, there's been no explanation, no workaround, no fix, and it's cost us a lot of money. We wonder what will happen next that might cost us money? There appears to be a culture change at Apple to the detriment of the user. This comment as I write it is on page 16 of comments in this thread! But still, crickets from Apple. We recently asked Apple if our next round of business purchases could have a previous operating system installed on them, before Catalina, so we could work around this. They said no. So, we are at a crossroads wondering if we need to make a change to PCs here. If any other business our business worked with had this culture change we would have severed ties long ago. And unfortunately after 15 years of happily using Apple products at our offices, we may be changing to PC.
AZsport115 - best response on this I've seen. It's beyond frustrating that Apple won't even acknowledge it and explain why they made a change that is unarguably for the worst and negatively impacts a lot of people and businesses. Surely someone in tech world media can get a contact at Apple to say something, even if off the record?
when are you going to fix Mail in Catalina...you have ****** off thousands of people....a day does not go by when I have not heard about the incompetence of Apple design team on this issue...a 4th grader could fix that code
well it seems that you don't care....so for what it is worth ..our family has not bought an Apple product in 7 months and we refuse to upgrade to Catalina.
this is our protest...yes us ...who have been loyal followers since ...yes...1984....not giving in...and you know...I don't think we will win this fight...but I feel good not caving in to your market ignorance and stupidity ...
Apple has been the darling of the tech industry for years without a doubt....why? simple they made great products....now watch as the competition starts understanding the weaknesses of the APPLE team....the weakness is not technology...they are out of touch with their customers period
Having worked in IT for a large enterprise, we had professional collaboration with our suppliers, like Microsoft, and the ability to test and provide requirements before accepting new releases. If something impacted our business processes, we could escalate to Severity 1 issue and either have it fixed, find a workaround or extend our time to adopt to change our business processes. It sounds like Apple doesn't really support an Enterprise as most other vendors in the Industry. I wouldn't know since our Company excluded Apple as a vendor (except for special situations approved at an executive level) to simplify the install base variation. Using Apple at home is easy as changes to Mail like this aren't critical... just really annoying.
Percolating from grass roots to corporation is the price of success. If it's a good idea, somebody with greater self interest, top heavy finance and a hidden face is bound to take it over and infuse it with a less-people oriented agenda. Corporate governance is the new way. The once sweet Apple, overripe.
Wouldn't you think that someone INTERNAL to Apple would say "hey wait, this just doesn't make sense!" It's group think at its worst -- insert Morton Thiokol space shuttle disaster thinking here, but less human tragedy -- with some lower level folks who probably want to change this "improvement" back to its former state, but can't. It's just depressing. With that said, Apple is the highest cap company in the world, so our collective voices are falling on their collective deaf ears.
But ...
Do you use Google Maps or Apple Maps? If so, do you find the scroll forward on directions feature that's missing on Apple to be a nuisance? And why isn't Apple Maps native to the internet (correct term?), like Google Maps is? How about Google Photos vs Apple Photos? Do you find it easier to share a link on Google or figure out how to create, share, use an album on Apple? I find Apple Photos to be a major pain in the ***. Google for search or Apple? Translate? Flights? Keep? Ads? Shopping? Home AI Assistant? I literally use EVERYTHING that's Google OTHER THAN shopping on Amazon and email/hardware with Apple. I think we all wish we could wave a magic wand and make Apple better, but sadly we can't.
I don't use Apple Music very often, but noticed this column sort feature while doing some recent listening. Maybe there's hope for the new App-based Apple software after all? Let's hope it transitions (back) to Mail.
catalina mail column view
