Mac Mail 6 is missing the "spinning wheel" indicator when checking for new mail

And you.

"The Mail app in 10.6.8 was the last proper email app that worked really well and was visually good to use and had good features."

I can't exactly pinpoint it, but in 10.6.8, Mail was already crippled to a degree. I think it started in 10.6.6, that Mail started checking all accounts at once, instead in sequence. This was and is still important to me on a slow satellite internet connection. If 10 email accounts get accessed at the click of a button my connection peters out.

There is a load of other things wrong with the new Mail [automized account setup and losing sent emails for example and that one can't drag/restore email accounts by dragging them into Mail].

I completely agree with your sentiment regarding change for changes sake. Of course this all has to do with the "iOSiffication" of the Mac OS and pandering to the switchers. If one never used a Mac before, Mail looks quite alright. But I'm with Apple since the Portable and System 6 and was never more frustrated about Apple's direction than today.

I have seven Mac users around me and five use different email application, for exactly the reason you state and others. I am so frustrated about Mavericks, that I am gladly stuck on OS 10.6.8. And if I could, I probably would go back to 10.6.5. This also has prevented me from upgrading to a newer Mac than the 2008 MBP I'm using, which is getting a little slow when using Aperture.

By the way I have tried Mavericks twice. It was running fast from an SSD, but there were so many small changes to the Finder and other UI changes that totally ticked me off, that I could not get used to it.

And frankly, if I have to ask my boys several times a day, how to do this or where did this go, I feel embarrassed as a long time Mac user who taught them at one time the inner workings of the Mac. If I need a Bible to find my way around Mavericks, then I have either lost my cognition or Apple lost their founding principles of how to design an easy to understand and logic UI for their current OS.

Good to see some proper objectivity brought to bear in this discussion.

Thank you.

Mikofox - you can always get Mail to individually check your separate accounts. From Mail's menu bar select Mailbox and then Get New Mail, on the fly out menu you can choose which account you want to be checked.

Thanks, I use that sometimes, but when I want to check my email I don't want to have to sit there and click ten different mailboxes, just to load content in sequence. It's two clicks per mailbox, versus one click on the Get Mail button and sequential checking with server problem indicator working, when Mail was still functional.

I hear you, I use Command+Shift+N to retrieve my mail, and I am always left wondering if Mail was actually doing something...... I only have 3 accounts but I would like to see some indication that Mail was polling the servers.

So use either of the 2 activity monitors that Mail provides.

That does not help. I have the activity monitor open, and you see nothing, if no Mail is on the server. And using an additional monitor to see if the server are connected is different to see if they are actually contacted at the very moment and talking in just that moment to my computer.

I am a software engineer and designer and the spinning wheel was brilliant. Removing it was the opposite. I could give you hours of explanation or study real software engineering and software architecture and you can answer it on your own.

I have 7 accounts and removing the speening wheel is making OS X windows like.

I can only totally agree to your statement. This is why I do not update my fathers computer (from 1999 Tiger) or the other 7 Persons I have getting to use Apple products.

To be honest, I have the feeling the employeed Microsoft engineers for 10.5.x and since that a lot of things are getting worse and are not the slightest bit intuitiv any more.

It's hard to know which question or response is being addressed in some posts but some constructive debate is occurring and I am so glad that not everyone buys into the Apple are infalible story. Obviously it would be great if all that want change in the Mail App go to Mail on the Mail App toolbar and click on 'Provide Mail Feedback'. This link goes to the Apple Feedback site http://www.apple.com/feedback/ and this one goes to the OS X operating system feedback http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html . Let's see if Apple are responsive or not? Apple say that they do not moinitor the these support forums, except I notice that when where it suits them they remove stuff, but it is up to us to make ourselves heard.

Tried to alter a typo but was blocked from editing within a few minutes of posting the post above. It said that I was not authorised and then when I got to the page 'edit' had gone.

This is a very long thread, so maybe this has already been mentioned. You may need to set the volume up a bit, since it's a fairly quiet ping, but there is a ping sound when Mail is finished checking for new mail. Otherwise, it's a shame they removed that and for no good reason.

Yes, I'm aware of that thanks, however, it's always been there and, very annoying as well, but it's not a patch on the spinnning wheel cog and if you are deaf the ping is not of any help.

Maybe you can convince Apple to bring back the sleep light. 😉 I really miss that too.

Yes, that is something they done bad as well. I can not cite you, that's what I wanted. I did give feedback on mail in the mail programm, I wrote them and I phoned them a year ago and still nothing happened. And I did so for other points annoying me.

I did even fill out there survey abut there forum, but the questions are quite silly.

For all the ping does not help at all, becaus turning the volume up to hear the ping makes the computer too loud for me. And always turning it up and down is annoying,. The solution would be the spinning wheel, but they are deaf on this one.