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

Anybody know if this has been fixed in 10.9 Mavericks?

Nothing is broken, so expecting a "fix" would be silly.

The feature has been removed. Since it serves very little purpose, I wouldn't expect it to be resurrected.

Barney why does it bug you so much, that people long for the return of a feature they treasured and made great sense to them?

Some posters have explained very well, why it was very important to them, but you seem to have a comprehension or acceptance problem and therefore belittle us, who like to have this feature back.

It doesn't bother me at all. I'm not the one complaining. I'm just explaining the reality. The feature was removed as it serves no purpose. If a send or retrieve fails, a dialog will be displayed.

You can also view activity in the activity pane or window.

Hit the the feedback page if you want it back.

Barney,

If you bothered to read the thread prior to adding a snarky reply that adds no value whatsoever to the conversation, you'd see that the spinning wheel serves a very real purpose that the two half baked replacments cannot fufil and why these are inferior replacments. It has been explained numerous times in the thread, we have all already left feedback about this.

The "reality" is that this feature was not removed because it serves no purpose, it was removed when Mail.app was switched to asyncronous parallel account checking which introduced a bug into the spinning wheel, rather then fix that they just removed it the very next update.

Finewine & Mikofox,

I wouldn't get my hopes too high about this being fixed in Mavericks despite that OS upgrade being mainly geared towards refreshing the UI and bundled apps. It sure would be a welcome surprise though. :-)

I've been following the thread from the beginning. I think I responded to you once before.

I'm trying to point people to the place to go to have any hope of getting it back.

Just because I point out the truth which you do not agree with does not make it snark.

My opinion is that is is useless. There are less than 100 posts here, with several people posting more than once.

That's just not much interest, and certainly not enough for Apple to consider.

Posting wishful thoughts and disparaging people who don't agree with you won't make it come back.

You have to go to the Feedback page, which you can reach from within Mail.

Thinking that you can dismiss other people with the "truth" or "explain reality" to them, then go on to just add your own personal opinions without any real insider information is the very definition of snarky, that is what snarky means. it is condencending and pointless and of no value whatsoever. if you have nothing of value to add best to add nothing.

The mail feedback feature has already been discussed in this thread, in fact none of us would have know to do that without this thread. We have all already discussed the alternatives, how they fall short, and where to leave feedback. Since you obviosuly have a different opinion from all the people posting on this thread and don't really have anything of value to add perhaps you should just unsubscribe so you aren't compelled to be an appologist for something that other users genuinely miss and found value in.

You don't seem to be adding any value arguing with me.

It is what it is. Send Feedback to Apple. This ain't the place to get anything changed.

The spinning wheel cannot be resurrected by anybody but Apple. Apple pretty much isn't here. They are at the Feedback site.

You can argue with me all you want. It won't bring it back.

Anyone who misses this feature can let apple know from the Mail.app, go to the Mail menu and choose the Provide Mail Feedback option.

In case anyone is wondering, the value of the spinning wheel feature is that it showed immediate realtime feedback about the status of each account on an account by account basis which is crucial to users on lower bandwidth connetions and helpful to all users.

The replacments:
1. The Mail Activity pane only shows one bar for all accounts and doesn't give nearly the information or feedback desired, or any breakdown about what is happening with each account. It is pretty much useless but the only real replacment we currently have. (you can activate this using the triangle in the square icon in the bottom left of the status bar in the app)
2. The Mail Status window cannot be left open because it does not minimize with Mail.app and has no way to dock with Mail.app, making it a right pain to use and totally impractical. It can be helpful to diagnose isses, but that is about it. (you can activate this using Window menu in the Mail.app, choose the Activity feature.)

What the spinning wheel indicator did with simplicty and grace in true apple fashion, neither replacment is capible of fufilling with their cludgy partial functionality.

So again, if you miss this feature please leave feedback for the Mail.app team via the Mail.app Provide mail feedback menu option. Thanks.

@Barney-15E

are we not being "pedantic" about "semantics" here.

A couple of Thesaurus alternatives to the word "fix" are "see to" and "restore".

@redesigned

Thank you for your very informative explaination on this much sort after feature that many many people would liked returned. Let us all hope that it is in Mavericks.

If "many many" is enough I am sure that it will be.

If "many many" is enough I am sure that it will be.

I wouldn't count on it. For better and for worse apple very seldom ever bases its decisions off of user feedback, sometimes this has been lauded as visionary and other times as deplorable, but if we have learned anything this is the apple way and culture.

We can hope though, this feature alone would make the mavericks upgrade worthwhile for me.

Apple had a good reason for adding it in the first place and saw the benifit of it at one point so our best hope is that they revisit those original reasons.

redesigned wrote:

If "many many" is enough I am sure that it will be.

I wouldn't count on it. For better and for worse apple very seldom ever bases its decisions off of user feedback, sometimes this has been lauded as visionary and other times as deplorable, but if we have learned anything this is the apple way and culture.

It has certainly been effective from a business point of view. But we will have to see if there is going to be a tipping point in the spinning wheel saga.

i agree for the most part. it was almost their undoing at one point in history, but steve jobs managed to pull them back from the brink of obsceurity to one of the most successful businesses in history using these same principals. so it seems like whether or not pushing all changes and decisons top down is a good thing depends largly on the vision of who is on top. for me personally this is the source of both why i absolutly love and use apple products, and also the source of all of the things i don't like about them. a real double edged sword.

my main point though is that no matter the user feedback, apple doesn't tip to user feedback. like i said the best we can hope is that this prompts them to revisit their original reasons behind adding it and that they reweigh their own internal decisions on the matter.

As someone who posted regarding the spinning wheel some time ago, it is actually an industry standard and appears with most apps when the app itself or the system is waiting (sometimes coloured). Even during computer shutdown or startup there is a spinning wheel.

It therfore follows that it should appear when Mail is waiting on the mail server(s) to respond.

brewersd.