Mavericks Mail App and Gmail folders

This has been a most interesting thread. I just upgraded to Mavericks on my iMac, 10.9.1. All sorts of weird thing happened to my mail after that. Unfortunately I hadn't stumbled on this thread first or I might have waited to update to Mavericks. I tried 3x to download the update for Mail and started the installation process only to encounter the error below. (My hard drive is named "Carpe Diem V") Rather baffling~ I just don't get how my computer doesn't meet the requirements.

So, upon further reading I decided to give Postbox a try. I have it installed to use simultaneously alongside the apple Mail app~ I can't even believe the difference in speed and ease, after just one day's use! I'm going to keep testing it and getting used to it, but if it keeps up this good I'm just going to stop using apple Mail and keep up with Postbox.

I'm not a real techie person, have been a loyal apple/mac user since '80s, and have been disappointed in this whole update/maverick/mail problem. It's still unclear to me as to whose fault it is (apple or google), but at this point the most important thing is to have things work smoothly on my computer again.

Thanks everyone, for all the helpful dialogue here.

re: my last post, my attachment didn't come through... I'll try it again here. It was the error message when I tried to update apple mail.

The Mail Update was for 10.9.0. It is already rolled into 10.9.1.

I spoke too soon. Mail problems are resurfacing. Latest problem is peculiar. I have two email accounts managed by Google (plus an iCloud account which works fine). The first is my business email - which is something like xx.xx@Business-address.com, and my second is my personal address which is like xx.xx@gmail.com. Over the last several weeks I have been sending emails from my business address and replies come to my personal address. This happens frequently. It becomes extremely irritating when I try to unsubscribe from tedious spam-type emails to my business address only to get replies to my personal address saying "But xx.xx@Gmail.com is not subscribed to any of our emails."

When recipients have tried to help me they have discovered that although my "From" and "Reply to" boxes are set to XX.XX@business-address.com, the Return Path is actually set to XX.XX@gmail.com. But the Return Path setting is not a client-set header. How on earth do I get out of this? Is it a Mail issue or a Gmail issue?

Check your SMTP server settings, both SMTP servers.

When you use the detailed search in Gmail/Mailplane, it really is quite good. Better that Mail.app search.

Mailplane still has its quirks (especially about attachments), but I've gotten really fond of it. And their support is nice. Meanwhile Gmail for Mail.app remains unreliable.

I don't know what to do about my Sunday students though. A few have Gmail accounts and since it's Mavericks it's just not working well for them. I hate to tell them they have to buy a $25 mail app (or use the web all the time) just to get reliable mail. Even the $2 Airmail app has too many bugs to recommend it.

I suppose they could always use Thunderbird, which also works. Or just Gmail on the web, with the web limitation. Still, it's too bad Mail.app is left like this.

I actually called AppleCare about it, since I have a new MBP and tried to get it to work with a brand new installation. But after the initial sync, which does work, new mail simply is not coming in. AppleCare apologized and said they know about the problem and are still looking into it. And they confirmed my settings, but don't know why it doesn't work.

Apple basically took an app that was working and break it though. I think most everybody would be happy if they simply reverted to Mountain Lion Mail.app.

doug

Many thanks for this suggestion. I think the problem is sorted, but largely by accident. It was clearly, as you said, an SMTP issue. The SMTP settings were the same for both my Gmail account and my Google Apps account, except that the first was linked to my personal email and password and the second was linked to my business name and password. I deleted the settings for the latter and then put the same ones back. This time I got an error message saying I couldn't have two SMTP settings the same and so cancelled save. Then I tried to send an email from my business address and I got the message saying I couldn't use the SMTP setting I had chosen. Did I want to use the other setting (ie the Gmail setting which was identical to the one just deleted and reinserted - except for link to name and passowrd). I said yes and clicked on the "Use only this server" setting and, lo and behold, it all seemed to work OK. When a reply was sent to that email it came through correctly to my business address.

This problem only surfaced after Mavericks was installed. Prior to that "upgrade" I never had any problems using Gmail.

Doug,

This is a good news, I was afraid that Apple doesn't even care about it. If they are working on it, there is some hope.

But, on the other hand, I tottaly agree with you that they should simply revert to Mountain Lion Mail.app and everything would be settled up.

virtualAThome wrote:

Doug,

This is a good news, I was afraid that Apple doesn't even care about it. If they are working on it, there is some hope.

But, on the other hand, I tottaly agree with you that they should simply revert to Mountain Lion Mail.app and everything would be settled up.

Really! I can't believe how much time I've wasted since upgrading to Mavericks just because of Apple's mess-up with the Mail app I've been using for years. I'm "ok" now with Mailplane, but the hours wasted...

doug

Appleinsider reports that Mavericks 10.9.2 beta has been sent to developers. See : http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/01/16/apple-seeds-second-os-x-1092-mavericks -beta-to-developers

In the article, it says "…Apple once again asks developers to focus on Mail. The built-in OS X Mail app has run into a number of issues since the latest version launched with Mavericks last October. Users have complained of Gmail compatibility as well as inconsistent performance from Smart Mailboxes."

Any developers reading this care to comment? Should we be expecting any fixes in 10.9.2?

Bark!

barkofdelight wrote:

Appleinsider reports that Mavericks 10.9.2 beta has been sent to developers. See : http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/01/16/apple-seeds-second-os-x-1092-mavericks -beta-to-developers

In the article, it says "…Apple once again asks developers to focus on Mail. The built-in OS X Mail app has run into a number of issues since the latest version launched with Mavericks last October. Users have complained of Gmail compatibility as well as inconsistent performance from Smart Mailboxes."

Any developers reading this care to comment? Should we be expecting any fixes in 10.9.2?

Bark!

It would be nice if it was fixed. But they created so many problems I don't have a lot of confidence at this point.

doug

Yes the latest beta update appears to correct the problem of mail reappearing in the inbox following an attempt to move to another gmail label.

I have been having problems with Mail non-stop since Mavericks came along. On Friday, I had enough and got Airmail from the App Store. For £1.49, I have to say, its the best email client by far and beats Mail and Outlook hands down!

Works perfectly with Gmail and looks fantastic. This will be my default mail client from now on!

m_a_c wrote:

I have been having problems with Mail non-stop since Mavericks came along. On Friday, I had enough and got Airmail from the App Store. For £1.49, I have to say, its the best email client by far and beats Mail and Outlook hands down!

Works perfectly with Gmail and looks fantastic. This will be my default mail client from now on!

I tried Airmail for quite a while but a lot of bugs were driving me crazy. I might try it again to see if they have been fixed. In particular, the problems I was having were:

• The worst problem was that very often sent mail did not get marked with the "Sent" label, so I could not find Sent mail there. It would always be in the "Local Sent" mail folder though. I wonder if they have fixed that. It was an on-again/off-again type thing.
• While there is the ability to move mail between accounts, it doesn't work well because it changes all the dates on the moved mails! (On the other hand Mailplane doesn't have any feature for moving mail between accounts.)
• Send Again does not work correctly, and while the Airmail team is mostly very nice, they get quite argumentative about this one, insisting that "this is the way OUR send again works." The problem is you can't send just any email again, only the latest one in a conversation.
• While they do respond and have support (unlike Postbox, which I haven't tried because they say up front they provide no one-to-one support or user-to-user support forums) it changes all the time and it's hard to figure out from week to week how to contact them and give feedback.
• There were composing issues with certain fonts - with the formatting tools not working.
• Though they supposedly support Gmail-like keyboard shortcuts, they don't work as well as in Gmail. For example v - used to label and archive - doesn't let you search after one input character, so it is very hit and miss as to whether you can find the folder you are looking for. This works perfectly in Mailplane.
• There was a UI issue they say they have fixed now, so I should try it - before if you tried to read from oldest to newest order, after filing or deleting the current message you would end up at the previous, already read message instead of the next, unread message. They told me they finally fixed that, but I haven't confirmed that yet. I should try the latest beta to see if that is true.
• There are strange, inexplicable features, like what's the difference between a "new folder" and a "new label"? Both open up the exact same dialog and seem to do the same thing, so why do you need both? I could not get a straight answer on this when I tried to find out. There are other mysterious unexplained settings and features too, and it's hard to find out what they are.
• I'm curious what happens to mail with more than one label. Are they treated in a smart fashion like in Gmail, or are duplicates created in each folder like with most IMAP clients. I was never able to get them to answer that.
• Search was on the slow side, and a bit hit-or-miss. Mailplane search is really fantastic - almost instantaneous.

Airmail does work better than Mavericks Mail does though. Anything works better than Mavericks Mail. I can't believe Mavericks Mail got out of beta.

My feeling about Airmail is that it too is basicallly still is in beta. They seem to be going for a wide breadth of features and be cutting edge, rather than taking the time to make sure each feature actually works correctly. The current "stable release with no bugs" is actually just one of their beta versions. It definitely still does have bugs.

I might try it again later. Particularly to see if they fixed the problem with Sent mail. That was a complete show-stopper to me. I couldn't find old insurance claims I was looking for! The search in Mailplane is super-fantastic.

doug

A followup to my comment above about Airmail labels and folders. They have updated their knowledge base to explain this better, as follows:

For GMAIL - GOOGLE APPS

Labels are the same of Folders but the messages are stored once. A message can belong to multiple labels.

For POP3 GENERIC IMAP or EXCHANGE

Labels are the same of Folders but the messages are stored multiple times. A message can belong to multiple labels.

This seems quite reasonable, and better than how most IMAP clients handle it. Most of them will always make copies of multi-labeled emails.

doug