why does it take emails 2-3 hours to reach me on my Mac but get them immediately on my iPhone.

I suspect it has to do with your ISP and how their servers handle mail. One of my co-workers has a Windows phone ( one of the few in the world who do ! ) and an i-Phone and he has had email take a day or more to show up on the Windows phone.

If the mail account in question is the same on both devices, then it's how the devices are configured to access the account.

If you're comparing @icloud.com (iPhone/iPad) with @isp.net (your service provider-based email), then it could be any number of things including how the mail programs are configured to check for mail.

pokey b wrote:

I suspect it has to do with your ISP and how their servers handle mail. One of my co-workers has a Windows phone ( one of the few in the world who do ! ) and an i-Phone and he has had email take a day or more to show up on the Windows phone.

FWIW, that doesn't make much sense. If I have an email account, let's say "mine @ gmail.com", and someone sends me an email, that email goes to my router as one email for any devices I own to receive. My ISP doesn't know to send one to a mobile device and one to a computer. There aren't separate emails for mobile devices.

Actually, that email doesn't "go to your router" at all.

Emails like @icloud.com trigger a push event through the APN to your connected device, telling it to immediately download the content. Emails like @gmail.com go to your account and STAY THERE until your device's next connection cycle to retrieve new content.

I explained it badly. 😁

What I was trying to say if my computer is on, and my iPad is on, I get gmail at the same time on both devices. Neither device can retrieve mail without going through my router.

Better? 😎

pokey b wrote:

Your i-Phone could be getting mail through AT&T, for example, and your computer through an entirely different ISP, say Comcast. Those will be entirely two different routes to the end user.

That would be difficult since I have no iPhone and I only have one ISP.

FWIW, I think what everyone is trying to say is if your iPhone and your iPad (with cellular) are set up to receive emails through the same cellular service, they would receive an email at the same time. Your iMac would not be receiving email through your cellular service so it could receive emails before or after your mobile devices. A 2 to 3 hour spread does seem unlikely but not impossible.

Geez, now I'm talking to myself. 😁

When you click on the button to get new mail, does the process end fairly quickly? If it does, then faster internet isn't going to help.

How much mail do you have in the account? What about moving some of the oldest stuff out of the Inbox and putting it into a folder of some sort so that the polling for new mail doesn't have to check against such a large list?

Maybe try pulling the Internet account completely out and putting it back in again? Maybe there's something in the folders / account that's corrupt?

I get my emails at nearly the same instant. I don't know of a reason it would take longer on a computer of any kind.

Your i-Phone could be getting mail through AT&T, for example, and your computer through an entirely different ISP, say Comcast. Those will be entirely two different routes to the end user.

There you go ! That explains it. Also, ember 1205 mentions a point I forgot... The refresh rate of your email settings.

Exactly. BTW, I've had some the best conversations with myself. They made perfect sense.