Magic Mailboxes ⇥ techreflect.net

Chris Hynes:

I worked on the Mail team from just before Public Beta thru Tiger. One of my proudest achievements on the team (and at Apple) was brainstorming with my team members and pushing an idea we internally called Magic Mailboxes and eventually became called Combined Mailboxes.

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For this example, I’m going to presume that a novice user has one account, probably a POP account. Here’s what it looked like in Mail.

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As you add more and more accounts, this model falls apart. With three accounts, you have 3 inboxes, 3 drafts, 3 trashes, and so on.

I’ve tried probably half a dozen alternative email clients over the years, but I keep coming back to Apple’s on MacOS and iOS. One reason has been its long-time support for unified mailboxes. I have an indefensible number of email addresses and this is essential for my use.

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