Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


   Mail in Mavericks: Is It Safe Yet?

   Joe Kissell

   Since I was the one who raised such a ruckus about the original release
   of Mail in Mavericks (see '[1]Mail in Mavericks Changes the Gmail
   Equation,' 22 October 2013), lots of people have been asking me whether
   the recent Mail update (see '[2]Apple Updates Mail to Address Mavericks
   Bugs,' 7 November 2013) fixes everything. Is it now safe to upgrade to
   Mavericks and use Mail with Gmail accounts, and can you now experience
   at least the same degree of email functionality found in the Mountain
   Lion version of Mail? My official answer is a qualified 'Maybe, sorta.'

   On the positive side, the update ' which leaves Mail's version number
   at 7.0 but increases the build number from 1816 to 1822 ' appears to
   address two big problems for most people. The first is that if you had
   Gmail's All Mail label hidden, messages you delete or file should no
   longer reappear in your Inbox. And the second is that Mail should no
   longer spend extended periods of time out of sync with your Gmail
   Inbox. I'm glad to see those fixes, as those were probably the two most
   serious problems.

   But you'll notice I've used weasel words like 'most' and 'should' and
   'appears,' because some users are still having trouble in these two
   areas. Anecdotal evidence suggests that deleting your Gmail account
   from Mail, adding it back, and waiting for all your messages to sync
   yet again, increases your chances of success.

   Even though the release notes for the update claim it also fixes
   problems with unread message counts, numerous people are still seeing
   incorrect behavior there. And, as far as I can tell, all the other
   problems with Mail in Mavericks are unchanged. Rules and smart
   mailboxes still have issues, AppleScripts targeting Gmail mailboxes
   won't work, Gmail mailboxes can't be arranged in arbitrary order,
   you're still forced to use default locations for Sent and Trash, IMAP
   accounts must download all messages in their entirety, and the list
   goes on.

   If you were holding off on upgrading to Mavericks because of the Mail
   problems, all I can say is that it's safer now than it was at first. I
   can't guarantee you a trouble-free experience, and without a doubt,
   some people upgrading from Mountain Lion will feel the new version of
   Mail is a distinct downgrade. It all depends on how you use Mail, and
   as we've seen, each person approaches it a bit differently from the
   next.

   As for me, I haven't had any complaints about Mail in Mavericks since I
   stopped using Gmail and switched to a conventional IMAP provider, as I
   discussed in [3]a Macworld article. I don't know if Mail would be
   working as well if my 300,000+ messages were still on Gmail's servers,
   but I'm certainly not going to move them back there just to find out.
   For my own needs, Mail in Mavericks is back to usability ' and would
   have been even without the recent update. Your mileage, of course, may
   vary.

   If the Mail update doesn't cut it for you, your options remain as
   before. You can do as I did and switch to a different provider if your
   problems are specific to Gmail. You can switch to a different email
   client, of which there are many fine choices. You can use a Web-based
   mail interface, assuming your provider offers one. Or you can keep
   waiting and hope for better news in a future update.

References

   1. http://tidbits.com/article/14219
   2. http://tidbits.com/article/14280
   3. http://www.macworld.com/article/2059230/why-and-how-im-saying-goodbye-to-gmail.html

.