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Just gave it a try and it works really well. Thanks for the tip.

It’s interesting to hear that you still use a desktop application to check e-mail.

For some reason I thought 37signals used GMail or another web-based solution.

For what it’s worth, you can setup Mail to “auto-vacuum” your mail. This will help keep Mail app always humming.

I like using Mail on my Mac. I have gmail forward all my mail. The interface is just much more intergrated with my other Mac apps.

How do you do that Ben?

Yes, DO TELL !

I’m not a Mac user. You’re telling me Mail.app didn’t have a big shiny button in preferences/options labeled, e.g. “automagically make this application run a lot faster” which would then vacuum the database?

That’s kind of negligent of Apple, should that be the case.

And don’t say “that feature doesn’t matter,” obviously it does for Jason and many others.

Thanks for the cute input, Warren. :-|

Doesn’t Mailbox -> Rebuild do exactly the same thing?

For auto-vacuum, I believe (but an not certain) that to turn auto-vacuum on, run the following command:

sqlite3 -a ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

Note the “-a”, that should turn on auto-vacuum. I am currently away from my Mac, so I cannot verify if this is correct.

Can anyone verify Ben’s comments? Sounds great if that’s all it takes.

Mail.app + IMAP is a web app, Ben. :)

Actually, to expound upon that: the primary advantage to a web app vs. a desktop app are “omni-accessible” data and (usually) operating system agnosticism. The primary disadvantages are speed and offline accessibility.

My favorite apps are those with persistent online accessibility and a rich desktop client. IMAP is a perfect example of this in action. I could use Mail.app at home, Outlook at work, and a webmail interface on the road, and my data stays in sync the entire time.

Computing is just data manipulation; make that data portable, and the battle of “web app vs. desktop app” disappears.

Ah Mail.app – the most Microsofty piece of software Apple offers. Mail.app ignores the IMAP RFC involving folder subscriptions. It will not obey them. It pulls down all IMAP folders whether you want it to or not. This angers me.

I tried this earlier this morning. I recently switched from Win/Outlook to Mac/Mail and the load times for the program and emails have been pretty sluggish. Running this command reduced the initial Mail.app launch from something like 10 seconds down to 2-3 seconds (sorry, I will not benchmark in “bounces”).

Strange…...

A leading Change Manager is using/promoting a desktop thing and not living in Africa (with respect for Africa that don’t have access anywhere yet/anytime)

Strange ….

Please comment on the vision.. I would like to learn !

This is a great tip. You guys do know that you can setup Mail with your Gmail right? I did this a while ago and it works great. I can send and recieve flawlessly.

BEN , looks like the sqlite version in tiger doesnt sport auto vacuum. but i guess you could set up an automator that quits mail.app and then terminal’s sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum once a week or so :)

Ben: sqlite does have an auto_vacuum mode that would do this kind of cleanup automatically, but it has to be enabled at the time the database is created, so it’s not possible to use a command to turn it on for Mail’s database. Moreover, the version of sqlite that shipped in 10.4 has a bug that can [rarely] corrupt databases if auto_vacuum is on … which is probably why Mail.app doesn’t do it.

Warren: This is called a “bug”, and I’ve heard Windows and Linux have bugs too, so don’t get all hoity-toity. Apple didn’t intentionally make Mail not clean up its database. A big “Vacuum” button is more of a Windows or Linux-style solution, actually; the Mac Way would be to just have Mail do it automatically every few days without involving you at all. Wiping the app’s bottom is still wiping the app’s bottom, even if you use a shiny GUI button instead of a nasty command line tool.

In terms of speed, searching within Mail.app has gone from insanely unusable to acceptable. Great tip.

Mail is p.o.s. I use Thunderbird.

First, thanks Jason, that worked like a charm.

I just wanted to echo that Mail.app is one of the unsung heroes of the Mac world. When I finally switched to Mac I was trailing 12 years of email in assorted files that could no longer be brought into MS products. With the help of a program called emalichemy I was able to bring in gigabytes of old email into Mail.app and rediscover years of my life.

It is simple and it works. I’d love to see a built in ability to annotate (just a simple text field—MailTags is a bit overkill) but other than that it is a perfect email solution.