{"id":46773,"date":"2025-02-18T09:38:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T14:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=46773"},"modified":"2025-07-01T16:35:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T20:35:01","slug":"mailmate-2-0-beta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/18\/mailmate-2-0-beta\/","title":{"rendered":"MailMate 2.0 Beta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benny Kjær Nielsen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I’ve been very quiet here, but I’ve actually been working on MailMate during all that time — which should be obvious based on the other blog post today<\/a> about the latest beta and its release notes<\/a>. For years now, the main focus has been on improving\/maintaining MailMate and that is great for existing beta\/test users of MailMate, but obviously it’s not great for generating revenue from new users.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In the new license key setup, a MailMate license key is obtained by starting a subscription ($10 every 3 months). An active subscription means that MailMate will run in its “Paid Mode”. An inactive\/cancelled subscription means that MailMate will run in its “Free Mode”. These modes are (almost<\/a>) identical. Essentially, this means the price of a MailMate license key is now $10, but it is strongly encouraged to continue the subscription and for many users it is, in principle, required.<\/p>\n

Why do it this way? First of all, paid upgrades are not a realistic option for me. It requires working on two versions of MailMate at the same time and I’ve clearly proven that I’m not able to do that. The first license key was sold more than 14 years ago and it is still valid!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously, it was a $50 one-time charge. One of the reasons it’s not a traditional subscription is that he had promised<\/a> that 2.0 would be a free upgrade.<\/p>\n\n

Maintaining software requires the same amount of effort as creating, but it is not a straightforward source of revenue. I do not think I can or should make major flashy rewrites which could justify upgrade fees. Instead, a large number of subscribers is going to be an incentive for me to focus on keeping existing users happy. This means iterative\/frequent updates improving the details of existing features, improving performance, fixing bugs, and to at least some extent answering support emails. This is essentially how I’ve worked in the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Freron Software<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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When Paid Mode<\/strong> expires, MailMate will automatically switch to Free Mode<\/strong>. In this mode, you continue to have access to all features of MailMate, but it is not intended to be used by all users. If you are part of a business or you run a business relying on the use of MailMate then it is also required that you use MailMate in Paid Mode<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As described above, MailMate adds a header line to every outgoing email stating the email client used. In Free Mode<\/strong>, this header line will explicitly use “MailMate Free Mode” as the email client name. Most of your correspondents will never see this, but some email clients will display it when it’s available.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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I recently purchased an M4 MacBook Pro with a nano-texture display and set up Mail app fresh on the new machine, which is running macOS Sequoia. In the following weeks, I encountered a bunch of the same old problems—the Mail main window sometimes fails to come to the front when clicking on the Dock icon, requiring one or more additional clicks; the Flagged mailbox lists some unflagged messages, which can be removed from the list only by moving them to a new containing folder and back again; Mail app refuses to quit entirely because it's connecting to Gmail; a message sometimes isn't marked as read when opened in a window; my column widths are forgotten when switching folders—as well as a new problem: the Unread smart mailbox showed a phantom count of 1 when no messages appeared in the folder.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Although my immediate problem was solved, I started to wonder why Mail app hadn't downloaded that unread message. So for each of my email accounts, I used the Get Account Info contextual menu item to show the number of messages in each mailbox on the IMAP server, comparing it to the number of messages in each mailbox displayed in Mail app. To my horror, I discovered that there were multiple discrepancies, in multiple mailboxes, in multiple accounts. Mail app seems to download most<\/em> of the messages from each mailbox, but for some unknown reason it doesn't always download every<\/em> message from every mailbox.<\/p>\n

This was the final straw for me, an irreparable loss of confidence in the reliability of Mail app. In my opinion, Apple Mail is a formerly great app, during the 2000s, that has steadily declined in quality since then and ultimately became shoddy. […] RIP Mail app, long live MailMate!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The IMAP problem I’ve been having with Apple Mail for the last few years is that some message moves\/deletions don’t get synced to the server promptly. So if I view my account on my iPhone or Webmail I see a sampling of old messages—going back perhaps a month—still in the inboxes. Eventually those messages to get properly moved on the server, but by then new ones have taken their place.<\/p>\n

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MailMate's IMAP support appears to be flawless: unlike Mail app, MailMate downloaded every message in every mailbox for every account. How is it possible that one developer, Benny Kjær Nielsen, can succeed where an entire team of Apple engineers failed?<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Moreover, Apple Mail has some problems with junk mail filtering. As of macOS Ventura<\/a>, there's no longer a way to mark a message as not junk that Mail mistakenly marked as junk. And my junk mailboxes accumulate old messages despite the fact that I set Mail to erase junk messages after one month.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, if you have Apple Mail or MailMate you should be using SpamSieve<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Pierre Igot<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Welcome to the club! I am fairly confident, based on your quality standards, that you will not regret it. I switched from Mail to MailMate in 2020 and have never regretted it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n