OS X Lion will usher in a new look for the Mac’s native email client, with the company promising even better organization of email threads into what it calls “conversations.”
The new Mail will automatically group messages from the same conversation — even if the subject changes along the way. Clicking a “conversation” in the inbox will reveal a streamlined feed of individual messages in chronological order, which can be easily filed or deleted individually or by an entire conversation.
Users of Mail in iOS will already be familiar with the functionality, which is presumably being brought to the desktop with improved file coordination on the developer side.
The main layout is getting a revamp as well, displaying messages in the inbox alongside a full-height preview of the selected message, which ought to get tongues wagging.
Finally, while Apple promises a “powerful new way to search” even the largest inboxes, details on that feature are slight at the moment; the input field appears to remain an oblong oval with a magnifying glass icon.
Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie’s photos on Flickr.
15 responses to “Finer Threads Coming to Mac Mail with Lion OS”
Although I like the cleanliness of this direction, I must admit I’m a bit concerned with the overall scope of mailbox and account presentation. This route works nicely on iPad and iPhone, but my main iMac workhorse for my business really benefits form the three-window/pane view with the accounts and boxes to left, main inbox at top and then the preview pane below. I run quite a few different work accounts out of the one App – I can imagine this being quite a bit frustrating.
Have always thoroughly loved Mail (way above many other mail apps I’ve tried out), but might have to find a replacement if this ends up feeling as restrictive as it looks.
I like the widescreen orientation; looks better than any Mail.app plugin I have tried. Not being able to see folders and accounts is a bit of a bummer. I usually have multiple accounts set up in Mail, and like being able to see folders for quick drag and drop of things that don’t get sorted by the extensive rules I have set up.
will there be any option to constantly display folders? i have hundreds of folders in quite a hirarchy which my work depends on. search only won’t cut it for me…
It looks like they are constantly displayed… look on the Lion page on apple.com.
The folders are visible on the second screen shot… they’re at the top, under the navigation.
Interesting and useful post
I’m trying to figure out what exactly has changed about e-mail threading. Mail.app already does thread my conversations even if the subject changes. So how is it different in Lion?
You can still expand the list of mailboxes to the left of the message list.