There has been an an ongoing discussion regarding a better e-mail application for Mac OS X.

I have to agree with Brent Simmons on the specific needs to make e-mail friendlier to Pro users (emphasis mine):

1. No clicking to file a message. Keyboard only.

2. No clicking—or tabbing plus arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow arrow—to go to a mailbox.

3. Easy searching multiple mailboxes.

4. IMAP.

5. Editor with macros (think BBEdit’s clippings, TextMate’s snippets, vim’s abbreviations).

6. Mac-app-ness.

Mail doesn’t do 1, 2, and 5.

I have to deal with a lot of mail and I don’t always deal with it appropriately because it’s not easy enough to get through. I’m now great at training my mail server’s junk mail filters via various keyboard twitches that I’ve mastered, but the rest of the e-mail client should function just as well.

I’ve been using Adam Tow’s excellent MsgFiler plug-in for Mail.app and it’s helped me greatly with the filing of e-mail messages and with the opening of most¹ folders in Mail.app. However, this functionality should be built-in as well.

In terms of the no market for a non-free ‘Pro’ e-mail client for Mac OS X, I definitely have to side with Michael McCracken that there is definitely for a market for a paid, Pro e-mail application:

How is the market for programmer’s editors? XCode is free and very good, emacs, vim, etc. are also free and excellent. But there are people making money selling text editors. People buy BBEdit, TextMate, and SubEthaEdit because these programs have important features that give you more power over something that they do all day.

I bought SubEthaEdit. Hell, as I mentioned above, I bought MsgFiler, a Mail plug-in that adds functionality that I feel should be built-in!

Paul Kafasis also noted: “What’s to stop an open source client? I’d say very little, except for the incredible effort needed. “ And went on to say the following:

I think a nice solution here, and perhaps in general, would be a MailKit framework, similar to WebKit. Mail could be built on top of it, and be free, and developers could build custom clients as well.

The thing is, Matt Ronge has been working on MailCore (i.e. Paul’s ‘MailKit’) and Kiwi (the e-mail client) for quite some time now. It’s far from done, but we’re well on our way.

Now, Paul is entirely correct that it’s a lot of work. Interestingly, Matt’s original reason for writing MailCore and Kiwi is because Mail.app (and it’s not alone here) is horrendous at handling IMAP appropriately.

If Kiwi is released with excellent support of the IMAP protocol² and can check-off everything on Brent’s list then I’d totally dish out some cash for it. In fact, I think many people would. If someone else beats him to the punch? I would plunk down my credit card for the best option for me.

Just because Apple includes a free Mail application in Mac OS X that’s about as good (give or take a feature here and there) as most other free e-mail clients, doesn’t mean that there’s no market for a paid, ‘Pro’ e-mail client.

Update: Matt Ronge has posted regarding the state of e-mail in which he discusses his improved motivation for developing MailCore/Kiwi and the fact that he had considered making Kiwi a commercial app.

¹ It currently doesn’t allow you to search for and file messages to or open one’s various inboxes, so that has to be done manually.

² If it also supported IMAP’s IDLE command, I’d be even happier.