IMAP problems with Apple Mail.app

I’ve been wanting to use Apple’s Mail.app for a while now. I’m a very heavy email user; I send and receive hundreds of messages a day, I do so from multiple computers, so I use IMAP.

I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird which works great, however a couple of years ago I purchased a powerbook, so I though why not give Apple’s Mail.app a try, the interface is great — everything from a user experience is great. However, I had a problem with IMAP, and the problem is a delay in reporting the presence of new messages in the inbox.

So at the time, I did not feel like trouble-shooting the problem all that much, so I kept using thunderbird.

A few month later apple released Tiger and the best thing about it was Spotlight, and when I read that it also searches mail messages, I was really excited about using it.

So I got a new Mac mini with Tiger installed. When I gave Tiger’s Mail.app a try and the same problem was still there. Since my powerbook was still my main computer for work, I decided to stick with thunderbird.

Now I’m using a Macbook Pro (I’ll make a new entry for this one on its own), so I thought since I’ve changed my Powerbook to this, I might as well try to move to Apple Mail.app, maybe they have fixed the problem since the last time I tried, and as I expected the problem was still there.

This time I was prepared to take the problem head on, so I called Apple!!!

The gentleman I got asked me a few questions, I told him what the problem is, and first thing he tells me that I might have to reset my Mail application preferences in order to start fresh, so I tell him I’ve been having the issue on multiple computers with multiple versions of Mail from multiple networks. So he goes and talks to some other dude, comes back and tells me it looks like it might be an issue with the provider, so I stop him and say that the problem is only showing up when I’m using Apple mail, no other IMAP client is doing this, and to TOP it all off, I work for the provider and I’m one of the engineers that designed and maintains the system and I’m quite willing to work with him or anyone else to prove it’s not the provider. Then he tells me in so many words that I have to wait for the next update, but without formally acknowledging that there is a problem with Mail.app.

So if you’re using IMAP don’t use mail, it sucks from that perspective.