Our Verdict
When I review GyazMail 1.2 ( ) for Macworld in 2005 , I compared it favorably to Apple ’s Mail ( ) . Now at version 1.5.7 , GyazMail ’s price has n’t convert in three years ( it ’s still $ 18 ) , which is very good indeed . alas , though , not much else about GyazMail has change either . In the meanwhile , Mail has sire much better , and so have other free choice , such as Thunderbird 2 ( ) and online options such as Yahoo ! Mail ( ) and Google ’s Gmail ( ) .
The good
Unlike Thunderbird , GyazMail learn e - mail addresses from and saves young addresses to the Mac OS X Address Book , which is skilful news and declarative of the program ’s Mac OS ecstasy fiber . GyazMail supports Growl , a engineering for providing telling when chain armour arrive , even if you are in another programme . GyazMail has fantabulous instrument for finding and especially for filtering messages . The program also offers a blessing to baron users who prefer the keyboard to the mouse : you may create your own keyboard shortcuts for do most actions .
The good affair about GyazMail , however , is its very attractive user user interface ; it ’s very unlike from Apple Mail , but it ’s also clearly a Mac OS X software to the core . mack drug user do worry about aesthetic , and GyazMail may be the only third - party e - mail client worth comparing to Mail in the looks department . I tested GyazMail in Leopard ( Mac OS X 10.5 ) and found it to be antiphonal and completely static .
The less good
Ah , but skillful looks are n’t everything . GyazMail patronize POP account and IMAP account , but it stick out alone in take something it callslocalaccounts . A local account is n’t really an account at all . It match to nothing outside the programme , does n’t reference any external servers , and does not command any conformation . or else , a local story is an organizational pseudo - story , a kind of first-rate - booklet into which you’re able to filter or move messages that arrive at your real mail accounts . Mail and other programs also distinguish between incoming and sent content for dissimilar account , but less obtrusively and less confusingly . The GyazMail approach works O.K. , but it is idiosyncratic and has no special advantage . It ’s easy to find messages in GyazMail , but it ’s just as easy , if not easier , in Thunderbird and Mail . And in Thunderbird and Mail , if you line up yourself doing the same search frequently , you could redeem the search parametric quantity and create what Mail calls a smart mailbox , something that is n’t potential in GyazMail .
GyazMail ’s attractive substance abuser port is mar by a lack of clear distinctions between tangible accounts , which correspond to server outside your estimator , and local pseudo - accounts , which do not .
GyazMail supports labels , but it lets you create only a set number of them , and you could apply only one recording label to a message . This allows you to flag messages that , say , need a response or are peculiarly important . But GyazMail ’s labels are much less utilitarian than Gmail ’s , or than Thunderbird ’s tags : in those program , you may make your own and use multiple labels to the same message , provide a full-bodied multi - dimensional pecker for organizing substance .
GyazMail’s attractive user interface is marred by a lack of clear distinctions between real accounts, which correspond to servers outside your computer, and local pseudo-accounts, which do not.
IMAP and Web mail
GyazMail has add up accompaniment for IMAP ( Internet Message Access Protocol ) in the last brace of years . Of course , many other node , including Mail and Thunderbird , have supported IMAP for years ; in the meantime , more and more users are discovering the welfare of entanglement post . And while Mail and Thunderbird will configure themselves to access your business relationship with popular on-line mail serve like .Mac and Gmail , to access my Gmail account using GyazMail , I had to fiddle about in GyazMail ’s account preference duologue , tweaking port and authentications configurations most users do n’t really realize . In the end , it took an east - mail to GyazMail support to do the trick .
I hasten to add together that my e - mail to GyazMail financial support was answered very promptly , and by the developer of the program himself . I have been rather less successful getting straightaway help from the head programmer at Google .
Macworld’s buying advice
GyazMail 1.5.7 is a substantial , competent background e - ring armour client , with an attractive user user interface and some nice features . This is especially remarkable considering the fact that it is the work of a single smart as a whip computer programmer , Goichi Hirakawa . But the program has n’t changed much in years , and the balance of the east - post existence has change a sight . I surmise that , in 2008 , most Mac OS ex user seem for a desktop e - ring mail client will be well serve up by Mail or the open - source guest Thunderbird , or perhaps – if you are really into tycoon searching and filtering chain mail – by Bare Bones ’ Mailsmith ( ) . But if you are shopping around for an e - mail computer program that work very well with OS X , GyazMail is in spades worth a download . And if you are already using GyazMail and like it , I do n’t see any understanding to switch .
[ William Porter is a database applications developer and case lensman who last in Dallas , Texas . ]
