iPhone email app usability
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You know, for a company who built its reputation on usability, I just don't get the design decisions on the email app. Unlike my previous Android phone, which would automatically delete local emails from the Inbox if they were no longer present on the server each time it checked the mail, with Apple I have to manually delete each and every email. There's not even a Select All button. Grabbing your phone and clearing out 50 messages from the day before is tedious at best. Am I missing something here, or is this just drop dead stupid design?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
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Wrong forum[^]. :-D
Wrong message type selected... :rolleyes:
[www.tamautomation.com] Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing.
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You know, for a company who built its reputation on usability, I just don't get the design decisions on the email app. Unlike my previous Android phone, which would automatically delete local emails from the Inbox if they were no longer present on the server each time it checked the mail, with Apple I have to manually delete each and every email. There's not even a Select All button. Grabbing your phone and clearing out 50 messages from the day before is tedious at best. Am I missing something here, or is this just drop dead stupid design?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
Stupid as a rock... I have never used an iPhone therefore I'm not the best one to give my opinion... I've found this link[^] where it seems they explain it can't be done and they recommend using IMAP to sync with the server... X|
[www.tamautomation.com] Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing.
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You know, for a company who built its reputation on usability, I just don't get the design decisions on the email app. Unlike my previous Android phone, which would automatically delete local emails from the Inbox if they were no longer present on the server each time it checked the mail, with Apple I have to manually delete each and every email. There's not even a Select All button. Grabbing your phone and clearing out 50 messages from the day before is tedious at best. Am I missing something here, or is this just drop dead stupid design?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
This seems to be a common practice in recent mail clients. Even in Windows / Windows Phone 8, it is same. I had the same question and figured out that, the mail client uses push technology to get new messages, and the one you have deleted on the server after you have received them on your device won't get deleted, because it is a one way push. now if you hit the Sync / Refresh button on your mail app, then it will remove deleted messages (in both direction). I think they are trying to minimize the data usage / time taken to update the view.
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You know, for a company who built its reputation on usability, I just don't get the design decisions on the email app. Unlike my previous Android phone, which would automatically delete local emails from the Inbox if they were no longer present on the server each time it checked the mail, with Apple I have to manually delete each and every email. There's not even a Select All button. Grabbing your phone and clearing out 50 messages from the day before is tedious at best. Am I missing something here, or is this just drop dead stupid design?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
when i made the Android -> iPhone transition, i hated the email client, too. but i've since discovered that it's not stupid, it's just different. i was used to working with email one way, but the iPhone doesn't really work that way. now that i've adapted, i like the email client just fine.
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when i made the Android -> iPhone transition, i hated the email client, too. but i've since discovered that it's not stupid, it's just different. i was used to working with email one way, but the iPhone doesn't really work that way. now that i've adapted, i like the email client just fine.
So you don't mind tapping the screen 51 times in order to delete 50 messages?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
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This seems to be a common practice in recent mail clients. Even in Windows / Windows Phone 8, it is same. I had the same question and figured out that, the mail client uses push technology to get new messages, and the one you have deleted on the server after you have received them on your device won't get deleted, because it is a one way push. now if you hit the Sync / Refresh button on your mail app, then it will remove deleted messages (in both direction). I think they are trying to minimize the data usage / time taken to update the view.
Remind Me This - Manage, Collaborate and Execute your Project in the Cloud
Although you're right, I think you missed his point. It was more so the fact that you have to individually select messages to delete regardless of if you have sync on. And based on what he's said, there doesn't seem to be a sync button (can't verify because I'm not an iFan). And yes, mail apps that don't try to minimize data usage end up having to do some crazy data polling and end up killing your device's battery. If you have used Yahoo Mail app on android, you'll know what I mean.
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So you don't mind tapping the screen 51 times in order to delete 50 messages?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
i don't delete messages from the phone at all now. that's what i meant by 'adapting' - i changed the way i manage email. iPhone for viewing, maybe for replying. deleting here just moves a message to Trash. gmail for most viewing and replying. deleting here just moves a message to Trash. Eudora at home - that's the final resting place for all email. everything, including deleted but not spam, ends up there.
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So you don't mind tapping the screen 51 times in order to delete 50 messages?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
Do you really have to delete 50 emails often ? :confused:
I'd rather be phishing!
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i don't delete messages from the phone at all now. that's what i meant by 'adapting' - i changed the way i manage email. iPhone for viewing, maybe for replying. deleting here just moves a message to Trash. gmail for most viewing and replying. deleting here just moves a message to Trash. Eudora at home - that's the final resting place for all email. everything, including deleted but not spam, ends up there.
Eudora? Holy cow, does that take me back. I didn't even know those guys were still around.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
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Do you really have to delete 50 emails often ? :confused:
I'd rather be phishing!
Only when I post to CP and get email notifications. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
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Although you're right, I think you missed his point. It was more so the fact that you have to individually select messages to delete regardless of if you have sync on. And based on what he's said, there doesn't seem to be a sync button (can't verify because I'm not an iFan). And yes, mail apps that don't try to minimize data usage end up having to do some crazy data polling and end up killing your device's battery. If you have used Yahoo Mail app on android, you'll know what I mean.
Silvabolt wrote:
I think you missed his point. It was more so the fact that you have to individually select messages to delete regardless of if you have sync on. And based on what he's said, there doesn't seem to be a sync button (can't verify because I'm not an iFan).
If he has deleted the messages on the server, all he has to do is press the Sync/Refresh button on bottom left corner. and it will delete the messages he has deleted on the server, or just wait until the next scheduled sync. I thought this is what his problem was. :)
Remind Me This - Manage, Collaborate and Execute your Project in the Cloud
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Eudora? Holy cow, does that take me back. I didn't even know those guys were still around.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
it's a dead product now, and hasn't updated in many many years. but it still works. and i like the UI far better than any of the other clients out there (ok, except Outlook, but that's overkill for just an email client).
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Silvabolt wrote:
I think you missed his point. It was more so the fact that you have to individually select messages to delete regardless of if you have sync on. And based on what he's said, there doesn't seem to be a sync button (can't verify because I'm not an iFan).
If he has deleted the messages on the server, all he has to do is press the Sync/Refresh button on bottom left corner. and it will delete the messages he has deleted on the server, or just wait until the next scheduled sync. I thought this is what his problem was. :)
Remind Me This - Manage, Collaborate and Execute your Project in the Cloud
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it's a dead product now, and hasn't updated in many many years. but it still works. and i like the UI far better than any of the other clients out there (ok, except Outlook, but that's overkill for just an email client).
Doesn't matter how old it is. If it works, it works. I spend all day writing code in CodeWright, my programmer's editor, which died somewhere in the mid 90s.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
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You know, for a company who built its reputation on usability, I just don't get the design decisions on the email app. Unlike my previous Android phone, which would automatically delete local emails from the Inbox if they were no longer present on the server each time it checked the mail, with Apple I have to manually delete each and every email. There's not even a Select All button. Grabbing your phone and clearing out 50 messages from the day before is tedious at best. Am I missing something here, or is this just drop dead stupid design?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
It's just a drop dead stupid design. Get a Blackberry, it really knows how to manage email properly. It keeps in sync with my five different email servers and combines the list into a unified display. When I reply, It chooses the account the original message was to but I can override that easily if necessary. I use Outlook at work and at home for two different accounts and they work both ways with my Blackberry for deleting, etc.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Eudora? Holy cow, does that take me back. I didn't even know those guys were still around.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer Enjoy comedy? Watch Talking Head Games (SFW)
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Eudora? Holy cow, does that take me back. I didn't even know those guys were still around.
I also use Eudora. I have about 30 active email addresses, and I use Eudora on about 10 of them. Eudora was originally developed on the Mac, then Mac and PC by a company that I don't remember the name of, then purchased by Qualcomm, who continued development and bug fixes for a few years, then ended active product support around 2006 or thereabouts. There are 2 free versions and there used to be a "paid mode" version (which I have) that is no longer available. It is 32 bit only, but still available for download here[^]. Too bad it is not still under support/development. It was the finest mail client there could be. Despite being dead, it is still the best at a number of tasks, still besting products under active development such as Outlook in a number of ways. Eudora has the best spam abatement logic, and has the most robust connection menu (POP2, POP3, SMTP, ESMTP, IMAP, SSL, TLS, NNTP, ...). It keeps folders of messages in separate files, and the mailbox format is the same as unix mbx files. It has the best message filtering logic and filtering UI of any I have seen. There are a lot of other things I like about it ... the list goes on. One of the things that really annoys me no end (grrrr ... NSFW) about Outlook is that it wants to keep everything in one monstrously huge file - configuration, data, messages. If you simply open and close Outlook, without even looking at a message, you trigger a multi-gigabyte backup of your mail file, which is binary and can't be compressed or stored in any type of 'diff' format. Eudora doesn't have that abysmal affliction, and I use it on some of my email addresses for that reason alone. I really understated the spam handling in the paragraph above. I'd rather not provide a lot of details here but nobody does it like Eudora.
-- Harvey