Mail.app

Mail.app is the email client bundled with Mac OS X.

Some folks don't like the new version of Mail in Tiger. In fact, they are pretty damn vociferous about their hate.

The hidden PreferPlainText preference mentioned below still works in Tiger (thank heavens) -- check out this macosxhints.com story for how to force Mail to display a plaintext alternative for messages. Repeat after me: HTML does not belong in email.

Brent Simmons covered the Tiger topic in What I think happened to Mail. In the comments of that article, I wrote:

Having just installed Tiger last night, I'm getting a fresh look at Mail's new UI in action... and I have to say I love it. The main window feels more unified without the drawer, and all the small enhancements are great (e.g. individual activity indicators next to the separate account inboxes). I think the menubar looks (and feels) better than before -- much less distracting. Not sure what everybody was in an uproar about.

No "uproar" pun intended. I swear.

Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are your friends. For example, under the Mailbox menu, you'll find a "Go To" submenu with some handy shortcuts -- Cmd-1 (Apple-1) through Cmd-6 (Apple-6) take you to your Inbox, Outbox, Drafts, Sent, Trash, Junk mailboxes.

Another favorite is Cmd-Option-P, which switches to the Plain Text version of the email you're currently reading. Handy for the times when you get crazy HTML mail or stuff you can't seem to read. On this same front is this hint from MacOSXHints.com: Force Mail to display plain text by default, which is very handy as there isn't a Preferences item for it.

Speaking of Preferences, under "Viewing" be sure to turn off "Display images and embedded objects in HTML messages" to save yourself a lot of time and spam-grief.

Rules

While you're in there, why not create Rules to shunt all your mailing lists and other subscriptions into their own folders automatically? That would be an example of good behaviors. :)

And for goodness' sake, change the checking interval to something sane like every 30 minutes or more. Do you know how many interruptions that is during a given week?

See Minimizing Mail for more tips.

Something I wish Mail.app had...

Every time I use the Dock icon feature that NetNewsWire has, a hierarchical list of unread messages, I wish Mail had the same thing. As it stands currently, Mail lets you start a new email, get new mail, and see open windows.