One of those hidden power features that I really like in Apple Mail is Smart Mailboxes. It has both light and dark modes, but I prefer the light mode with its subtle gray shading on the menu chrome, the slim inbox view and the wide reading panel, saving extra clicks to open messages and read them. It has a very minimalist design that I initially thought betrayed a lack of power features, but there’s actually more to Apple Mail than appearances suggest. If Outlook is a fussy jumble of icons and menus, Apple Mail is the exact opposite. In no particular order, here are the things I like about Apple Mail. Is Apple’s freebie strong enough to replace Outlook for Mac? Here’s my week-long view. The most obvious alternative is the one that comes pre-installed on every Mac – Apple Mail. My plan is to spend a week with a series of Outlook for Mac rivals to find one which best suits my needs, which is basically juggling four different accounts, a mixture of Gmail and IMAP accounts. I’ve had enough, and I’ve decided to seek alternatives. It’s bloated, buggy, lacks features that have been in Outlook for Windows for years and Microsoft is making a terrible hash of a migration to a new version. I switched to Mac over a year ago, and while Outlook for Mac isn’t as terrible as everyone warned me it would be, it’s not great either. I’ve been an Outlook user for as long as I can remember, but my patience has popped.
