For years I have used and loved Mulberry, perhaps the best e-mail client in existence. So I was greatly saddened to hear that Cyrusoft, the company behind Mulberry, declared bankruptcy a year ago.
I was just as shocked as I was dismayed. Mulberry was hawked by so many colleges that I assumed its destiny was all but sealed. College students, as early adopters, would all be exposed to Mulberry and see how wonderful it was, and they’d take it to their jobs, promoting an almost viral spread.
I guess the Thunderbird/Outlook duopoly was just too strong for Cyrusoft to handle. However, all is not lost, as Mulberry is available for free now. Let’s take a look at all the wonderful features of this program!
Mulberry has plenty of features in its conveniently all purpose preferences dialog, but if setting "processing order" is too confusing, there's always
Simple mode! For those who want the ease of simple but don't want to give up all the features, Mulberry does allow you to set things like your hierarchy setup in simple view, which I'm curious to find out the function of.
Nothing too out of the ordinary here. Now that we've set up our Email Server and Default of Copy Outgoing Messages, let's check some MulberryMail!
Mulberry saves me from my e-mail!
Oh wait. Mulberry has quite helpfully informed me that the certificate was unverified, and detailed in the middle of this window what I need to do to continue. Don't worry if you find this box confusing, Mulberry will warn you again if you try to do something unsafe:
Ever the faithful e-mail Lassie, Mulberry has realized that I might not be able to hand validate an e-mail security certificate, and re-explains in English why what I'm about to do is a very bad idea.
And now we're ready to check e-mail!
As soon as we pick Mailbox Locations. (Anyone know how I can pick mailbox locations in Gmail? I can't find it anywhere.)
OK! We've done it!! We're at the mail screen, and here it is:
Check out all these...speculations
Mulberry is an e-mail driver's dream. See that circular button to the right, same line as IMAP:INBOX? I don't even know what it does! You can change your font size, match, select, check, search, and details, among other things. But in many other ways, it's an ordinary e-mail program. If you ignore the <<Entire Hierarchy>> (which doesn't even work for me, anyway), you can just click on your Inbox and read the messages with the handy preview pane. (Though if you have an invalid cert like I do, you'll have to click on those first two boxes every time before you start).
As you might imagine though, Mulberry has more. You can reply to messages!
As soon as you decide whom to reply to.
It's unfortunate that newer mail programs don't ask me whom I want to reply to when I hit reply; I end up having to change things around all by myself if I want to reply to someone besides the sender. Hopefully someone will pick up on that and start adding it back.
Once you've sent the e-mail, Mulberry asks me to save a copy of the draft. Of my e-mail, I assume. (Mulberry doesn't overstay its welcome by over-explaining such things.)
Commentary: Of course, I probably want my draft in the drafts folder. But most other e-mail programs rudely take that task out of my hands and do it themselves. This is obviously an overstep of the bounds of a computer program. It's only a short step from deciding where/how to file my mail to world domination.
And now we've sent the e-mail. Well, as soon as we...
No, just kidding. We've sent it. Mulberry doesn't mess around. That e-mail's gone.
Just as a quick look, here's one of Mulberry's other features - a calendar!
While none of the buttons at the top work, if you pick a date, they all spring to life, so it's just a minor bug.
Mulberry has chosen UTC (the universal standard for time across the globe) so I can coordinate international appointments (though it's always changeable from this screen, for aspiring and aspired jet-setters).
Even if you're not impressed by that demo, consider: we barely used any of the many features available. Mulberry has a search system for e-mails that's almost as powerful as regular expressions (even spruced it up to look a bit better than regex), and an address book (or rather, what appears to be a set of address books). It even has some user interface consistency to boot; the Details button is on e-mail, address books, and the calendar, and true to its word, it always shows some sort of detail.
So, in conclusion: Mulberry, the best e-mail client in existence. It looks like it will live on in open source.
-C
All text here copyright Christopher Liu, 2009. You are permitted to cite excerpts, max 100 words per page containing excerpt. All other rights reserved. Just e-mail me if you want to do something--I doubt I can say no. (chris@)