SmallCubed MailSuite



SmallCubed MailSuite 1.0.2 macOS 12.6 MbWe have been working hard on getting our MailSuite ready for Mac OS 10.14 Mojave. With MailSuite we will be migrating our 4 core products( MailTags, Mail. So many third-party apps are unreliable, and Apple Mail just refuses to evolve. Nevertheless, for some time now, I have been managing email with Apple Mail, but only after I add features to it with SaneBox (a sometimes sponsor of this blog) and, on the Mac, SmallCubed’s MailSuite.

As I have lamented too many times on Mac Power Users, I seem to be able to find email apps that I can live with, but not fall in love with. So many third-party apps are unreliable, and Apple Mail just refuses to evolve. Nevertheless, for some time now, I have been managing email with Apple Mail, but only after I add features to it with SaneBox (a sometimes sponsor of this blog) and, on the Mac, SmallCubed’s MailSuite.

Even after bolting on these tools, I still find myself primarily managing email on my Mac and treating the iPhone and the iPad as email triage machines on the rare occasion that I even look at email on those devices. For about a year now, I have been using colored flags for email in that triage role. Whether an email is customer support or a general feedback issue, it gets a specific colored flag. The same goes for legal and personal email. The problem I keep running into, however, is that Apple Mail cannot keep track of the flags. Sometimes a flag applied on the iPhone shows up on the Mac; sometimes it does not. Moreover, once I clear the flags that do make it over to the Mac, those flags may get cleared over on the iPhone. Then again, they may not. I would go through a whole process of checking the flags I cleared on the Mac to see if they made it over to the iPhone and iPad, and vice versa. I finally realized the madness of it all a few weeks ago when my flag counts were Mac (17), iPhone (34), and iPad (12). Enough!

So I have created IMAP folders with categories such as “Customer Support” and “Process” that hold email between my devices. The folders never get out of sync, and while it is slightly more work to move the messages into folders compared to flagging them, it is worth it to have a system I can rely on. A few additional points on this workflow:

Smallcubed Mailsuite Big Sur

SmallCubed

Smallcubed Mailsuite Ios

  • This is not a beta problem. While I am running some devices on the new betas, flags have not been syncing for me for a year now.

  • I struggled with the name of the folder to hold email for later processing. The Hey.com service uses the term “Focus & Reply”, which sums it up nicely, but I prefer one word. I ended up with “Process”, because that is what I try to do with that folder every day.

Small Cubed Mailsuite Catalina

So far, terrible out of the box experience.Launching MailSuite from the disk image tells you that you have to move it to the Applications folder... OK. Why didn't they put an alias to the Applications folder right there on the disk image like other products do?Moving to the Applications folder and launching then offers registration. Ok, I registered with the right button. The left button offers 'install' so I clicked, then clicked 'Install Full Suite'. The app confirmed with 'Installation Complete' and 'Ok'. Pressing OK and then the list of components still show 'Not Installed'. Pressing 'Remove Full Suite' quit mail... but beyond that, did nothing other than flicker. Trying 'Install Full Suite' again just did the same thing. NO JOY. Note that 'Install Full Suite' does not offer to relaunch Mail... sigh, not impressed.Looking at the directions, it seems that you have to drag this into the Security preferences for 'Full Disk Access'. Can't fathom why the app did not indicate that it needs to be there before proceeding. Manually drug the MailSuite app into the 'Full Disk Access' list and started over. NO JOYFurther looking at the directions, they expect a button in Mail preferences under the 'General' tab of 'Manage Plug-ins…' which is not there. Googling this problem it seems that a hidden Mail preference of 'EnableBundles' has to be set to true or '1'. Note that MailSuite's installer was not smart enough to look in the Mail preferences and see that it was not set and offer to set it. I had to quit Mail, open Terminal and issue the command line:sudo defaults write '/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail' EnableBundles 1to enable the bundles and have the 'Manage Plug-ins…' button show in Mail preferences. Using Google to fix installation problems is by definition a poor out of the box experience.After doing all this, then launching MailSuite, it still fails to install anything. The 'Install Full Suite' button remains impotent.So now I have a support ticket in to just get this installed. I should have downloaded the time-bomb version and gone through this before dropping my money on the product, silly me. If you buy this product similarly, silly you!