Email Programs For Os X

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On May 6, 2002, Steve Jobs opened WWDC with a funeral for Classic Mac OS:

Max OS X Mail is a easy to use free email program which comes with Mac OS X. One of the Mail app advantage is Spam filter -which avoid junk emails. It allow users to send up to 5 GB files via iCloud and MailDrop service. Mac Notifications centre provide message alerts. Mozilla Thunderbird (free) It is a secure email client, chat client and RSS. Apr 28, 2020 Mozilla Thunderbird 52 is a free full-featured and secure email application and chat client that includes an RSS feed reader and newsgroups option. Manage as many email accounts as you want from one convenient location efficiently and with style, while Mozilla Thunderbird filters away the junk mail. Supports Email Address Internationalization (EAI). 41 discuss As of October 2016, email clients supporting SMTPUTF8 included Outlook 2016, 42 mail for iOS, and mail for Android.

Yesterday, 18 years later, OS X finally reached its own end of the road: the next version of macOS is not 10.16, but 11.0.

There was no funeral.

The OS X Family Tree

OS X has one of the most fascinating family trees in technology; to understand its significance requires understanding each of its forebearers.

Unix: Unix does refer to a specific operating system that originated in AT&T’s Bell Labs (the copyrights of which are owned by Novell), but thanks to a settlement with the U.S. government (that was widely criticized for going easy on the telecoms giant), Unix was widely-licensed to universities in particular. One of the most popular variants that resulted was the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), developed at the University of California, Berkeley.

What all of the variations of Unix had in common was the Unix Philosophy; the Bell System Technical Journal explained in 1978:

A number of maxims have gained currency among the builders and users of the Unix system to explain and promote its characteristic style:

  1. Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new “features”.
  2. Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.
  3. Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
  4. Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.

[…]

The Unix operating system, the C programming language, and the many tools and techniques developed in this environment are finding extensive use within the Bell System and at universities, government laboratories, and other commercial installations. The style of computing encouraged by this environment is influencing a new generation of programmers and system designers. This, perhaps, is the most exciting part of the Unix story, for the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality tools is essential to meet every-increasing demands for software.

Today you can still run nearly any Unix program on macOS, but particularly with some of the security changes made in Catalina, you are liable to run into permissions issues, particularly when it comes to seamlessly linking programs together.

Mach: Mach was a microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University; the concept of a microkernel is to run the smallest amount of software necessary for the core functionality of an operating system in the most privileged mode, and put all other functionality into less privileged modes. OS X doesn’t have a true microkernel — the BSD subsystem runs in the same privileged mode, for performance reasons — but the modular structure of a microkernel-type design makes it easier to port to different processor architectures, or remove operating system functionality that is not needed for different types of devices (there is, of course, lots of other work that goes into a porting a modern operating system; this is a dramatic simplification).

More generally, the spirit of a microkernel — a small centralized piece of software passing messages between different components — is how modern computers, particularly mobile devices, are architected: multiple specialized chips doing discrete tasks under the direction of an operating system organizing it all.

Xerox: The story of Steve Jobs’ visiting Xerox is as mistaken as it is well-known; the Xerox Alto and its groundbreaking mouse-driven graphical user interface was well-known around Silicon Valley, thanks to the thousands of demos the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) did and the papers it had published. PARC’s problem is that Xerox cared more about making money from copy machines than in figuring out how to bring the Alto to market.

That doesn’t change just how much of an inspiration the Alto was to Jobs in particular: after the visit he pushed the Lisa computer to have a graphical user interface, and it was why he took over the Macintosh project, determined to make an inexpensive computer that was far easier to use than anything that had come before it.

Apple: The Macintosh was not the first Apple computer: that was the Apple I, and then the iconic Apple II. What made the Apple II unique was its explicit focus on consumers, not businesses; interestingly, what made the Apple II successful was VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet application, which is to say that the Apple II sold primarily to businesses. Still, the truth is that Apple has been a consumer company from the very beginning.

This is why the Mac is best thought of as the child of Apple and Xerox: Apple understood consumers and wanted to sell products to them, and Xerox provided the inspiration for what those products should look like.

It was NeXTSTEP, meanwhile, that was the child of Unix and Mach: an extremely modular design, from its own architecture to its focus on object-oriented programming and its inclusion of different “kits” that were easy to fit together to create new programs.

And so we arrive at OS X, the child of the classic Macintosh OS and NeXTSTEP. The best way to think about OS X is that it took the consumer focus and interface paradigms of the Macintosh and layered them on top of NeXTSTEP’s technology. In other words, the Unix side of the family was the defining feature of OS X.

Return of the Mac

In 2005 Paul Graham wrote an essay entitled Return of the Mac explaining why it was that developers were returning to Apple for the first time since the 1980s:

All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple’s low point in the mid 1990s. They’re about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get.

The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know?

Graham argued that hackers were a leading indicator, which is why he advised his dad to buy Apple stock:

If you want to know what ordinary people will be doing with computers in ten years, just walk around the CS department at a good university. Whatever they’re doing, you’ll be doing.

In the matter of “platforms” this tendency is even more pronounced, because novel software originates with great hackers, and they tend to write it first for whatever computer they personally use. And software sells hardware. Many if not most of the initial sales of the Apple II came from people who bought one to run VisiCalc. And why did Bricklin and Frankston write VisiCalc for the Apple II? Because they personally liked it. They could have chosen any machine to make into a star.

If you want to attract hackers to write software that will sell your hardware, you have to make it something that they themselves use. It’s not enough to make it “open.” It has to be open and good. And open and good is what Macs are again, finally.

What is interesting is that Graham’s stock call could not have been more prescient: Apple’s stock closed at $5.15 on March 31, 2005, and $358.87 yesterday;1 the primary driver of that increase, though, was not the Mac, but rather the iPhone.

The iOS Sibling

If one were to add iOS to the family tree I illustrated above, most would put it under Mac OS X; I think, though, iOS is best understood as another child of Classic Mac and NeXT, but this time the resemblance is to the Apple side of the family. Or to put it another way, while the Mac was the perfect machine for “hackers”, to use Graham’s term, the iPhone was one of the purest expressions of Apple’s focus on consumers.

The iPhone, as Steve Jobs declared at its unveiling in 2007, runs OS X, but it was certainly not Mac OS X: it ran the same XNU kernel, and most of the same subsystem (with some new additions to support things like cellular capability), but it had a completely new interface. That interface, notably, did not include a terminal; you could not run arbitrary Unix programs.2 That new interface, though, was far more accessible to regular users.

What is more notable is that the iPhone gave up parts of the Unix Philosophy as well: applications all ran in individual sandboxes, which meant that they could not access the data of other applications or of the operating system. This was great for security, and is the primary reason why iOS doesn’t suffer from malware and apps that drag the entire system into a morass, but one certainly couldn’t “expect the output of every program to become the input to another”; until sharing extensions were added in iOS 8 programs couldn’t share data with each other at all, and even now it is tightly regulated.

At the same time, the App Store made principle one — “make each program do one thing well” — accessible to normal consumers. Whatever possible use case you could imagine for a computer that was always with you, well, “There’s an App for That”:

Consumers didn’t care that these apps couldn’t talk to each other: they were simply happy they existed, and that they could download as many as they wanted without worrying about bad things happening to their phone — or to them. While sandboxing protected the operating system, the fact that every app was reviewed by Apple weeded out apps that didn’t work, or worse, tried to scam end users.

This ended up being good for developers, at least from a business point-of-view: sure, the degree to which the iPhone was locked down grated on many, but Apple’s approach created millions of new customers that never existed for the Mac; the fact it was closed and good was a benefit for everyone.

macOS 11.0

What is striking about macOS 11.0 is the degree to which is feels more like a son of iOS than the sibling that Mac OS X was:

  • macOS 11.0 runs on ARM, just like iOS; in fact the Developer Transition Kit that Apple is making available to developers has the same A12Z chip as the iPad Pro.
  • macOS 11.0 has a user interface overhaul that not only appears to be heavily inspired by iOS, but also seems geared for touch.
  • macOS 11.0 attempts to acquire developers not primarily by being open and good, but by being easy and good enough.

The seeds for this last point were planted last year with Catalyst, which made it easier to port iPad apps to the Mac; with macOS 11.0, at least the version which will run on ARM, Apple isn’t even requiring a recompile: iOS apps will simply run on macOS 11.0, and they will be in the Mac App Store by default (developers can opt-out).

In this way Apple is using their most powerful point of leverage — all of those iPhone consumers, which compel developers to build apps for the iPhone, Apple’s rules notwithstanding — to address what the company perceives as a weakness: the paucity of apps in the Mac App Store.

Is the lack of Mac App Store apps really a weakness, though? When I consider the apps that I use regularly on the Mac, a huge number of them are not available in the Mac App Store, not because the developers are protesting Apple’s 30% cut of sales, but simply because they would not work given the limitations Apple puts on apps in the Mac App Store.

The primary limitation, notably, is the same sandboxing technology that made iOS so trustworthy; that trustworthiness has always come with a cost, which is the ability to build tools that do things that “lighten a task”, to use the words from the Unix Philosophy, even if the means to do so opens the door to more nefarious ends.

Fortunately macOS 11.0 preserves its NeXTSTEP heritage: non-Mac App Store apps are still allowed, for better (new use cases constrained only by imagination and permissions dialogs) and worse (access to other apps and your files). What is notable is that this was even a concern: Apple’s recent moves on iOS, particularly around requiring in-app purchase for SaaS apps, feel like a drift towards Xerox, a company that was so obsessed with making money it ignored that it was giving demos of the future to its competitors; one wondered if the obsession would filter down to the Mac.

For now the answer is no, and that is a reason for optimism: an open platform on top of the tremendous hardware innovation being driven by the iPhone sounds amazing. Moreover, one can argue (hope?) it is a more reliable driver of future growth than squeezing every last penny out of the greenfield created by the iPhone. At a minimum, leaving open the possibility of entirely new things leaves far more future optionality than drawing the strings every more tightly as on iOS. OS X’s legacy lives, for now.

I wrote a follow-up to this article in this Daily Update.

  1. Yes, this incorporates Apple’s 7:1 stock split [↩]
  2. Unless you jailbroke your phone [↩]

Related

Courier 1.0.9
The Courier mail transfer agent (MTA) is an integrated mail/groupwareserver based on open commodity protocols, such as ESMTP, IMAP, POP3,LDAP, SSL, and HTTP. Courier provides ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, webmail, andmailing list services within a single, consistent, framework. Individualcomponents can be enabled or disabled at will. The Courier mail servernow implements basic web-based calendaring and scheduling servicesintegrated in the webmail module. Advanced groupware calendaringservices will follow soon.
  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: Double Precision, Inc.
  • Modification Date: August 28, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS

Download File Size: 7.5 MB

Dovecot 2.3.7.2
Dovecot is an open source IMAP and POP3 email server for Linux/UNIX-likesystems, written with security primarily in mind. Dovecot is anexcellent choice for both small and large installations. It's fast,simple to set up, requires no special administration and it uses verylittle memory.
  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: Timo Sirainen
  • Modification Date: August 26, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS

Download File Size: 7.1 MB

Emailchemy 14.3.9
Emailchemy converts email from the closed, proprietary file formats ofthe most popular (and many of yesterday’s forgotten) email applicationsto standard, portable formats that any application can use. Thesestandard formats are ideal for importing, long term archival, databaseentry, or forensic analysis and eDiscovery.
  • License: Demo, $30 individual, $50 family
  • Developer/Publisher: Weird Kid Software
  • Modification Date: July 26, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.7 or higher - 64-bit - Java (contained within the application)

Download File Size: 105.7 MB

Enigmail 2.1.2
Enigmail is a seamlessly integrated security add-on for MozillaThunderbird. It allows you to use OpenPGP to encrypt and digitally signyour emails and to decrypt and verify messages you receive.

Email Programs For Mac Os X

  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: Enigmail Project Team
  • Modification Date: August 18, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher, Thunderbird

Download File Size: 3.2 MB

Gmail 6.0.190811
The official Gmail app brings the best of Gmail to your iPhone or iPadwith real-time notifications, multiple account support and search thatworks across all your mail.
  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: Google
  • Modification Date: September 3, 2019
  • Requirements: iOS 11.0 or higher and the Web

Download File Size: 184.1 MB

GPG Suite 2019.1.83
Everything you need to get started with secure communication andencrypting files in one simple package.
Use GPG Suite to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify files or messages.Manage your GPG Keychain with a few simple clicks and experience thefull power of GPG easier than ever before.
GPGMail
is an open source plugin for Apple Mail. Encrypt, decrypt, sign andverify mails using OpenPGP with a few simple clicks.
GPG Keychain
is an open source application for macOS. It allows you to manage yourOpenPGP keys. Create and modify your keys and import the keys of yourfriends from a key server.
GPG Services
is a plugin that brings GPG power to almost any application. It allowsyou to encrypt/decrypt, sign/verify and import keys from textselections, files, folders and much more.
MacGPG
is the underlying power engine of GPG Suite. If you're familiar with thecommand line use the raw power of it. Based on GnuPG.
  • License: Freeware - GPG Suite includes a one-month trial of GPG Mail, $24
  • Developer/Publisher: GPGTools
  • Modification Date: August 24, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS 10.12 or higher - 64-bit

Download File Size: 26.7 MB

The name Sierra continues on with their California landmark theme, in this operating system the use of the term ‘OSX’ has now dropped the ‘X’ to ‘OS’.Disappointedly for some the new macOS will run on less machines than its predecessors including OSX 10.11 El Capitan. The Macs that will run macOS Sierra. Apple has dropped support for any models pre late 2009 for MacBook and iMac. iMac – all models from late 2009, iMac 10,1 – 17,1. Requirements for os x sierra. And anything pre 2010 for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini and Mac Pro.You’ll still require a 64bit Intel processor, 8GBs of free disk space – if upgrading, as appose to clean install min plus at least 2GB of RAM.

GyazMail 1.6.1
GyazMail is an email client for Mac OS X. It offers you a full-featured but easy-to-use packagebased on the Cocoa framework.
  • License: Shareware, $18
  • Developer/Publisher: Goichi Hirakawa
  • Modification Date: October 7, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or higher - 64-bit

Download File Size: 7.4 MB

Mail 13.0
Apple's standard email client.
  • License: Comes with your Mac and iPhone
  • Developer/Publisher: Apple
  • Modification Date: September 27, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS 10.15 - 64-bit, Earlier versions come with earlier operating systems
Mail Archiver X 5.1.2
What to do with Mail Archiver X?
* Keep your mails at one place.
* Exchange your mail archive with others or use archives as a backup.
* Read your mail, after you have changed your mail application.
* Filter out garbage.
Benefits of Mail Archiver X
* Mail Archiver X uses the fastest available database Valentina from Paradigma Software.
* Mail Archiver X is the only mail archival application, which also offers cleaning of mails.
* Mail Archiver X utilizes a hypbrid approach with AppleScript. AS is only used where required, which makes Mail Archiver X much faster than comparable applications.
  • License: Shareware, $40
  • Developer/Publisher: Moth Software Mainz
  • Modification Date: July 29, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.12 or higher - 64-bit

Download File Size: 184.1 MB

Mailman 2.1.29
The GNU Mailing List Manager
Mailman is free software for managing electronic mail discussion ande-newsletter lists. Mailman is integrated with the web, making it easyfor users to manage their accounts and for list owners to administertheir lists. Mailman supports built-in archiving, automatic bounceprocessing, content filtering, digest delivery, spam filters, and more.See the features page for details.
  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: The GNU Mailman Steering Committee
  • Modification Date: July 24, 2018
  • Requirements: macOS

Download File Size: 9.4 MB

MailMate 1.13
MailMate is an IMAP email client for macOS featuring extensive keyboardcontrol, Markdown integrated email composition, advanced searchconditions and drill-down search links, equally advanced smartmailboxes, automatic signature handling, cryptographicencryption/signing (OpenPGP and S/MIME), tagging, multiple notificationmethods, alternative message viewer layouts including a widescreenlayout, flexible integration with third party applications, and muchmore.
  • License: Demo, $50
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  • Modification Date: September 9, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.10 or higher - 64-bit

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Mailplane 4.1.4
The best way to use Gmail on your Mac.
Gmail, Google Inbox, Google Inbox, Calendar & Contacts
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All in one app with Apple-like keyboard shortcuts.
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  • Requirements: macOS 10.12 or higher - 64-bit

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MailSteward 13.3
MailSteward will archive all of your email in a database for easy retrieval. Click on theArchive Email button and MailSteward will go to work storing copies of all your emailtext, HTML, attachments, and raw source, into a relational database file. MailSteward hasa wealth of features for importing, tagging, saving, and exporting, including the abilityto export your vital email information to a number of standard data formats.
  • License: Shareware, $50
  • Developer/Publisher: pubblog.com
  • Modification Date: July 8, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.11 or higher - 64-bit

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Mutt 1.12.2
Mutt is a small but very powerful text-based mail client for Unix operating systems.
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  • Developer/Publisher: Mutt.org
  • Modification Date: September 21, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS

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MyPopBarrier 3.1.8
This program allows the removal of your emails directly from the server.It can connect to several accounts at the same time.
  • License: Single User Donationware, Shareware for professional use or school ~$7
  • Developer/Publisher: Thomas Robisson
  • Modification Date: May 31, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9.5 or higher - 64-bit

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Microsoft Office 2019 16.31
Word Processor (Word)
Spreadsheet (Excel)
Presentation (PowerPoint)
Notes (OneNote)
Email (Outlook) - Not available with Office Home and Student
  • License: Buy Office Home and Sudent for $150; Buy Office Home and Business for $250 / 365 Demo, Office 365 Home $100/yr
  • Developer/Publisher: Microsoft
  • Modification Date: November 12, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS 10.12 or higher - 64-bit

Download File Size: 4.1 GB - Office 365 Trial on the Mac App Store

Download Office 365 Trial - Credit Card Needed for Trial

Download Updates

Download File Size: 1.1 GB - Word on the Mac App Store (Office 365)

Download File Size: 283.9 MB - Word

Download File Size: 816.4 MB - Excel on the Mac App Store (Office 365)

Download File Size: 280.1 MB - Excel

Download File Size: 428.1 MB - OneNote on the Mac App Store

Download File Size: 2201.8 MB - OneNote

Download File Size: 732.6 MB - PowerPoint on the Mac App Store (Office 365)

Download File Size: 268.4 MB - PowerPoint

Download File Size: 800.5 MB - Outlook on the Mac App Store (Office 365)

Download File Size: 309.7 MB - Outlook

Postbox 7.0.6
When you are serious about email, Postbox has the tools you need topower through mountains of messages. Postbox is powerful, intuitive,ultra-customizable, speedy, and dead set on saving you time.
  • License: Demo, $30/year
  • Developer/Publisher: Postbox, Inc.
  • Modification Date: October 17, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS 10.13 or higher - 64-bit

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Postfix 3.4.6
What is Postfix? It is Wietse Venema's mail server that started life atIBM research as an alternative to the widely-used Sendmail program. Nowat Google, Wietse continues to support Postfix.
Postfix attempts to be fast, easy to administer, and secure. The outsidehas a definite Sendmail-ish flavor, but the inside is completelydifferent.
  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: Wietse Venema Et al
  • Modification Date: June 27, 2019
  • Requirements: macOS

Email Programs For Os X 8

Download File Size: 4.6 MB

SpamSieve 2.9.37
SpamSieve is a Macintosh application that filters out unsolicited massmailings, commonly known as “spam.” Previously, most people just ignoredspam messages or created simple rules in their e-mail programs to filterthem out. In recent years, the spam problem has gotten worse. Today’sspam is harder to detect, and there is more of it. Without theassistance of a good spam filter, you’ll waste valuable time sortingthrough your inbox manually.
SpamSieve gives you back your inbox by bringing powerful Bayesian spamfiltering to Mac e-mail programs. It’s quick and easy to controlSpamSieve from within your mail program, and you can customize how itinteracts with the rest of your message sorting rules.
SpamSieve learns what your spam looks like, so it can block nearly allof it. It looks at your address book and learns what your good messageslook like, so it won’t confuse them with spam. Other spam filters getworse over time as spammers adapt to their rules; SpamSieve actuallygets better over time as it adapts its filtering to your mail.
It's quick and easy to control SpamSieve from within Apple Mail(Mail.app), Airmail, Entourage, MailMate, Mailsmith, Outlook, Postbox,PowerMail, and more.
  • License: Shareware, $30
  • Developer/Publisher: Michael Tsai
  • Modification Date: August 19, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6 or higher - 64-bit

Download File Size: 15.5 MB

Thunderbird 68.2.0
Software made to make email easier. Thunderbird is a free emailapplication that's easy to set up and customize = and it's loaded withgreat features!
  • License: Freeware
  • Developer/Publisher: The Mozilla Organization
  • Modification Date: October 21, 2019
  • Requirements: Mac OS X 10.9 or higher - 64-bit

Download File Size: 58.9 MB