Once again, after seeing the kids off to school and wife to work with a peck and smile, I found myself greeting a visitor, Scruffy, the American Kennel Club certified feature retriever. He appeared at my door bearing screen caps and text descriptions of new features in Apple’s upcoming Mac operating system rewrite.
For folks with multiple mail accounts, OS X Lion offers a new way to assign specific functions — mail, iChat, iCal — to individual email accounts (screen cap, above).
System Preferences > Internet Accounts > Click on the account you want to edit
Why does this little feature need a System Preference Pane? I imagine Apple plans to add more functionality in future iterations of Lion.
iPadification
The biggest change in Mail 5, according to Scruffy (tail wagging enthusiastically) is the new user interface, featuring an iPad-like fullscreen mode. Yes, fullscreen apps are an over arching theme in Lion and this core application is among the first to get the treatment.
Another Back to Mac adaptation in Mail 5 is message grouping, which gathers all emails in a thread into a single collapsable feed.
Mail 5′s toolbar has gotten a makeover, says the Scruffinator (his new affectation). The most notable change being you can drag mailboxes, etc. to the toolbar and then drag to re-order those — this order is tied to Command + 1, 2, 3, 4… a fast and convenient way to move between mailboxes.
[u] Similarly, Mail 5′s new message window sports an updated menu bar. The funky conch shell, boxed in red, is actually a palette and clicking it brings up the OS X color picker.
The item on the far right brings up the Mail stationery menu — thar be templates!
A pooch with a purpose
Apple’s also advertising more powerful search in Mail 5, which Scruffy tells me delivers updated-as-you-type results. This feature will be good as long as text autocompletion isn’t too aggressive.
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