Mail 5 in Snow Leopard

Is there a way to install the new version of Mail in Snow Leopard? I don't really care for the new updates to be honest besides the new mail and also the new calendar app.

 

I guess we won't know until the new OS actually becomes available next month.

 

I would say don't count on it. Apple has never released upgrades to Mail a la carte. Besides, that would be one less reason to upgrade to Lion and Mail 5 has been getting some great reviews. OP just upgrade to Lion, it's only $30. This is your computer. Most people spend more than that for a large pizza and drinks.

 

that is one expensive pizza

 

Well I did say Pizza AND drinks. The drinks being Beer.

 

I would be shocked if they updated Mail in SL to 5. On a separate note, I love the new Mail and hate using the one in SL when I have to but I'm still not quite sure why they haven't implemented delivery and read receipt options.

 

Maybe someone can hack the mail.app or something

 

$30 really isn't a whole lot just to upgrade to OS X Lion. You can also look at it this way: you like the new Mail and Calendar apps. Well, if Apple ever did release them individually through the app store, they would likely charge $10 each. So buying them together would cost you $20 and it is only $10 more to upgrade to an OS that looks well worth it.

Things could be worse if Apple was charging $100+ for OS X Lion but they aren't. They normally charge $130 for major OS releases but Lion looks to be breaking that (SL doesn't count as it was more of an in-house service pack and not a major OS upgrade).

 

Wasn't the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard $29 as well? Sure, Lion will be OS X, though I am not digging that, but it is not like you are going from XP / Vista to Windows 7. Sure, Win 7 is using Vista interface but there is light speed of difference.

 

You're right about all else but I don't follow you on the part I highlighted. Why would you not be happy that Lion is OS X, what else would it be, Windows?

 

I meant iOS. This has been a long day.

 

SL was $30 as well but Apple even admitted it was more of an in-house update instead of really adding anything to OS X. It could have easily been released as a downloadable service pack and that is why people gave Apple such a hard time over charging $30 for something that probably should have been free.

OS X Lion actually adds a lot more features over SL. The whole multi-touch gesture aspect of OS X has been completely changed, the way you access apps has been changed, there are a bunch of updates under the hood to improve performance, the Versions aspect changes the way OS X works with documents, and there are a slew of other upgrades. SL and Leopard weren't that different and SL only added a handful of new aspects.

Lion changes all of that. It might look similar to SL but that doesn't mean that it isn't just as significant as upgrading from XP to Vista (which focused a lot on dragging down systems with a more graphically intense GUI). I think MS learned the hard way that you should fix what isn't broken and Apple has pretty much taken that position with OS X for many, many, many years now.

 

Is Lion like the iOS as they showed with the iOS like apps in the developer's conference? I would hate to see everything become just a giant ipad functionality.

 

Ah, thanks for clarifying that earlier. I'm ruining Lion on a partition and it's much faster with app launching and system performance. The upgraded Spotlight alone and Mail are greatly worth the upgrade price. I can tell you now that once you use Lion you'll understand why it makes sense that Apple "infused" iOS into Lion. Try to be open about this, it's not that Mac OS X is now "iOS", it's more like iOS is a scaled down Mac OS X, and truthfully that's exactly what it is.

For iPhone/iPad customers, the biggest smoke screen that people put up when asked why don't they switch from Windows to Mac, is generally the learning curve. They've been used to using Windows and it's hard to learn a whole new system. Well Lion should solve that problem big time.

As I said early, don't look at Lion as "iOS" because it's not, the whole system is infused. Since many Windows users use iOS devices it makes perfect sense to be able to come home, put down the iOS device, jump on their Mac and it all seems "together" rather than two complete different systems.

Mac OS X is still the same system, but with Launchpad, Mail, Address book, Calendar and many of the nice features like Cut Copy N Paste, auto-spell correction and application grouping that are in iOS. This is the upgrade that should've been, period.

 

Launchpad = nearly worthless.
New gestures = nothing bettertouchtools can't already do

The only real thing (besides w/e under the hood there is) for Lion would be the new apps and the new Versions.

 

That's subjective and personal preference in regards to your "opinion" about Launchpad. Why should I have to install 3rd party software to do something the OS already has? Not interested in using BTT in SL.

Again, your "opinion" of what the only REAL THINGS that have been put in Lion is just that, your opinion, and I'm happy to tell you that there is a lot more to Lion than what you think. If I didn't know any better I'd swear you were just another Windows fan downplaying OS X. Typical.

 

Boo hoo, I don't want to pay $30 and I just want to spend $20 to upgrade two apps. I am sorry but that is the way it is coming off to me. Lion is only going to theoretically cost $10 more than it would be to buy dedicated Mail and whatever other app you were interested in. So why bother with all of this "I don't want to upgrade so I am going to jump up and down and put down OS X Lion because it looked at me funny in the school yard" nonsense and just face the fact that you will likely have to buy it in order to get the new apps that you want?

You don't have to use the launchpad with Lion if you don't want to and I am sure those gestures can be disabled if you don't want to use them either. However, I am surprised to see someone complaining about a company adding more functionality to their OS so that people don't have to use 3rd party programs. Damn Apple for trying to get more use out of their trackpads! Don't they know that I can do almost the same things in Snow Leopard so long as I download a dozen 3rd party apps?

I also wouldn't say that Lion is like iOS. About the only real thing it is borrowing from iOS (at least that can be immediately seen on the surface) is the app interface but that only occurs when you want to browse through your apps. The program dock, title bar, desktop, etc. are all still there and Lion relies heavily on keyboard and mouse input (whereas iOS was built around touch input). Lion might be borrowing a few features from iOS but that doesn't mean it is iOS. After all, iOS was built around OS X but that doesn't mean it is OS X.

 

I know $30 is not free but for the differences, improvements and polish this OS brings, it is essentially free. I've been using DP4 of Lion since it came out as my primary OS and it's been awesome.

 

That's not true.

Snow Leopard mainly dealt with large, under-the-hood changes that don't really demo all that well (64-bitness, Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL), but even ignoring that they finally rewrote the Finder and added native Exchange-support.

Especially the former was a very welcome change to anyone who has ever been beachballed to death by the Finder, because you dared use a network drive of some sort. To me the new Finder was a much bigger deal than something like Launchpad.

 

I meant to say "only a handful of new aspects that were observable by the end consumer."