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Apple Updates Mail to Address Mavericks Bugs

Apple has released an update for the Mail app in OS X 10.9 Mavericks to address some of the Gmail issues outlined by Joe Kissell late last month (see “Mail in Mavericks Changes the Gmail Equation,” 22 October 2013).

The 32.46 MB Mail Update for Mavericks, which you can get via Software Update or download from Apple’s Web site, claims to fix the inability to delete, move, and archive messages when using custom Gmail settings; inaccurate unread mail counts; and other unspecified bugs.

It’s clear that Apple intended to make Mail in 10.9 Mavericks work better with Google’s popular email service, but the result for many was a broken mess. It will take time before we know for sure if Apple’s update solves the problems, but since support for the 20-year-old IMAP must by necessity be bolted on to Gmail’s modern architecture, there will always be some disconnect — if not outright incompatibilities — between Gmail and an IMAP client like Mail.

If this update does not resolve the particular problems you’re seeing with Gmail, your best bet may be either to use Mailplane, which encapsulates the Gmail Web app within a native Mac wrapper (to see why TidBITS publisher Adam Engst likes Mailplane, read “Zen and the Art of Gmail, Part 4: Mailplane,” 16 March 2011), or to follow in Joe Kissell’s footsteps and leave Gmail for a more standards-compliant email provider (see “Joe Kissell Says Sayonara to Gmail,” 31 October 2013).

While he can’t offer a concrete recommendation, Joe has now weighed in on the update, in “Mail in Mavericks: Is It Safe Yet?” (11 November 2013). We’ll continue to track the various problems readers are reporting in the comments on all these articles and will share any important solutions we find.

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