Pop goes "POP"...

[Fishrrman]

Has anyone noticed that Mail.app in Mountain Lion no longer gives you the option to set it up for a POP server?

With ML, it has become "IMAP only".

Is there a technical reason for this, or is it but one more illustration of Apple dictating what choices their users must have?

Give me back my POP!

 

[miles01110]

It probably has more to do with it being a Developer Preview.

 

[interrobang]

Is there a technical reason for this, or is it but one more illustration of Apple dictating what choices their users must have?

Probably Apple deciding not to spend resources developing a client for a mail handling scheme that's past its prime.

You can still get POP3 support from Thunderbird, Outlook, Mailsmith....

 

[Bear]

Probably Apple deciding not to spend resources developing a client for a mail handling scheme that's past its prime.

You can still get POP3 support from Thunderbird, Outlook, Mailsmith....

How much resources is it to test a protocol that you already have the code for? Removing POP3 from Mail makes things less simple and less "it just works" than Apple devices are supposed to be.

 

[interrobang]

How much resources is it to test a protocol that you already have the code for?

Short answer to a complicated question: a fair bit. Maintaining code is harder, most of the time, than actually writing code.

Removing POP3 from Mail makes things less simple and less "it just works" than Apple devices are supposed to be.

The thing is, Apple is pushing the multiple-device world, and POP3 was never intended for use on multiple devices. When mis-configured, POP3 can cause all sorts of problems if you don't know what you're doing. Plenty of people on this forum have accidentally wiped out their server-side mail while trying to use POP.

POP never "just works" if you have more than one device. You have to set it up and use it carefully.

Apple rarely designs with the power user in mind. It generally applies the philosophy that if you're advanced enough to want something other than the default, you'll be advanced enough to figure it out on your own.

 

[Fishrrman]

"The thing is, Apple is pushing the multiple-device world, and POP3 was never intended for use on multiple devices."
and
"POP never "just works" if you have more than one device. You have to set it up and use it carefully."

This would tend to support my original observation -- that being that Apple has purposely dropped POP for reasons of their own (and not for "technical" reasons). They're trying to push in a direction not of our own choosing.

In other discussion threads, there has been the back-and-forth argument that Apple's intent is to make the Mac OS "more like" the iOS -- possibly even merging the two at some point in the future. When they do things like this (i.e., "drop POP"), that lends credence to such speculation.

"Apple rarely designs with the power user in mind. It generally applies the philosophy that if you're advanced enough to want something other than the default, you'll be advanced enough to figure it out on your own."

Again, more "dumbing down" of the OS. I actually find POP much more "intuitive" than IMAP, and prefer that once I have my email "in hand", that it be OFF the server. Kind of like when your postman puts the mail into your postbox, and you pick it up. At that moment in time, your mail is no longer in the Post Office's possession, and is in _your_ sole possession. That's what I want with my email, too.

Give me back my POP!

 

[Jare]

"The thing is, Apple is pushing the multiple-device world, and POP3 was never intended for use on multiple devices."
and
"POP never "just works" if you have more than one device. You have to set it up and use it carefully."

This would tend to support my original observation -- that being that Apple has purposely dropped POP for reasons of their own (and not for "technical" reasons). They're trying to push in a direction not of our own choosing.

In other discussion threads, there has been the back-and-forth argument that Apple's intent is to make the Mac OS "more like" the iOS -- possibly even merging the two at some point in the future. When they do things like this (i.e., "drop POP"), that lends credence to such speculation.

"Apple rarely designs with the power user in mind. It generally applies the philosophy that if you're advanced enough to want something other than the default, you'll be advanced enough to figure it out on your own."

Again, more "dumbing down" of the OS. I actually find POP much more "intuitive" than IMAP, and prefer that once I have my email "in hand", that it be OFF the server. Kind of like when your postman puts the mail into your postbox, and you pick it up. At that moment in time, your mail is no longer in the Post Office's possession, and is in _your_ sole possession. That's what I want with my email, too.

Give me back my POP!

tldr; Develop your app and be quiet. That's the reason you have the DEVELOPER PREVIEW Right? Right.

 

[deconstruct60]

I actually find POP much more "intuitive" than IMAP, and prefer that once I have my email "in hand", that it be OFF the server. Kind of like when your postman puts the mail into your postbox, and you pick it up. At that moment in time, your mail is no longer in the Post Office's possession, and is in _your_ sole possession. That's what I want with my email, too.

Your flaw is applying POP's limited model to IMAP.

IMAP works like this:

You check your P.O. Box and look at the mail there. After looking at the mail you leave the mail in the box. You don't walk away with the mail by default. If there were multiple people with a key to the box they could all go to the same box and see all the mail that came in. (different people being different devices.)

Any modern IMAP mail reading client worth $0.02 has rules/sorting mechanisms which you could use to move/copy mail to a local folder. In the case of "move everything before read", you have what POP does. There is no requirement in IMAP to only use server "folders". That is the whole crux. It is trivial for IMAP to provide a superset of what POP offers. It is significantly more flakey for POP to offer what IMAP offers.

By the way, you are fooling yourself if you think you are in sole possession of the email. Typically copies of mail queue up on email servers are made. There is no guarantee that some POP account is going to be cleared out in a timely fashion. Which means a back-up queue will sweep at least a fraction of the stored mail in. There is a larger fraction with IMAP but POP isn't zero.

 

[KnightWRX]

Removing POP3 supports makes no sense.

 

[Anthony La]

We talking about adding POP accounts through Mail, or the "Mail, Contacts and Calendars" preference pane? My POP-only ISP email account was added just fine, although only through the automatic setup. I can't get it to do manual configuration anymore.

 

[maflynn]

Removing POP3 supports makes no sense.

Agreed, as a developer I cannot see removing a pre-existing function as I update code

 

[KnightWRX]

Agreed, as a developer I cannot see removing a pre-existing function as I update code

That's not quite true though. As you rewrite some support portions of the code, sometimes higher level interfaces need to be rewritten to the new backend code.

That is usually a good time to clean out some cruft. But...

POP3 isn't cruft. It's a mature protocol that is both quite easy to implement (you can basically do POP3 manually from Terminal quite easily if you know how using only the telnet application) and ubiquitous in nature.

 

[calderone]

Agreed, as a developer I cannot see removing a pre-existing function as I update code

You are joking right?

 

[macmongral]

Has anyone noticed that Mail.app in Mountain Lion no longer gives you the option to set it up for a POP server?

With ML, it has become "IMAP only".

Is there a technical reason for this, or is it but one more illustration of Apple dictating what choices their users must have?

Give me back my POP!

stop giving out false info

POP is still there just set up the acct from pref pane and do not put in the pw the set-up will fail and you can setup a POP acct just the same as Lion
Nothing has changed only the mail no 6.0

 

[Anthony La]

Has anyone noticed that Mail.app in Mountain Lion no longer gives you the option to set it up for a POP server?

With ML, it has become "IMAP only".

Is there a technical reason for this, or is it but one more illustration of Apple dictating what choices their users must have?

Give me back my POP!

Going to back up what macmongrel just said.

POP's still there. You just can't change an IMAP account to a POP account after the account's been created, and Mail will always attempt to set up an IMAP account before it tries a POP account.

If your server doesn't support IMAP, and/or email setting autodiscovery doesn't work, then you'll be given the option to select POP, IMAP, Exchange, or Exchange IMAP. It's been like this since Leopard.