Emails are fast. But they should also be pretty to look at and come with well-packed attachments. Some of these wishes are possible with Apple’s latest email software Mail, which is part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is to have – others not.
An e-mail is not a legally binding statement. The risk of forgery or late delivery is too high. Besides, it’s not easy to sign an email in a forgery-proof way. As long as these problems are not solved, we recommend for really important things, the good old communication on paper. Often desired, but still not feasible in email is, for example, the read receipt. This is an e-mail extension from Microsoft, which is not available in the e-mail protocol languages (IMAP, POP3 and SMTP). Technically, the read receipt is a response that the recipient’s software sends as soon as the recipient opens the email. A double-edged issue: On the one hand, the sender knows that his message has been opened; on the other hand, not all recipients may want to be shown their cards in this way. Apple’s Mail software does not support this feature, so you can’t request a read receipt when sending, and conversely, Mail does not respond to such confirmation requests.
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