? for Mac users

[Whaler]

How do I disable Mac mail?
Using either Safari or Firefox Mac mail is defaulted to when I try to use the "Contact Us" on many web sites. As I don't subscribe to Mac mail it's a pia.

[gerti]

You don't need to subscribe to .mac or mobileMe, you can use Mail.app with nearly any mail service (google, yahoo etc).

I think you can only set mailto links to open a mail application. I don't think you can set it to open the web mailer of choice.

[Bruce Cohen]

Dick,

Simple stuff - go into system preferences (see att jpgs) and select network. Depending on your set-up, the window you see will most likely differ from mine, but the domain type (configuration) is what you want to change. Click on the assist me button and follow the instructions. Also, you can possibly delete "mac mail" in that window









Bruce

also, if there's an Apple store near you, you can go to the Genius Bar and the kids there will be more that helpful getting you set up.

[twistsol]

To select a different mail client, you have to go into the Mail application, choose preferences and from the general tab, select a different mail application. OSX is basically hardwired to look at the Mail app to figure out how to handle mail.

If you use web based mail through Yahoo or Google etc, selecting a web browser as your default mail app porbably won't work. Safari will just send you back to mail again and when I tried with Firefox, it just opened and kept opening more windows repeatedly until it crashed. I haven't tried Opera or OmniWeb.

You can use the Apple Mail Application without subscribing to the .Mac service. gMail and Yahoo mail support POP access to your email although Yahoo charges about ten or fifteen bucks a year for it.

If all else fails, deleting the Mail app will bring you to a page not found message if you click on a mailto link. I'm sure there is a really geeky command line way around it, but I'm way to lazy to figure it out.