Apple Mail and Entourage: Occasionally, Not So Intuitive

While I like the fact that all Apple Mail messages can be searched with Spotlight (a sort of Google Desktop search built in to the Apple operating system, I find that I don't like having to use three different programs (Mail, iCal, and Address Book) to manage mail, personal information, projects, and tasks. As a result, I've abandoned Apple Mail for Microsoft's Entourage. Entourage integrates all these elements even better than Outlook does.

Today, though, I discovered a problem: every time I click an email link on a web page, my Mac launches Apple Mail. My effort to correct this behavior led me down a surprisingly counter-intuitive path, so I thought I'd document it here for other "switchers."

Settings for the default mail program should be in System Preferences. They aren't. Instead -- in a move that seems to fly in the face of the whole "intuitive approach" to computing -- Apple has hidden the default mail program settings in Apple Mail's preferences menu.

The result? To make Entourage (or any other mail program) your default mail program, you have to launch Apple Mail, click on Apple Mail's Preferences menu, and select your alternative mail program there.

Settings governing how a particular application works should reside in that application's preferences menu. Settings governing system-wide behavior -- which program handles all email, for example, or which browser is the default browser -- should be found in System Preferences. This needs to be changed.

Until it is ... well, now you know what to do.