I use notmuch instead of mu4e, and have been quite happy with it for the last 7 years or so. The org integration is good, though I don't actually use it all that much. What is indispensable for me, though, is being able to start a longer message in a text file, save it, open a message window, (C-x i) the message file, pull in some code or text from another buffer -- basically to treat my longer emails the way I treat any other piece of text that I'm working on.
Similarly, if I'm writing, any mail (or attachment) from the last decade is just a few key strokes and a search query away, without ever really taking my eyes off my current buffer.
I know there are other ways to accomplish the same thing, but that close link between my mail and the rest of my writing is the main benefit, for me, of having my mail in emacs.
That's true. Beyond links to email, I also include links to a specific line in a file, links to a commit, links to a remote file (e.g., an apache config file), maybe some snippets of code, links to other TODOs, all in one TODO. So it's really having all of those together which is important for me.
If I wasn't using org, I don't think I would find it that useful. I'm not really a power user of mu4e. I don't have any complicated email workflows. I like that the search is very fast (for me, anyway -- I only have 100k emails), and, obviously, that my email is stored locally. I like that I can compose in Emacs. I also use two computers and I like that I can easily share configuration. My config, which doesn't do anything too fancy, is here: https://github.com/mjhoy/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs.d/lisp/i...
How good are OS X task management tools? Can they build/export custom reports and stuff?
There is only one big thing I find is missing to Org, and that's its lack of options
for collaboration. After all any humans collaborating toward common goals would do best
to have a common plan and a common way to track each others progress.
I think you more mean, "I'm not an 'Emacs is my Operating System' person".
There are many people who use Emacs as their OS, its never been appealing to me, because I like the richness of other tools.
There is a question though, are OSes doing enough to make the integrated experience like Emacs something that's done system wide? I think Apple comes close to providing the set of things you want, but it still feels tacked onto the top, rather than more deeply integrated.
I'm sold on Magit. If I had more interfaces that worked like Magit and were as well thought out, I'd use them, even if I had pretty OSX programs to use in their place.
Richness of other tools are OK if you use one OS. But if you switch between several of them, then Emacs tools more handy...
I'm using Windows & Linux at work, and Mac OS X at home, and Emacs provides uniform interface for most of my tasks, except web browsing and multimedia...
They essentially act as regexes that when match allow for an external application to be called with that text sent as a parameter. This allows for dates to be clickable and create and event in a calendar for example.
They also do a good job of taking phone numbers from emails and when an unknown call comes in suggesting that it might be the person who included that in an email.
These features generally work well in their apps, but I think there's less support for third parties to create custom options (though I haven't actually tried so not sure).
I use Emacs' rmail with mairix as a search tool. I can link to emails via rmail like this:
[[rmail:<mbox-path>#<message-id>][link text]]
No need to type that out, M-x org-store-link does that for me in any rmail buffer.
I split my mboxes regularly, so I need to link them via mairix instead of rmail. I haven't set it up yet, but that is so trivial I guess it's already done.
Are there other good reasons to use mu4e? I'm an Emacs person, but not yet an "I do my email in Emacs" person.