When Google announced IMAP support for Gmail, the first thing I tried was to set it up with Apple Mail. But it failed–I couldn’t get it configured so that everything worked smoothly. So I was using the Gmail web client exclusively.
Now I want give it another try with these two helpful articles from the Google Help Center: Apple Mail 3.0 and
Recommended IMAP client settings
One hint: At one point the article says
DO save draft messages on the server. If you want your drafts in your mail client to sync correctly with Gmail’s web interface, set your client to save drafts to the [Gmail]/Drafts folder.
You can do this by expanding the GMAIL tree, select the Drafts folder under [Gmail] and in the menu click Mailbox → Use This Mailbox For → Drafts.
If you want to send from several email addresses, this hint is very useful.
I’m also using the letterbox plugin to add a 3rd column to Apple Mail for viewing emails. This is particularly interesting if you have a wide screen display.
Do participate!