My problem was with the single-click behaviour. Since my Mail Downloads folder was a custom one and not the default Downloads folder that’s in the Dock, I was not getting any feedback when I was single-clicking on the button, which led me to believe that it was broken.

I think they could have alleviated the problem by

1) updating the tooltip when hovering over the new Save button to indicate clearly where the files are going to be saved

2) providing some kind of feedback other than just the bouncing in the Dock, especially when the Mail Downloads folder is not in the Dock.

But these days, unfortunately, Apple does not pay attention to such details anymore. They only pay maximum attention to the default scenario, and if your situation strays from the default scenario, even using only options provided by Apple itself, there’s a good chance that your situation will not have been tested properly.

Other than that, I agree that the problem with the triangle in the Save button is somewhat minor. It’s a non-standard thing, but I guess we are used to having so many non-standard things these days.

The bottom line is that, if Apple had done the migration properly so that it would work well also for users who had a non-default Mail Downloads setting in their prefs, I probably would have presented and phrased my initial blog post differently. But they did not, and so I assumed that the button was buggy, etc. etc.

Apple’s current set up for downloads works well, I suspect, for the majority of users who go with the default set up. They will get the visual feedback of seeing their attachments bounce in the Dock, so the problem you experienced will be escaped by most. Perhaps, Mail might check your default downloads folder to insure that it is in the Dock and that visual feedback is available.

Now I see that indeed, when I click on the “Save” button, Mail saves the files in my old destination folder. Since it is not the default “Downloads” folder that’s in the Dock, the Dock icon does not bounce, and so I get absolutely no feedback, either visual or audio, when I click on the “Save” button. I am just supposed to know that it saves in that destination folder—something that it never did before.

(For the record, prior to Mac OS X 10.5, the “Downloads” destination defined in Mail’s prefs was only used automatically by Mail when you double-clicked on an attachment icon in an e-mail message to open it. Double-clicking on it would have the effect not just of opening the attachment, but of actually saving it in the Downloads folder first and then opening that file.)

Anyway, thanks for the clarification. Now I understand what’s going on. I don’t really like it, because it means that if I want to manually choose the destination of the save, I have to click-and-hold and choose “Save All,” but I guess I can get used to that now.

I still think that the complete lack of feedback when clicking on “Save” if the destination folder is not the default Downloads folder is rather problematic.