I dunno - and I don't think we'll ever know .

After all the early ones in the USA were all OK - it was only one from the last day that caused the problems.

The Genius went through everything and couldn't find any obvious errors anywhere , all my rules were checked , all my settings were checked

A tad worrying indeed but what a godsend it is to have access to the Genius bar. Non apple folks eat your heart out.

Out of curiosity, did the 'Genius' take a look at the console log? This may have revealed the problem.

No - he didn't

In reply to a post by lenaspell:

A tad worrying indeed but what a godsend it is to have access to the Genius bar. Non apple folks eat your heart out.

lol been following this thread, never ever had the above issue with gmail ?? I thought genuis was some sort of program on a Mac that told you what the problem was

Might be worth a try next time you go in.

MrGrumpy - Nope they are the friendly and usually excellent guys and gals in a special section of the Apple Stores all around the world. The best one I have ever used resided at the store in Boston.

@ Wellard and lenaspell

Console is a closed book to me - but I did have a look and there are some very strange entries in it - yup - another visit to Apple is indicated and I'll try and get Scott again .

Thanks for that suggestion .

I've been using gmail for years without a problem.
This sounds like a mac problem rather than a gmail problem so I would be careful about blaming gmail for something that may be a programming error in mail.

Did you use the "recent:" prefix for your pop name in the mail program

see

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=...

this can cause a lot of mail to be downloaded