[Am-info] [OT] I've gone over to the brightly colored side.

[Mitch Stone]

--- From a message sent by Paul Rickard on 1/18/02 7:06 PM ---

>========== On 2002.01.18 04:56 PM, Mitch Stone typed: ============
>
>>I've seen it become temporarily unresponsive when an application takes a 
>>dive, but generally cmd-opt-esc brings up the force quit dialog box and 
>>the OS kills it gracefully. Haven't been forced to reboot yet and haven't 
>>lost any services, but maybe I'm not pushing the envelope. I honestly 
>>expected far more problems then I've encountered thus far. Considering 
>>the youth of this OS and the tricky business of handling the Classic 
>>environment, I think Apple has done a good job.
>
>      Yes, look at it that way - Apple is further ahead (so far as 
>stability anyway) with OS X after >1 year of the product being available 
>than it was with Mac OS Classic after 17. (20 if you count Lisa OS as 
>well) X is absolutely more stable than Classic or Windows 9X, at least 
>even with Windows 2K/XP, and the ease of use is unmatched anywhere. Only 
>reason I don't run it myself is because I don't have the time right now 
>to add more RAM to my iMac G3/500.

Of course OS X has at least a 15 year legacy behind it too, so it just 
depends on how you look at it. The MacOS has seen its share of stinkers 
(7.5 comes to mind), but for the most part even the "classic" OS was 
stable. What was unstable was the way it handled exploding applications, 
but this improved substantially with OS 8.x onwards (as I recall, this is 
when the Finder became multithreaded). 

Still, nothing beats protected memory. I've been using the beta of 
OmniWeb 4.1 for my daily browsing. It takes a dive every so often, but 
it's a non-event in OS X. I would never have even considered using a beta 
application in my daily work under the classic MacOS.

>>Have you found an e-mail client you like? Mail.app just isn't going to 
>>cut it.
>
>      I'm sure someone here *cough* could set you up with Claris Emailer, 
>if you don't mind using an app that was abandoned 4 years ago. I prefer 
>it to Eudora, I guess because of how clunky Eudora looks in comparison. 
>Emailer is really nice, I've used it on both my machines since I moved to 
>Macs in 1999.

I've been using Emailer since version 1.0. It runs in the classic 
environment, but I'm trying to get out of classic. Emailer is tough to 
replace on a feature for feature and quality of interface basis. 
Incidentally, the head of the Emailer design team moved to Microsoft and 
headed the Outlook-Entourage project for the Mac, which is why it turned 
out quite well. Still, I do not want to use it for political reasons.

Of the two alternatives Eric suggested, it looks like PowerMail is the 
better candidate, but they want what I consider to be an outrageous price 
for shareware ($49). They also don't say if it will import from Emailer.

 Mitch Stone  
 mitch@accidentalexpert.com