Sunday, November 10, 2002

OS X Mail: Getting Happier All the Time. I switched one of my main email accounts over to the Mail app in OS X about a week ago now. I'm pretty happy with the result. I had heard the app was sluggish. It's clearly a bit slower than Eudora, but the time I "lose" waiting for mail to process is more than made up for by the time I'm saving not having to deal with spam. The spam filter in this program is really quite awesome. I am at a point after just a week -- and having just added a second main email account a couple of days ago -- where I see one or two spams a day. Contrast that with a couple dozen prior to the switch. Very cool. This morning, Mail did something else cool for me. My primary SMTP server was down or unreachable for some reason. I tried to send an email. After trying for a bit, I got a dialog that said, "That mail server isn't responding. Want to try one of your others?" It gave me a choice of using my .mac SMTP server. I said, "sure." Mail zipped right out. Cool. Eudora doesn't have that feature. 9:24:52 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Thursday, November 7, 2002

So is OS X Slow for You? Slashdot has a piece on the flurries of complaints about OS X slowness that crop up from time to time. My experience is that this is almost exclusively app-dependent, although some screen and system settings appear to be able to have inordinate impact on screen refresh which can make the system seem much slower than it actually is. What do you think? 5:40:36 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Monday, November 4, 2002

Apple Gets High Support Marks from PC World Readers. PC World magazine reports that overall customer satisfaction with computers is not getting any better. But the best marks for support go to Apple. (Thanks to MacCentral for the pointer.) 4:29:58 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Sunday, November 3, 2002

OpenForBusiness Magazine Says You Can Get By With Linux Just Fine. I don't have recent experience with Linux as a desktop environment, but I have several friends who do. I've asked if I should consider moving to it. Their unanimous answer has been negative. Principally because I need features in my office-equivalent application (forced on me by a book publisher) that none of the Open Source products have. Namely, revision-tracking with comments and style sheet compatibility. Frankly, in all of my other Office-type needs, OpenOffice on Windows 2000 would do nicely (and presumably its Linux equivalent would do as well or better). But as far as I can tell, there is no good Office replacement on OS X yet. Which sort of agrees with this guy's point: I'd probably be better off with Linux than with OS X since neither meets that Office need. Hmmmmmmm The Point Not Taken: "No matter how often it has been said, it seems that many GNU/Linux and Macintosh users refuse to see the obvious. (Open For Business via MyAppleMenu)" Source: myapplemenu 12:41:36 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Don't get TOO excited Fortune : Jaguar 'most impressive new software' this year [MacCentral] The reason Forbes thinks Jaguar is impressive is because it allows Macs to become equal citizens on largely Windows networks. So it's nice to have Forbes' endorsement, but it's clear they still bleed IBM blue and Microsoft puke...er, puce. 12:47:22 PM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Friday, October 25, 2002

Does Jaguar Fix the Screen Saver Memory Eater? I took screensavers out of play in OS X 10.1 when several message boards indicated that might be the source of the only crashes I was seeing. Now Ken Bereskin at least implies maybe it's OK to turn that beautiful feature back on. I'm going to give it a try. The built-in screen saver in Jaguar (now called Screen Effects) includes a new default effect called Flurry. Flurry was one of the most popular screen saver downloads for 10.1 so we were thrilled to be able to include it and make it the default in 10.2. [Ken Bereskin's Radio Weblog] 10:47:32 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Gimme Back My Apple Decal! I always liked Apple decals. I put them lots of strange places. This Wired News piece reminded me of those days. The last few Macs I bought didn't have decals in them, I don't think. Or maybe they did but they weren't very interesting. 12:31:23 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

© Copyright 2002 Dan Shafer.