A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 8, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Mail.app
While email is usually discounted as a light use for a computer, anyone who has a considerable amount of email to deal with would hardly agree. For me, an email client must be robust as well as stable. I've had experiences with losing an entire mailbox in the past and it's never fun.
Mail comes with OS X, but instead of being a lightweight solution like Outlook Express, Mail is best compared to the likes of Outlook under Windows.
From a functionality standpoint, Mail has all of the features of Outlook as an email tool (Address book and Calendar support are provided through separate applications). The biggest changes that I had to get used to were, you guessed it, keyboard shortcuts to perform the tasks that I was used to under Outlook. The shortcuts did take a bit of getting used to for me, but in the end, it wasn't too difficult; to send a message after you've composed it, the shortcut is Command-Shift-D; replying is Command-R; forwarding is Command-Shift-F (Command-F opens up the Find dialog box); and Command-Shift-N gets new mail.
The application itself is lightning-fast; start up time is much faster than Outlook 2003 and a bit faster than Outlook 2004. The one aspect of Mail that is absolutely an improvement over Outlook is in its searching abilities. If you have any appreciable number of messages under Outlook, you know that searching for a particular message: 1) takes forever, and 2) leaves you with a noticeably slower machine with your hard drive crunching constantly. The search function in Mail is significantly quicker than Outlook and you get noticeably fewer disk accesses to find the email that you're searching for than under Outlook. Obviously, without knowing the architecture behind how Outlook searches vs. how Mail searches, I can't say exactly why Mail is faster, but I'd venture to say that it's either OS X doing some incredible caching, or it's just a much better indexed database with a faster search algorithm. Regardless of why, the reality is that it is significantly faster on a single 160GB SATA drive than I've ever had an Outlook search be on anything from a regular IDE drive to a 10K Raptor.
The overall interface and interaction with Mail is significantly faster than Outlook, regardless of how fast of a Windows PC I compare it to. The application has no problem handling tens of thousands of emails (the most that I've had in it at one time was a little over 23,000) and after a little experimenting, I finally found out that Option-Command-Delete would permanently delete an email instead of first sending it to the Trash folder. What's also nice to know is that copying or deleting a lot of emails doesn't slow down the program significantly; it's very easy to multi-task in Mail. While it could be attributed to the fact that all desktop G5s are now dual processor systems, the application is far less prone to slowdowns than any of the dual Opteron boxes on which I'd ever used Outlook. Now, it may be possible that Mail is more multi-threaded than Outlook or it may just be a case of better caching at work in the application. Needless to say, whatever it is - it works.
Mail has a built-in spam filter and the same filtering/rules capabilities of Outlook 2004. I've found that the spam filter in Mail is at least on par with that of Outlook 2004, if not a bit better. So far, I've been pretty pleased with it; although, there have been a few false positives that I've encountered when the filter is set to the most aggressive settings.
It's very easy to get a good set of rules set up and running in Mail - the process is even simpler than Outlook and it's quite easy to prioritize rules as well as have certain rules stop processing other rules after they've completed. Overall, I'd say the application is just as powerful as Outlook as an email client, but noticeably faster.
Most importantly, all of the little things that I appreciated about Outlook were also present in Mail. Start typing someone's name/email address to which you've sent email in the past or whose name already appears in your address book and autocomplete will bring up a list of addresses that match what you've already typed. While this feature has been in Outlook for a while, what's important here is that I didn't find any of the little gems of Outlook to be absent in Mail, which means a lot for a die-hard Windows user in order to feel comfortable under OS X.
The one issue that I had with Mail when I first started using it was that there was no way to directly import an Outlook pst file into the application. There are ways around this, such as exporting your Outlook mail to another format, then importing them into another client supported by Mail, and then exporting again before finally importing into Mail. But, I decided to not deal with that and just started my mailbox over from scratch. It took me a while to get enough emails accumulated in the application before I could truly pass judgment on it, but now that I have, it gets my stamp of approval.
Stability is another aspect of Mail that I have been pleased with, but the application isn't totally rock solid. Out of all of the apps on OS X, I've probably had Mail crash on me more times than the rest, but considering that I haven't had too many crashes under OS X in general, that's not too bad. None of the crashes have ever been detrimental to any of my mailboxes; all of my data always remained intact, but just as is the case with any crash, they've always been annoying. I would say the number of times that Mail has crashed on me would be similar to the number of times that Outlook 2004 crashed on me, maybe a little less.
In the end, I'd say the best way to summarize Mail is that it's nice to see a good, fast, robust email client finally included with the OS for free.
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phlipper8 - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Just one question. The author never mentioned the fact that he was using an actual 64 bit operating system, built specifically for a 64 bit machine. Could be the reason behind some of the good speed he noticed. Also, he needs to compare prices of comparable 64 bit windows systems. The pricing would be extremely comparable I would imagine.garfieldonline - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
There are other values of Mac haven't been discussed here. For instance, itsnoise level. Granted, you can make your PC quiet too but at what cost? P4 and new processors are continuously getting hotter and hotter, and keeping them cool is a nightmere to system builders. Big fan and non-traditional cooling systems such as water coolers are options. Big fans causes noise, and for some, like me, would find it very distracting. It is very hard to concentrate when you are sitting next to a noisy machine.Until recently, to me, cooling is a weakness in case cooling. You put a fan to suck air from the front panel, exhuast hot to the back. A fan on the top of the CPU and a fan on the chipset. In nutshell, put a fan on whatever it is hot. When it may seem effective. But what about air turbulence?
It is a double edges sword when you have the complete control of the system design (English isn't my first language) Apple engineers are allowed to take a look into the cooling system in more details. Result, they divided the machine in to cooling zones. Fans are all monitored and controlled. Not one or two fans in the system, but all nine fans (if my memory serves) The whole system is properly cooled but still manage to be quiet. Unlike PC, only the core components got cooled (CPU, GPU, Northbridge)
As we all known, overheated system can cause stability problems, and I should know it. I used to have a SIS735 motherboard from ECS. SIS735 runs very hot at full load. Since the passive cooling for the chipset wasn't adaquate. The system tends to hang a lot. To getting the system cool is an expensive experience sometime. Not everyone has all the building kit at home. Thermal componetns, fans etc aint' cheap ... For some it is a hit & miss process. (Correct me if I am wrong. I think Dell got cooling problems with their new Prescott machines when they first launched.
Non-traditional cooling ... first thing comes to my mind is price, and second is difficultly. My friend just tried installed one, and what a disaster! Result, a new machine. While on the topic of water cooling. Have anyone mention the new water cooling system in new Mac? It is an engineering marvel. The big and bulky water cooling systems used in PC is not on the same level, at least not on my book.
Game is pushing PC design to its boundaries, and often people over-emphasize the framerate. At work, I don't really care about framerate (unless you are a game developer I guess) All I care is if a machine is stable, fast enough to get my job done quick. Many here already mentioned, Mac OSX is based on Unix, and hence inherites the stability of Unix. Time is all we fighting against. I remember few months ago, I walked back to my office, and turned on my P4 2.6GHz HT machine. I was greeted with a BSOD. How nice was it. It told me to take a walk.
Standard ... As mentioned by the writing. The menu bar is always there on all Apple application. We PC uses like to "hunt" thing. It is "fun". But for new uses, espeically older user, this standard causes much less confusion in using a computer. From the support prospective, this is a great idea too. Try to get someone to work with Windows Multimedia Player 10 over the phone. Skinnable is great if you know you are way around. Otherwise, it is a nightmere to supporting staff. Tell them to go to FILE->OPEN? What FILE-OPEN, I can't see any ...
I guess things can go on and , and I am not even I Mac user (in that sense, I sure someone can point out few mistake here and there in this post. Please do it kindly.)
victorpanlilio - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
kmmatney wrote in #111: $2500 for a computer with no monitor and a crap video card. That's the "uncomfortable" part to me.What exactly do you plan to *do* with your computer anyway? Play games? Edit digital video? Render 3D animation? Write the next Nobel prize winner for literature? Sequence genes? Design buildings? Develop web applications? Analyze stocks? Visualize seismic data to find oil deposits?
*cough* Let's try pricing an IBM Intellistation Pro. A single-CPU Opteron system starts at C$3489 from the IBM Canada web store. A single-CPU Xeon-based IBM Intellistation Z starts at C$3209. The dual-CPU capable HP xw6000 starts in a lower price range but only has 533MHz FSB. A Dell Precision 670 with dual 2.8GHz Xeons and configured similarly to an entry level Power Mac G5 is about C$2754 (forget about the single-CPU model with only a 40GB HD).
A dual-CPU Power Mac G5 starts at C$2799, but this is with only 256MB PC3200 RAM (not enough), 80GB SATA HD, and a 64MB nVidia FX5200...
Apple's pricing appears to be similar to that of the Tier 1 PC vendors, and in some cases a bit better. I'm sure others more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm wrong. In some recent reports, Dell and HP appear to be taking market share from the whitebox vendors -- in many cases, the price delta between the Tier 1 vendors and the smaller builders has all but vanished. It means that boutique vendors such as Voodoo, Alienware, BOXX, and Falcon are going to get squeezed on margins as well. Such is the risk of differentiating on "speeds and feeds" and then getting stomped on by large competitors with deeper pockets.
twilson - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Good article. Probably one of the best articles I have read. And it manages to remain objective.However the comments on Safari, are a bit misleading. When it comes to the speed of rendering a page, I believe Safari actually waits until the page is loaded (so that it can check/validate the content [how well it conforms to the W3C standard]). If you have a page that is written correctly/closer to the W3C standard you will find that Safari will in fact load it faster than IE. Also, the time it takes to render a page must from pressing ENTER to when it finishes loading activity (as opposed to having a screen full of info).
You also refer to Safari's 'incompatibility' with Web sites. Yes this does appear to be the case. But in truth it is actually the web-sites "non-compliance" with the ratified W3C standards. Even the Anand homepage fails W3C HTML 4.01 vaildation (which it claims to be) with 367 errors.
Safari is quite strict in it's adoption of these standards. If only IE was like Safari in that respect and we wouldn't have the badly written sites we have today. For example, in Safari if you browse a page with an error in a function of javascript, then none of that pages Javascript will work. This is better than IE's everything else works and you only learn that function is crap when you get to it.
This all stems back to IE/Netscape fight when each side was introducing it's own object model for javascript and their own tags.
Safari absolutely rules.
victorpanlilio - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Correction: I had written in post 120 "dmr9748 wrote in #117" and it should read "dmr9748 wrote in #119". My apologies.victorpanlilio - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
dmr9748 wrote in #117: "The thing is when you when you think of MAC you think of one company"No, when I think of MAC I think Move, Add, Change, or MAC as in MAC address. I've worked for IBM, DEC, Compaq, and Fujitsu, and the corporate deployment projects I've been involved with are in the range of 1500-2500 PCs, so I think I can speak to the issue of volume purchasing, and yes, discounts are normally offered for large numbers of identically configured units. One concern a business may have about buying Macs for corporate use is that Apple is the sole hardware supplier, but this does not seem to bother Genentech, a leading biotech firm that runs its business on Macs. Of course, Genentech's CEO is on the Apple board, but I suspect that he isn't buying Macs for his company just because they look pretty.
You wrote: "It is not that hard to get a bulk deal directly from the company that builds and distributes the entire machine."
True enough, but Virginia Tech originally purchased their G5s at full retail from the Apple web store, with no volume discount, so the price on their cluster was even higher than it could've been, and yet the price/performance was better than the alternatives they had considered.
You wrote: "The point that I am getting at is that you should not be suprised that Apple with allow people to purchase a large amount of MACs for a lower price than PC"
See my statement above. What was your point again? Macs can be purchased directly from Apple. IBM Intellistations and Power5 blade servers can be purchased directly from IBM. I imagine that any savvy purchaser can negotiate a volume discount from either vendor. So?
You wrote: "In a business you have to purchase machines that is easy to use for all levels of computer users, easy to manage, cost effective, and you can easily get people to control and maintain the system."
I once worked for a large energy company that had over 2500 Macs. The support staff needed to answer help desk calls and do deskside visits? 12 people. That's 1 support person for every 208 machines, and this was without remote tools like SMS2003, pcAnywhere, or ZenWorks. In another large energy company I worked at, the ratio of support staff to PCs in an all-Windows shop was about 1:70. Do the math. If you're an IT Director who wants to build a large empire, which platform do you choose?
Of course, now that vulnerabilities in Windows are becoming a huge headache, AT&T -- which has 70,000 PCs -- is doing its due diligence and looking at alternatives: MacOS X and Linux.
You wrote: "Now, when you take a look at the numbers, 98% of the computer market consists of PCs and 2% are MACS."
There are also more Chevys and Fords on the road, does this mean everyone should drive a Chevy or a Ford, or that Chevys and Fords are better cars than marques that have a smaller market share? Curious logic indeed. And since we're talking about numbers, why is it that, even with its tiny market share, Apple manages to win kudos from the likes of PC World, which named OS X best desktop OS of 2004, and from PC Magazine, which recently gave the iMac G5 a 5-star rating Editor's Choice rating? Do you suppose they've taken leave of their senses?
You wrote: "The versatility of the PC is what really wins over MAC." Well, sort of. What "wins" is that even a whitebox Celeron is good enough for a lot of people's basic computing needs, and Apple chooses not to build stripped-down models. When I got my Honda Civic 8 years ago, I could still buy one without a radio; now I can't buy a Civic without a radio. I suppose if I wanted a really barebones car I could buy a Yugo or a Lada... :-D
dmr9748 - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
#117 My opinions are backed by fact that is why I posted those links.So far, the "facts" that I have been confronted with are of listings of a supercomputer consisting of numerous clustered MAC computers that was purchased directly from Apple. It is not that hard to get a bulk deal directly from the company that builds and distributes the entire machine.
The thing is when you when you think of MAC you think of one company. With your everyday computer, you have numreous other companies competing for your business. MAC has their own line of stores which makes things pretty easy. With the other end of the spectrum, you have to shop around for every little thing and prices as well as performance varies.
Another you have to look at is the fact that since the PC part of the market is so big, not a lot of companies are going to give people huge bulk deals. The one example with NEC, for example, even though the cost is so high, a company will buy that large number of computers for that price. You have to look at this from various views. The most important view is that of a business.
In a business you have to purchase machines that is easy to use for all levels of computer users, easy to manage, cost effective, and you can easily get people to control and maintain the system. Now, when you take a look at the numbers, 98% of the computer market consists of PCs and 2% are MACS. With that said, which would best fit this scenario?
Since PCs statistically better for that scenario, you get those people that spend the extra money for NEC computers.
I know we have seen companies bend over backwards for people but it usually happens in very few situations. Mostly when they are trying to take hold of a target market. If a company already has a hold of it, they will not barter on their price. Sort of like Walmart. Walrmart will come in and lower their prices to a point they are hurting but it hurts the surrounding stores as well to a point where the competition goes out of business. Once that happens, Walmart will jack the prices back up. The most famous company for doing that is Blockbuster.
It is a standard business tactic that is seen in the computer industry everyday between Intel and AMD. It is almost the same between PC and MAC except MACs can be purchased direcly from Apple. I am not able to find an option to go to a retailer and purchase a barebones MAC. You buy a MAC you get everything. You buy a PC and it's like buying a car. You can upgrade parts or you can just leave them out. The versatility of the PC is what really wins over MAC.
The point that I am getting at is that you should not be suprised that Apple with allow people to purchase a large amount of MACs for a lower price than PC. Also, you should not be suprised that PCs sell for a lesser price in smaller numbers. PC companies know they can sell their products in any volume. MACs, on the other hand, do not have a big enough hold on the market to say to a large company "we will not give you a special bulk deal." That does not help them get close to that 3% of the market.
Like I said earlier, if both PCs and MACs had 50% of the market, things would be different.
ThatGuyPSU - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Cindy, you rock. Forget about calming down. You go with your bad self.Marry me? How about just a tryst then? (haha)
=T=
gankaku - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
It appears that #112 isn't about to let facts get in the way of his opinions.So I agree with my learned colleagues. The Dell is, in fact, a cheaper server. You win.
However... Kindly take a look at the next rankings for the Supercomputer list in November (I think). Two of the top 10 supercomputers (possibly two of the top 5) will be comprised of Apple Xserves. They will also be the least expensive clusters in the top 10, by a wide margin.
azkman - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link
You have to actually read the articles and the background, not just look at the pictures. Basically, VT built the number three supercomputer in the world with 1100 G5s for less than $7M. Number one and number two at the time both cost over $200M.http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j...
Naturally, you will not accept this as proof. So to discontinue this pointless debate, I concede that the Dell server you chose is cheaper than the Apple server you chose.