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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raveng4 - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
If you are having difficulty maintaining your Gf's mac you must be doing something wrong. You CAN use just about any non apple hardware for it. Most if not all wireless devices are Mac compatible. Most PCI Cards I've used are just plug and play on the Mac so I'm nost sure why you are having such problems.As for this article I find it prett well balanced.
victorpanlilio - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
ss84 wrote in 139: So basically, the cheapest mac you can buy, that runs osx decently, costs 1300 dollars.No, as one commenter posted above, even the eMac would be suitable for "normal" computing tasks, and it starts at US$799. I just recently showed an eMac user (and his unit was an older 800MHz one, not the current 1.25GHz G4 model) how to turn his edited home videos into a DVD. At home I run OS X 10.3.5 on a G4 tower that's only 400MHz, with a 16MB ATI Rage128, and it's still fine for what I do (Photoshop retouching, a bit of video editing). I also have a 2.4GHz P4 Dell PowerEdge server for testing Win2K3 Enterprise. The Mac has no antivirus software; neither does the Dell -- but the Dell is fully patched, and I don't run IE on it except for Windows updates.
You also wrote: In an office environment, I cant think of anything that a mac can bring to the table that would offset the huge cost associated with each machine when compared to a windows machine that is suitable for the same task.
I respectfully beg to differ.
Re: "I can't think of anything" -- perhaps you might want to try thinking "outside the box" (literally). I derive part of my income from defending corporate Windows networks from malware. The billable hours required to do this are not at all trivial, given the increasing cooperation between spammers and virus writers -- blended threats are now the norm, not the exception. You can literally plug a modern Mac directly into the Internet (cable, DSL, whatever) and it will be fine. OTOH, I have plenty of experience with unprotected and misconfigured PCs in home and business settings, that were taken over by various kinds of nasty malware.
Even Bill Gates' own home PCs were hit (see ZDNet news story linked in an earlier post), so the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft has declared that MS will do something about it.
I recall a recent incident at a home building company, where I support the Macs in the marketing department. While the rest of the company was offline due to a worm that had gotten onto the corporate network from a laptop that carried the infection from home, the Mac users just kept working away, undisturbed by the support tech who was dashing madly from one PC to another to load a scan and remove tool -- and I had done exactly the same thing weeks earlier at another, all-Windows office. In short, we should not just look at hardware cost, look at the TCO (total cost of ownership). At C$95/hour for tech support, any price delta between Mac and PC hardware in an office-type environment can be quickly eroded by just one piece of malware running loose behind the defense perimeter. Since there are currently ZERO viruses for MacOS X, antivirus software and tech support to deal with malware intrusions are variable costs a business running on Macs does not have to deal with. Also, see my earlier post about the ratio of support techs to machines -- 1:208 for Macs, 1:70 for PCs, and this is based on my experience in large companies. Do the math. The costs for the "cheaper" PC quickly add up. I say this as someone who has worked in large PC companies (IBM, DEC, Compaq, Fujitsu) for much of his career.
ProviaFan - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
I think the whole pre-emptive multitasking thing may be a case of confusing the definitions or concepts in an attempt to explain why both Windows 9x/ME and OS 9 and earlier all could be crashed very easily by improperly written applications, while Windows NT/2000/XP and OS X are much more resilent. While I am not so sure of the proper terminology myself, I _thought_ the problems came from lack of (or improper implementation of?) protected memory, rather than inability to multitask.fxparis - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
victorpanlilio wrote in 135 (among interesting precisions) that our Macs are " inherently more secure than Window "I just " fear " that those leeches dedicated to hassle other people work and life have many skills and adaptation potentiality when it comes to "mal-programming"
I hope HE is right and I am wrong
emboss - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
Err, oops, sorry 'bout that.Actually 9x does have pre-emtive multitasking, and it's dead easy to prove. Write a program like this:
int main(void)
{
while (1==1)
{
}
return 1;
}
Under a non-preemtive system, such as Windows 3 or earlier, this will hang the system. Running such a program under windows 9x will just result in a hung program (obviously) but the system will still be fine. On a Cray, of course, the application will finish running in under two seconds ;)
I have no idea why MS says 9x doesn't pre-emtively multitask, except possibly to try to convince people to upgrade to a NT-kerneled OS (which had pre-emtive multitasking from the beginning).
emboss - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
ss284 - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
So basically, the cheapest mac you can buy, that runs osx decently, costs 1300 dollars. What about the majority of people who dont have that much money to spend on a computer? Apple gives them no other option. I would not consider 1400 a decent price, especially in a corporate environment, where $800 workstations are more than enough for almost any sort of office work. In an office environment, I cant think of anything that a mac can bring to the table that would offset the huge cost associated with each machine when compared to a windows machine that is suitable for the same task.mxzrider - Monday, October 11, 2004 - link
i have both mac and pc (pc has windows and mandrake) i can live with out either. i use my mac (ppc g4) for video editing, but i am getting in premier, media 100 8 is getting really old. so i might sell my mac cuz it is dirt slow compared to my 800$ pc. i got hte g4 right before the g5 came out.(piss me off). but i can type faster the the apple can keep up. so i might go in to my 5 year old cusins room. or sell it for 1500 and get a new pc. i have floated farther and farther away from mac.Maybe becuase i dont do as much video editing much any more.victorpanlilio - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
GoodWatch wrote in #134: I’m just waiting for the first port of OS X to the Intel platform*sigh* Don't. Apple still makes most of its income from selling HW, not SW, and though it could be argued tongue in cheek that Macs are just expensive dongles for some really world-class apps, MacOS X is optimized for the PPC architecture -- even though its Darwin OS core is synced with an x86 version, OS X on x86 will likely not be sold to the public as long as Steve Jobs is CEO of Apple. Just imagine the developer revolt that would ensue.
bebopredux - Sunday, October 10, 2004 - link
Being a PC only ( well, OK, Debian Linux too ) user for the past 7 years I always heard the MacHeads claim a superior system. I admit to really wanting a Mac in addition to my PC.Luckily I won a Mac G5 with a 23" Cinema Display this past May! I was thrilled to say the least. I have been impressed. Why? Being a "computer guy" I am always getting nagged by friends and family to help with their PC woes. I have been overwhelmed lately with the endless spyware, adware and browser hijacks occuring with Windows machines. A lot of the help is for elderly people who have made the jump to computing. I admire them for this. However, it is an absolute jungle for these people. IE6 is a dog now infested with fleas and ticks. These people have given up surfing the web because of this. Firefox and Mozilla help but, compared with Macs, PC's are a a bitch to surf with lately if you don't have the know how.
I have taken to suggesting people buy Macs now for this reason alone. iLife is a very simple and easy to master suite that does all they need to do. Safari, IMO is a pleasant surprise.
Bottom line? Macs make it easier to work and play rather than be under the hood all the time scanning for spyware etc;.
This was a good article but, I found it to be nitpicking. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who comes over to my house and tries the Mac wants one now. I do web desing and graphics work on my PC. I am accustomed to it.
I think it's a smart thing to learn all the OS'es you can! I use Linux, OSX and XP on a daily basis. I am teaching my kids all 3 too ( as well as BeOS!! ). Truthfully, I wish Macs were less expensive. They are very nice machines and the OS is stellar and less prone to Windows assaults which, lately, is becoming a HUGE hassle akin to an epidemic.
The correct answer is that Windows and Macs are both great. However, Windows seems to be asleep lately with regards to security.