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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vroem - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
"Well, to install an application, you simply drag the application's installer to any folder on your hard drive and it's "installed". Doing so actually triggers a number of files to be copied to various places on your drive, but the fact that you are separated from that process, it really made me feel like I wasn't in control of my system."You are thinking to much!
The thing you copy to your disk is the application not an 'installer'. Nothing happens in the background.
For the windows users: in OS X an application is a "package". For the user it's a file, for the system it's a directory that contains everything to run like dylibs (mac-dlls).
The application package is not supposed to change. Settings are ONLY created in the right folder in 'Library' in the users home folder. Deleting the relevant settings file resets the program's settings to the defaults.
Kishkumen - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
#34 - The phrase of the day is "price to performance" ratio. In fact #35 has some good information on the performance part of the equation. www.newegg.com has some good information for the price part of the equation. Look into it. A single Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 seems to perform quite well compared to dual 2.5 PPCs, but you're right, it's not about MHz. Perhaps I should say that Apple uses dual PPCs out of necessity due to IBM's inability to scale performance sufficientely per single PPC chip. In other words, if that's not clear enough, dual Xeon and Opterons are unnecessary for your typical x86 based workstation. Thus, better "price to performance" ratio. Now if you start beating us over the head again with this or that benchmark that the PPC "wins", again, don't forget the price part.Now, we have been going back and forth with the CPUs of the different platforms. We haven't even discussed video cards, hard drive performance/cost, cost of proprietary cables, etc. Say it again with me now, just so you don't forget what the argument is about..."price to performance".
cosmotic - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
37: Moving windows on a Mac is much faster than windows since its all in the GPU. Did you mean resizing?38: I all those third party themes (and defualt windows theme) look like crap. They are all afterthoughts. And sorry I cant spell. And as for my feelings, using a G4 400 makes me feel better than using an athlonxp 2500+...
If your looking for a responsive UI, get BeOS. If your looking for smooth pretty UI, try MacOSX's tripple buffered glory.
Boonesmi - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
ive used a couple g5's in the last several months. i wasnt disapointed with them at all. but if i had $3000 to waste on a new toy, no way would it be a new g5.my main rig is a dual opteron (less then half the cost of a new G5 to put it together) and when switching back and forth between the systems its clear to me that the dual opteron is superior (and not by a small margin)
granted the apps i run and the work i do arent the same as everyone else... im sure there are situations where a G5 would be better
darthlupin - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
The one thing that has been missing from the article, and mostly glossed over in the comments is how Mac OS X is really a *nix with a great front end. If you install the "Developer Tools" (which comes with OS X on a separate CD and can also be downloaded), you then have access to GNU tools such as make and gcc, and Perl(though that may be native,) as well as XCode which has plenty of advanced features. That means that you now have access to almost every open source project out there. I guess Anand isn't into that kind of stuff, but any Linux user should appreciate it immediately.Once you really get to know it, and I don't mean getting to know Finder / Aqua, but the whole package, OS X really makes Windows look like a toy. (Without meaning any offence to the diehard Windows fans.) Talking about keyboard shortcuts on Mac OS X for 17 pages, (though I do appreciate them highly,) is like talking about the automatic coffe cup holder and reclining leather seats on your Abrams tank. I.e. that's not to say that they don't deserve mention, just that they don't scratch the surface of what you can do with it.
If you're a Linux person, it's a very short hop to switch to OS X, (a fully functioning X11 can be installed separately,) and the laptops aren't nearly as expensive, (though still much more expensive than the equivalent Dell.)
Micah - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
I have found that upgrading and maintaining my girlfriend's Mac and getting things (especially hardware) working requires spending 1 of 2 things:1) Lots of $$! If you want a part, then Apple surely makes it. It will definitely look cool and work perfectly, but it will also cost 2-4x as much as the equivalent x86 part. Just look at Airport & Airport Extreme base-stations versus a Netgear or Linksys 802.11 wireless router.
2) Lots of time! In this way, the Mac seems to me a lot like Linux. I think a lot of 3rd party hardware out there works with Mac. Their towers come with PCI slots, for example. However, you still have to find the correct drivers or determine if the drivers are already built-in.
Just recently we went wireless in our apartment. I had to find a wireless PCI card based on a specific chipset for her Mac. Just like most Anandtech readers, I'm used to calling places and asking them to read product serial numbers to me to make sure that I get just the right model/revision/color/batch/stepping/whatever. However, that's usually a case of performance perfectionism. With the Mac, it was a case of getting the right chipset/revision/firmware or it just doesn't work, period. The only other time I've had to worry about that was with Linux.
So, I guess that my experiences with upgrading and maintaining the Mac have really soured me on it. Moreover, it has soured my girlfriend on them. She is really tired of having to do lots of research in order to find a non-Apple (read: affordable) piece of hardware that works with her Mac. She wants to be able to pick a box off the shelf at Best Buy and just be ready to go.
Mac promises ease-of-use, and it truly delivers...if you're willing to pay the big bucks.
offtangent - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
Flamers ... bear in mind that he did buy this machine, so I dont see why he cant complain about it, if he chooses to.As for the barefeats article, demonstrating how the latest 2.5GHz dual-G5s beat the Opterons & Xeons that were released last year is hardly any feat!
L1FE - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
For bob's sake people, it's not a benchmarking comparison but an editorial on his experience with the OS. And #33 how about you benchmark your "FEAL"ings on Mac since you obviously cared about that from your original complaint. And then you go on to say that it looks better than on a Windows machine when there are so many mods (win blinds) that look just as polished OSX. If I had an unlimited amount of cash, I'd buy a MAC. Until then I'll stick with my cheap PC and upgrade according to my needs. Nice editorial btw.P.S. It's FEEL. If you're going to emphasize it, at least spell it correctly.
CindyRodriguez - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
as for sluggish interfaces and choppy windows resizes... my Athlon 3000+ OC'ed with a Radeon 9800Pro isn't smooth as silk when resizing windows. I think overall, the interface of Windows IS more responsive than OS X but I think boasting that windows takes a half or quarter second less to do something is worth squat at the end of the day.Now Fedora Core 2.. on my Athlon, that's how I want OS X to respond.. but i prefer microkernels over monolithic kernels from an architectural standpoint.. and X is dog slow for stuff like moveing windows.
Also, as for OS X's sluggishness, remember that it's a display PDF interface. You can print ANYTHING out to PDF. You get real alpha channels. You get WYSIWYG output on postscript printers. it may not be as snappy as other OSes but there is a lot of value that replaces those fractions of a second.
My one big (major) complaint about the Finder is that it is WAY too slow when you are browsing remote AFP directories (or other network volumes, but AFP stands out).. especially over slow links. I'd like to see the Finder recognize slow links and simply list the files/dirs.. and then maybe download custom icons in the background.
CU - Friday, October 8, 2004 - link
OS 9 did not support preemptive mult threading. I think that is what caused multi-tasking to be so slow on OS9. I have used OS9 and it is not something I won't to repeat. I use OSX at work and while it is way better than OX9, I still like XP better. The dock is nothing special. Win98 maybe even 95 I cannot remeber has the quick launch bar that can be put on every side of the screen. You can even have more than one. It will also auto hide. The dock did not impress me but it is so needed for OSX since it lacks any other way to get to application easily. Using Expose to get to your HD and then clicking through folders to get to the application you want to run is so Windows 3.1. The start menu in windows seems to be the best solution so far if you use lots of application. I have also noticed the scrolling issue in Safari that he mentioned. It is very bad on my Powerbook 1.25ghz 1gig of ram. I don't understand how you can have problems having lots of windows open in XP and not OSX. XP can group all like windows together in the taskbar and you can increase the size of the taskbar to have the screen if needed (not very usefull though). It also puts arrows on the side of it so you can view more windows that are open. In OSX the dock just starts getting way to small since that is where your App shortcuts are at also. The dock is already not large enough to hold all the shortcuts I need. Command-H doesn't always help because that hides the app and not just the current window. My Powerbook also crashes more than my PC at home but not by much. But I overclock everything in my PC and run games on it. Anyway it was good read.