Mac OS X Beta Diary: OS X Mailbag

I’m on week four of using OS X, and all is still well.

Well, OK. That’s not the total truth. I am having some problems.

Earth to Eudora

First off, Eudora crashes more often than a Mars lander, and when it does, it often brings Classic down with it. This is troubling, especially as it tends to lead to the need for a total system restart.

Here’s the course of events:

I’m using Eudora. I get a piece of mail that I need to put into another mailbox. When I drag and drop it, all is well. Then…Eudora goes down. Sometimes, Classic goes too. If I relaunch Classic, sometimes it’s OK. But most of the time, if Eudora killed Classic (this is starting to sound like a novel) then it’s hopeless. I’m not sure why this is, but one thing’s for sure: I want a Carbon compliant e-mail application. Maybe if I offered to plug the application to death in a future Beta Diary, someone would step forward? We shall see.

Coolest Thing Ever I now have lightweight Web browser iCab ( www.icab.de ) running natively in OS X. It’s so great! The best part is, I can have Eudora open it instead of a Classic browser when I click on hyperlinks in e-mail messages — and iCab opens in OS X, not Classic. (Eudora refuses to recognize the Carbon version of Internet Explorer as a real application, so that was never an option.)

I’ve said this before, I’m sure, but it bears repeating: if I run only Carbon or Cocoa applications, Mac OS X as a whole runs faster. Now, considering this is a beta version of the OS, and beta versions are known to be a little slower (sometimes a lot slower) than the final version, the final version of this OS is going to leave skid marks. It’s going to be that fast.

Reader Mail

On a day-to-day basis, I honestly don’t notice much of a difference using OS X. Outside of the look and feel, it’s really not that much different for the user.

…Not that you’d think that if you read some of the comments in the story forums attached to my previous articles! Readers appear to be either happy or exploding with anger — there’s no in-between. However, I will say this to the folks who are writing in with their Steve-Jobs-is-evil-and-this-is-all-a-conspiracy-to-kill-Apple-and-Microsoft-is-secretly-programming-OS-X comments: “Put down the joystick, Mulder.”

I should also point out that I find it funny that everyone complained about how bad OS 9 was, and how OS 8.6 was so much better. Now we have people complaining that OS X is so bad, and how OS 9 is so much better. So which is it? 9 or 8.6? When we go to 11 (XI?), will OS X be the good old days?

The day I see you all pining for the days of the original Mac OS X Dock, there will be hell to pay. I’m just warning you now.