Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Erik Price]

On Thursday, January 2, 2003, at 11:10  AM, Drew Taylor wrote:


I've recently gotten a Mac OS X (10.2.3) box up & running.


DREW TAYLOR WINS.  FLAWLESS VICTORY.


1. Are there any local Mac mailing lists? I'm subscribed to 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] already.
2. What are your favorite/must have utilities?

BBEdit, worth every penny.  This editor was designed with the Perl 
programmer in mind (though it also works nicely with AppleScript, and 
any shell-based scripting language like Python or Ruby).  If you know 
Perl, and perhaps a little AppleScript (just enough to call a Perl 
script), you can extend BBEdit in so many ways.  Download the free 
trial (not BBEdit Lite, rather the full-version trial) from 
http://www.barebones.com/ and put it through its paces, you get 24 days 
(I think).  I had a job last year programming in PHP, where I was 
fortunate enough to get to use a Mac, and I have to say that this text 
editor

3. Are you using Mail for email? Plusses & minuses are welcome.


Yes.  Pluses include the sweet control over quoting and the spam filter 
system (very smoothly integrated) in a nice Cocoa interface.  Minuses 
include slight slowness (perhaps more so on your more venerable 
machine), not very powerful feature set compared to Eudora and others 
-- for instance, you can't choose to download HTML images on a 
per-email basis which would be nice for those of us who leave this 
turned off but occasionally would like to view an email in HTML format.

I hated Mail when it first came out but Apple did improve it quite a 
bit.  I can't say it has any single feature that makes it a killer app, 
it's just the way that Mail integrates with everything that makes it 
feel like an extension of the OS, sort of.  Like right now I'm 
composing this email in Mail, and if I had you in my iChat buddy list 
then I'd see a little green dot if you were online right now.  This is 
really hardly worth switching over from Eudora if you know and love it, 
but if you just grow into using Mail, it becomes very comfortable.

Also, I appreciate that it is smoothly integrated with Address Book, 
which I keep iSynced to my Treo, though I'm sure you'll see lots more 
software that hooks into Address Book in the future.  I think Mozilla 
has a nice mail client too, and I use that at work (on Win32), but 
there are things that I find myself missing from Mail.app when I am at 
work.

4. More in-depth books than "Missing Manual". Hints on hardware 
especially helpful.

"MacOS X Unleashed" looked good (more in-depth and less introductory 
than "Missing Manual", but I didn't read it.  I'm reading "Learning 
Cocoa w/Obj-C" and I think it's a good book so far, but I don't think 
it's terribly in-depth.  It's an introductory book.

6. Any other tips for a windows convert.


Since you're on a Perl mailing list, I'll assume you're interested in 
development -- make sure you've installed the Developer Tools.  It's a 
hefty few hundred MB but it's well worth it.  You get gcc and also 
Project Builder, which is Apple's IDE for Cocoa and Java programming, 
plus the Java SDK (soon to support 1.4.1 IIRC) and other GUI/CLI 
utilities.

It's not Linux, so I think that those who approach it thinking that all 
Mac software is going to be open source/free are going to be 
disappointed.  But just about any open source Unix app should run on 
MacOS X.  Use Fink ( http://fink.sourceforge.net ) if you would like a 
package manager for historically-Unix software like XFree86 or the 
Gimp.  (But if you prefer to roll your own, gcc comes with the 
Developer Tools.)

More and more I'm becoming comfortable with the ways that the OS is 
well-integrated with the applications, and applications are 
well-integrated with each other.  Sometimes I wonder if I should be 
afraid (a la Windows' integration with Internet Explorer), but none of 
the integrations are "required", so it's a win/win situation.

Performance wise, it helps to have a lot of RAM.  I'm assuming that on 
your beige you'll experience similar.  It feels like the OS was 
designed to take advantage of the kind of hardware that will be rolling 
out over the next couple of years -- forward thinking, but a bit 
debilitating for those of us who are using the machines of today or 
yesterday. The JVM is dog slow.  I have a 500mHz G3 w/384MB and it's 
just not worth running most large Java apps (plus they kind of stand 
out against the "native" Cocoa/Carbon apps on MacOS X).  This is 
especially sore for me because I like Java and develop with it at work.

I really love MacOS X -- it's not completely faultless, but it gives me 
the power and features of Linux but without making me micromanage every 
little detail of the OS.  You can micromanage if you want -- but if you 
just want to get stuff done, the OS pretty much takes care of itself.



Erik



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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Dan Sugalski]

At 2:18 PM -0500 1/2/03, darren chamberlain wrote:

* Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-01-02 14:08]:

 At 1:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Drew Taylor wrote:
 > I know everyone raves about mutt, and will probably look into it at
 > some point. But it seems strange to be using a text-oriented mail
 > program in one of the prettiest GUI's available. ;-) I also wonder
 > if Mail.app is the best available GUI email program for OS X.

 I've not used Mail.app, but I do use Eudora. As mail clients go, it's
 pretty nice, and free (Which is a good thing) if you don't mind a
 small and unobtrusive ad window. (Or reduced functionality)


Since he's already using Eudora on Windows ("at work", or so he claims ;),
that might be a pretty painless switch.


Dead-simple. Copy your Windows mail folder over and tell Mac eudora 
about it and you're set. (Done it both ways, works very nicely)

(darren)

PS I don't *really* have anything interesting to say in this message,
   but thought I did when I started it; but when my random sig generator
   produced what it did, I felt I had to at least send it along...

--
Remember, any design flaw you're sufficiently snide about becomes a
feature.


D'oh! I'd forgotten I'd said that. (Wow, my first sigquoting! I feel 
so special now... :)
--
Dan

--"it's like this"---
Dan Sugalski  even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
  teddy bears get drunk
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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Dan Sugalski]

At 2:24 PM -0500 1/2/03, Drew Taylor wrote:

At 02:09 PM 1/2/03 -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:


I've not used Mail.app, but I do use Eudora. As mail clients go, 
it's pretty nice, and free (Which is a good thing) if you don't 
mind a small and unobtrusive ad window. (Or reduced functionality)

I've been a Eudora user for many years now. I wondered if there was 
a good reason to switch to Mail.app. The junk filter seems nice, but 
I keep meaning to start doing filtering on the server anyway. And 
the ad window doesn't bother me since I think I've clicked on it a 
couple times in all my time of using Eudora. :-)

Yep--server-based filtering definitely wins if you can do it. (I've 
spamassassin and a slowly-growing IP ban-list, which works pretty 
well) I've heard rumors that there's a way to get Eudora to do spam 
filtering, but I think it'd be easier to set up a local mailserver as 
an intermediate and filter there instead.

I should note that I've been a happy Eudora user since Eudora Lite 
1.5, and that's a *long* time ago... :)
--
Dan

--"it's like this"---
Dan Sugalski  even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
  teddy bears get drunk
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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Drew Taylor]

At 02:09 PM 1/2/03 -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:


I've not used Mail.app, but I do use Eudora. As mail clients go, it's 
pretty nice, and free (Which is a good thing) if you don't mind a small 
and unobtrusive ad window. (Or reduced functionality)

I've been a Eudora user for many years now. I wondered if there was a good 
reason to switch to Mail.app. The junk filter seems nice, but I keep 
meaning to start doing filtering on the server anyway. And the ad window 
doesn't bother me since I think I've clicked on it a couple times in all my 
time of using Eudora. :-)

Drew

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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[darren chamberlain]

* Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-01-02 14:08]:
> At 1:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Drew Taylor wrote:
> > I know everyone raves about mutt, and will probably look into it at 
> > some point. But it seems strange to be using a text-oriented mail 
> > program in one of the prettiest GUI's available. ;-) I also wonder 
> > if Mail.app is the best available GUI email program for OS X.
> 
> I've not used Mail.app, but I do use Eudora. As mail clients go, it's 
> pretty nice, and free (Which is a good thing) if you don't mind a 
> small and unobtrusive ad window. (Or reduced functionality)

Since he's already using Eudora on Windows ("at work", or so he claims ;),
that might be a pretty painless switch.

(darren)

PS I don't *really* have anything interesting to say in this message,
   but thought I did when I started it; but when my random sig generator
   produced what it did, I felt I had to at least send it along...

-- 
Remember, any design flaw you're sufficiently snide about becomes a
feature.
-- Dan Sugalski
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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Dan Sugalski]

At 1:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Drew Taylor wrote:

I know everyone raves about mutt, and will probably look into it at 
some point. But it seems strange to be using a text-oriented mail 
program in one of the prettiest GUI's available. ;-) I also wonder 
if Mail.app is the best available GUI email program for OS X.

I've not used Mail.app, but I do use Eudora. As mail clients go, it's 
pretty nice, and free (Which is a good thing) if you don't mind a 
small and unobtrusive ad window. (Or reduced functionality)
--
Dan

--"it's like this"---
Dan Sugalski  even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
  teddy bears get drunk
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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Drew Taylor]

At 11:12 AM 1/2/03 -0500, darren chamberlain wrote:

* Drew Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-01-02 11:06]:
> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9
>
> I've recently gotten a Mac OS X (10.2.3) box up & running.

Not using it yet, though, huh?  :)


I should note that I sent the email from work where I am harnessed to NT 4. 
:-( But yes, I have the machine up & running but have not yet started using 
it on a daily basis. Problem #1 being that I have no built-in modem, no 
external modem on hand, and broadband is not available in the North End 
where I live.

> 2. What are your favorite/must have utilities?
> 3. Are you using Mail for email? Plusses & minuses are welcome.

I'm not a Mac user, so I don't have any OS X-specific advice, but
remember that all/most of your favorite Unix utilities will run under OS
X -- be sure to include some of the better ones in your considerations.

For example, mutt -- the best MUA available, bar none -- will work just
fine under OS X.


I know everyone raves about mutt, and will probably look into it at some 
point. But it seems strange to be using a text-oriented mail program in one 
of the prettiest GUI's available. ;-) I also wonder if Mail.app is the best 
available GUI email program for OS X.

Drew

--
Drew Taylor| Web development & consulting
http://www.drewtaylor.com/ | perl/mod_perl/DBI/mysql/postgres
--
"If you don't know what your program is supposed to do,
you'd better not start writing it."  -Edsger Dijkstra
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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Ron Newman]

On Thursday, January 2, 2003, at 11:10  AM, Drew Taylor wrote:


1. Are there any local Mac mailing lists? I'm subscribed to 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] already.

You'll want to get on the announcement list for the
Boston Mac Users' Group, bmac.org .  Here's the annoncement
for next week's meeting:

---
From: "Jonathan A. Duke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu Jan 2, 2003  10:45:38  AM US/Eastern
To: Multiple recipients of BMac-Announce - Sent by <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: BMac-Jan 2003-MacWorld, Mostly Live!

As is our tradition, we'll be featuring Steve Jobs' MacWorld Keynote 
for our meeting this month.

Also, we'll have people standing by with answers to some of your 
questions after the video.

And, of course, we'll have some special give-aways!!!

We'll see you there!


Now for the pertinent info:

Date:January 8, 2002
Time:7:00 PM
Place:   MIT campus, building E51, Room 315. Signs the night of the
meeting will direct you to the proper building and room.

Building E51 is on the corner of Memorial Drive and Wadsworth Street.
If you need a map, please check out our website at
.
Directions are below.

It is about a 10 minute walk from the Kendall Red Line stop.
Parking is available off of Hayward Street.  Neon yellow signs will be
posted the night of the meeting.

Thanks,
Jon Duke
BMac Executive Director
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Please note the agenda for the meeting at the end of this message.


Sign up for the automated BMac main meeting announcer...
Send an Internet mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with no body
text or subject.

The BMac announcement list is a low-volume list (3-5 messages per month)
intended to keep our membership informed of the happenings within the
group as well as any special events that may be of interest.

To unsubscribe from this list:
Send an Internet mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with no body
text or subject.

Directions:

- From Memorial Drive Eastbound (toward Science Museum):

Take the underpass under Mass Ave. Take first left off Memorial Drive
after underpass. This is Wadsworth Street. Go one block and E51 is on
the left hand corner of Amherst and Wadsworth Streets. For parking,
make a left on the corner and continue down to Hayward Street. Make a
right on Hayward Street and park in the lot on the left hand side.

- From Downtown Boston: Take Longfellow Bridge to Kendall Square.
Continue on Broadway. Take first possible left onto Ames Street, cross
Main Street, turn left on Amherst and continue for two blocks. E51 is
the right corner of Amherst and Wadsworth. For parking, go back down
Amherst Street one block to Hayward Street. Make a right on Hayward
Street and park in the lot on the left hand side.

- T: Take Red Line to Kendall Square stop. From the T head over toward
Au Bon Pain, take right onto Wadsworth St. The E51 building is at the
corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Street.


Agenda for Meeting:

7:00	Welcome & Announcements
7:05	Keynote Video
9:00	Giveaways

--
Jonathan A. Duke
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Executive Director
Boston Macintosh (BMac)
Boston's Premier Macintosh User Group

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Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[darren chamberlain]

* Drew Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-01-02 11:06]:
> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9
>
> I've recently gotten a Mac OS X (10.2.3) box up & running.

Not using it yet, though, huh?  :)

> 2. What are your favorite/must have utilities?
> 3. Are you using Mail for email? Plusses & minuses are welcome.

I'm not a Mac user, so I don't have any OS X-specific advice, but
remember that all/most of your favorite Unix utilities will run under OS
X -- be sure to include some of the better ones in your considerations.

For example, mutt -- the best MUA available, bar none -- will work just
fine under OS X.

(darren)

-- 
An operating system is just a name you give the features you left out
of your editor.
-- Per Abrahamsen in comp.emacs
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[Boston.pm] OT: Favorite Mac OS X utilities

[Drew Taylor]

Sorry for the OT post, but I know there are lots of OS X users on this 
list. :-)

I've recently gotten a Mac OS X (10.2.3) box up & running. It's a beige G3 
running at 266MHz (not too bad w/ 400+MB of RAM). Now I'm trying to make 
the Switch. I've read Pogue's "Missing Manual" and found it very helpful. 
My primary questions now are:

1. Are there any local Mac mailing lists? I'm subscribed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
already.
2. What are your favorite/must have utilities?
3. Are you using Mail for email? Plusses & minuses are welcome.
4. More in-depth books than "Missing Manual". Hints on hardware especially 
helpful.
5. Sources of mac hardware/reviews. I still can't believe the premium I 
have to pay for a "Mac" video card...
6. Any other tips for a windows convert.

Thanks for your help!

Drew
--
Drew Taylor| Web development & consulting
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