Engadget has published the results of its shoot-out between Vista and Leopard. Naturally, Mail.app and iCal win over Windows Mail and Windows Calendar.

In fact, to cut to the chase, Leopard wins the features shoot-out with 46 points to Vista’s 41.

Thinking about this exercise put me in mind of Umberto Eco’s well-known comparison between Macs and PCs, which he published in the Italian news magazine Espresso in 1994.

It is worth quoting at length:

…Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It’s an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me.

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ‘ratio studiorum’ of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach–if not the Kingdom of Heaven–the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revellers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions; when it comes down to it, you can decide to allow women and gays to be ministers if you want to…..

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic…

Which is more whimsical: the attempt to compare the feature sets of Vista and Leopard on the assumption that they rest on some notional level playing field or structuralism gone wild in correlating computers with Christian denominations?

What spirit of prophecy lead Eco to pair Anglicanism’s current troubles so precisely with the ever-increasing torment of Windows users? apple, not apple mail, not mail.app, windows, vista, leopard, catholicism, protestantism, Anglicanism, whimsy, switching, conversion

In a comment on another Hawk Wings post, Dave asks how to switch his email over from Eudora for Windows to Mail.app.

The answer is easy (especially as Andreas Amann, the developer of Eudora Mailbox Cleaner has already written out the answer):

1. Copy your Windows Eudora data folder onto a USB stick or something similar so that you can move it to your Mac.
2. [UPDATE: It emerges that there is an imtermediate step in here, too complicated to make into a bullet point but not complicated enough to make the process difficult. Details in EMC's readme file - Thanks, Dave].
3. Drop the complete Eudora data folder onto Eudora Mailbox Cleaner and wait for the conversion to finish.

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner also offers easy transitions from Thunderbird (Mac, Windows or Linux):

It’s freeware (donations from grateful users not turned away) and available from Andreas’ web site .

[Thanks, Andreas :)]mail.app, apple mail, eudora, switching, conversion, mailboxes, email, thunderbird

Emailchemy is an amazing utility that can convert mailboxes from a vast array of email clients (ranging from most currently in use to others long forgotten) into any one of the following formats:

RFC-2822 mailboxes (“mbox” format or “UNIX-style”) and variants, folders of individual RFC-2822 email files (.txt or .eml files), Comma-separated value files (.csv files), Maildir (qmail) and Maildir++ (Courier IMAP).

A new updated version (1.8) adds a “toolbox” option to the app’s main screen:

The new utilities offer useful extra additional conversion grunt:

1. IMAP ImportServer – import your converted mail into your new email software using this desktop mail server.
2. Mailbox Splitter – split large mbox files by message count or file size
3. Address Harvester – extract email addresses from almost any file
4. Mac OS X Mail Cleaner – clean out files leftover from the Tiger upgrade

Emailchemy is shareware (USD 28 for a single user) and is available from the developer’s web site .mailboxes, conversion, mbox, email, imap, maildir, old email clients

Emailchemy is an amazing utility that can convert and retrieve emails out of almost any email client you have ever heard of and some that didn’t know existed.

See an earlier Hawk Wings post for a full list of the 19 clients and formats it understands.

It can save emails and mailboxes from these clients into the following formats:

RFC-2822 mailboxes (”mbox” format or “UNIX-style”) and variants, folders of individual RFC-2822 email files (.txt or .eml files), Comma-separated value files (.csv files), Maildir (qmail) and Maildir++ (Courier IMAP).

An updated version released today support for reading and writing Entourage .rge archive files.

Emailchemy is shareware (USD 25 for a single user) and is available from the developer’s webs site .mailboxes, conversion, mbox, email, maildir, old email clients

Emailchemy is an app that converts mailboxes from an astonishing number of current and not-so-current email clients into the RFC-2822 (“mbox”) format.

This helps in moving from one client to another and with retrieving emails from ancient email clients that might otherwise be lost.

Today’s update adds some improvements to the way it handles emails from Outlook Express 5 for Mac and QuickMail Pro. The folder hierarchy in both is now preserved.

It also improves the CSV export option and includes bugfixes for handling Entourage and Emailer 2 folders.

Emailchemy is shareware (USD 25) and is available from the developer’s web site .emailchemy, mailboxes, mbox, conversion, email, RFC-2822, helpful apps

Emailchemy is a conversion utility that “reads mailboxes from the proprietary formats of the most popular (and many of yesterday’s forgotten) email applications and converts it to a standard, portable format that any application can use.”

It already converts from an astonishing range of source formats into an equally astonishing range of target formats. (See earlier Hawk Wings post for a full list).

A new version has been released which adds support for CompuServe2000 for Windows, CompuServe for Macintosh (aka “CompuServe Classic” or “MacCIM“) and Musashi. It also contains GUI improvements and minor bugfixes.

It was once free for a one-off use, but now seems to be shareware (USD 25). It is available from the developer’s web site.

Reports (and Slashdot commentary on them) that we are in danger of entering a Digitial Dark Age due to a lack of legacy support for formats and media may be overwrought.

All the same, Emailchemy is a life-saver for people who have been using email for a long time and have moved through many clients and platforms.

Emailchemy will convert emails from popular and obsolete email clients into formats that Apple Mail and other clients can read. It converts email from an astonishing range of formats (listed after the jump):

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