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, conversionSimilar Posts:

• Will Windows Vista be Apple’s Trojan Horse?
• Screenshot of Mail.app’s Windows Vista rival
• Windows Vista, Outlook 12 to support .ics format
• There and back again
• Windows email clients compared

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, thunderbirdSimilar Posts:

• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner 4.6.1: Slicker and Quicker
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner 4.6
• Full Marks for Eudora Mailbox Cleaner
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner: Eudora -> Apple Mail
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner updated

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 clientsSimilar Posts:

• Emailchemy 1.7.2: Amazing mailbox converter adds yet another format
• Emailchemy: Converting or Recovering old emails
• Emailchemy developer (and email packrat) tells all
• Emailchemy 1.7.1 Mailbox converter
• Importing email from Opera

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 Similar Posts:

• Emailchemy 1.8: Amazing conversion utility adds four new email tools
• Emailchemy: Converting or Recovering old emails
• Emailchemy developer (and email packrat) tells all
• Emailchemy 1.7.1 Mailbox converter
• Switching from Thunderbird to Apple Mail

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 appsSimilar Posts:

• Emailchemy 1.7.2: Amazing mailbox converter adds yet another format
• Emailchemy: Converting or Recovering old emails
• Emailchemy developer (and email packrat) tells all
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner 4.6
• Emailchemy 1.8: Amazing conversion utility adds four new email tools

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. Similar Posts:

• Emailchemy developer (and email packrat) tells all
• Emailchemy: Converting or Recovering old emails
• Emailchemy 1.7.1 Mailbox converter
• Emailchemy 1.7.2: Amazing mailbox converter adds yet another format
• Switching to Apple Mail: Two tales of woe

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):

• AOL for Windows (“PFC” files)
• Claris Emailer 1.x for Macintosh
• Claris Emailer 2.x for Macintosh
• Entourage
• Eudora
• Mac OS X Mail
• Mozilla
• Mulberry
• Neoplanet
• Netscape
• Opera 4, 5, 6 & 7
• Outlook Express 4 and 5 for Macintosh
• Outlook Express 4, 5 & 6 for Windows
• Outlook Express 5 for UNIX/Solaris
• PowerTalk/AOCE for Macintosh
• QuickMail Pro for Macintosh
• QuickMail Pro for Windows
• Yahoo! Mail
• any UNIX-style or mbox-format mailbox

into a useful set of formats:

• RFC-2822 mailboxes (“mbox” format or “UNIX-style”)
• Folders of individual RFC-2822 email files (.txt or .eml files)
• Comma-separated value files (.csv files)
• Maildir (qmail)
• Maildir++ (Courier IMAP)
• Variations of the RFC-2822 mbox mailboxes that are directly usable by:

• Mac OS X Mail (aka “Mail.app”)
• Eudora
• Mozilla (including Netscape and Thunderbird)

It can clean, repair and condense mailboxes and prepare them for archiving or entry into a stand-alone database. It costs USD 25 for a single user and is available from the developer’s website .mailboxes, conversion, mbox, old email clients, Eudora, thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, Claris Emailer, outlook express, emailSimilar Posts:

• Emailchemy developer (and email packrat) tells all
• Emailchemy 1.7.2: Amazing mailbox converter adds yet another format
• Emailchemy 1.8: Amazing conversion utility adds four new email tools
• Emailchemy 1.7.1 Mailbox converter
• Maildir to mbox conversion