You can choose a subscription to John Gruber’s site which includes a t-shirt (or two). That way you not only get the pleasure of supporting one of the finest independent voices on Mac matters, you get to replace your rattiest t-shirt with something much more tasteful.

Of course, I put mine on right away.

I started research for a freelance assignment on Vista today, so I felt a need for the extra protection:

This is actually a photo of me on the couch, thinking about starting the research. (You can see other, more ruggedly handsome people modelling their DF t-shirts here and here and here and here )

A paying membership of Daring Fireball scores you a full-content RSS feed for the site and a feed for Gruber’s Linked List, a daily list of links and blurbs.

Why is it worth it? For two reasons at least. First, the Linked List is astute and interesting. There are plenty of sites that are interesting but not astute, and some that are astute but not interesting. This list is both. I always start my daily NetNewsWire workout there.

Secondly, the longer articles are as well-written as they are informative. I rarely leave a piece John has written without a better understanding of how Mac OS X works (or should work!).

I get all of this for less money than my wife hands over for her PC’s antivirus subscription. It’s money very well spent.

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Mark Pilgrim announced that he was switching from OS X to Ubuntu, citing the ever-advancing proprietary creep in Apple as the main reason for his switch. Apple “just doesn’t get it” when it comes to open file formats.

Uproar. Not least because of Pilgrim’s reputation as a long-standing Mac guru.

John Gruber responded to the post, arguing that “Apple gets it / Apple doesn’t get it” is too crude a view:

The question isn’t “Does Apple get it?”, but “Does Apple get it enough?” …. [W]hile it is easy to find ways to complain that Apple is not open enough — under-documented and undocumented security updates and system revisions, under-documented and undocumented file formats — it would be hard to argue with the premise that Apple today is more open than it has ever been before. (Exhibit A: the Web Kit project.)

But there are things that could be better, should be better, but aren’t, and it’s hard to ascribe these policies to anything other than management that is, at best, indifferent to issues related to openness.

Interesting as this all is (and there is a lot more of it—you should read the posts on both sites), I am posting this because it turns out that Mail.app played a crucial role in Pilgrim’s decision to switch.

In his response to John’s response, Mark writes that Mail 2.0 finally forced his decision to switch:

And then came Tiger, and Mail.app 2.0. In Mac OS X 10.4, Apple deliberately changed Mail.app to use their proprietary .emlx data format, apparently to work around the limitations of Spotlight. Mail.app 2.0 helpfully auto-converted all my wonderful mbox files into Apple’s shitty undocumented format. I’m now in the process of undoing the damage….

This was really the last straw for me. I was already feeling vaguely dissatisfied with Apple; now I feel actively betrayed. By the time I even realized what had happened (a year after buying OS X 10.4), it was too late. Now I’m forced to migrate all my mail yet again from yet another proprietary format, and the best documentation I’ve found so far is on LiveJournal. Jesus H. Christ, somebody deserves to be fired for that.

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Responding to criticism that he doesn’t blog often enough, he says , “I’ll be announcing the fix for that one later today.”

I guess this means we will read more of John’s writing and that can only be a good thing.

Half the time I don’t understand what he is writing, but even then it is still good. He probably deserves his reputation as the most influential individual Mac blogger.

And he is not a stuck-up wiener either. Which is refreshing.

When an unknown Australian approached him out of the blue asking for an interview on what he thinks of Mail.app, he cheerfully agreed.

He sent in a great piece on Mail and what’s good and bad about it. He threw in some free advice too on how blogs should be formatted, which has made Hawk Wings nicer to look at and easier to read.

You can’t beat that. Intelligent, witty and a gentleman.

I imagine that’s enough adulation now. Keep your eyes on Daring Fireball and enjoy with me more Gruber more often (I hope).

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HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

JG: I’ve only been using Mail regularly since early September 2005, when we began eating our own dog food and switched our mail server at Joyent (the company I work for) to our own product, which supports IMAP but not POP.

I use Mail only to access my Joyent email account. I use Mailsmith to access all my other email, and have used it since version 1.0 in 1998. I’d still be using Mailsmith for my Joyent email if it weren’t for the fact that Mailsmith only supports POP.

(To be clear: I wholeheartedly endorse our decision at Joyent to only support IMAP clients.)

Also, you don’t want to get me started on calling Apple Mail “Mail.app”.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

JG: None.

HW: What’s your favourite thing about Apple Mail?

JG: The way it allows you to paste images inline within plain text messages.

HW: What’s your pet hate about Apple Mail?

JG: When it comes to writing, its mail composition environment is clumsy and primitive.

HW: If you could tell the Apple Mail development team one thing, what would it be?

JG: That the way Mail attempts to handle quoted passages in replies (in plain text messages) is cute if you want to be a top-poster who quotes the entire message you’re replying to, but frustrating and annoying if you want to do the right thing.

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