Michelle Lentz, a US technology writer, has recently switched from PC to Mac. She was tempted to stick with Entourage for her email–”I want the familiarity of the Microsoft products”.

But she was brave. She transferred all her email over and was delighted by discoveries like Mail.app’s rules-based ability to change the background colour of emails. (“I actually couldn’t do this in Outlook.”)

But what really turned her head around was the wealth of plugins that allow Mail.app users to tweak and extend the app to meet their needs:

…I used a bunch of plug-ins to make it a more useful productivity tool for me. I was not happy with the way the ToDos worked, plus I wasn’t overly thrilled with how I had to manually file things. I remembered that a lot of these things I had fixed in Outlook as well using plug-ins. I was thrilled to find tons of Mail.app plug-ins.

She found – and loves – MailTags, MsgFiler, Mail.appetizer (recently updated for Leopard), MenuCalendarClock and (briefly) Letterbox , a fair number of the plugins in the Hawk Wings Top Ten Plugins list.

And the end result?

I’ve made Mail just as productive, if not moreso, than how I was running Outlook. This I can live with.

switching, productivity, mail.app, apple mail, leopard mail, entourage, outlook, plugins, rules, smart mailboxesSimilar Posts:

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The video demonstrates the creation of an event in Entourage’s calendar, giving a sense of appointment features familiar (colour-coding for each calendar) and unfamiliar (allowance for travelling time to and from the appointment).

The new, previously-seen “My Day” Desktop interface for Entourage also gets a good work out. You get to see the creation of a to-do, the reordering of to-dos and other bits and pieces.

Since I am feeling grumpy with Leopard iCal at the moment (although not as grumpy as Pierre Igot at Betalogue who today rightly unloads on iCal’s lack of keyboard support ), it all looks pretty attractive.

It pains me a bit to say it, but here is something that looks like it works. And gives users some control over how to manage their to-dos and events and edit them easily. Of course, it may be a different story when we actually have the app in our hands.

See the sneak-peak for yourself below or on the Office:Mac 2008 web site :

microsoft, office for mac 2008, entourage, ical, mail.app, apple mail, switching, productivity, email, MBUSimilar Posts:

• MacWorld’s review of Entourage 2008: A missed opportunity
• Mail.app vs the “new” Entourage
• Entourage gets Spotlight, Sync Services support
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• QuickCal: plain language iCal Widget

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:

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There are already a number of tried and true ways to crack open Outlook’s PST files and make the transition, either using Mozilla or (for Outlook Express users) DbxConv.

Or you could use the shareware utility, O2M (formerly known as Outlook2Mac) which only costs USD 10.

Still, some people get a kick out doing this kind of thing for free, and libpst offers another way.

Joe outlines just twelve steps from downloading the source code, compiling (not as hard as you imagine) and running it, to the end result.

If I had a PST file to hand, I’d try it myself. Fortunately, I don’t.mail.app, apple mail, outlook, outlook express, microsoft, pst files, switching, freewareSimilar Posts:

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It covers all the steps from finding your Mail.app messages, converting, moving and importing them again and features some screenshots to help you on your way.

Perhaps the emlx to mbox converter has got smarter or perhaps the author was lucky, but he doesn’t mention any of the problems encountered by another user trying to do the same thing, which were posted on macOSXHints some time ago.

Needless to say, moving back the other way again from Thunderbird to Mail 2.0 will be easier and the outcome more pleasurable.mail.ap, apple mail, thunderbird, email, switching, mbox, emlxSimilar Posts:

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1. Address Book Dates (Age, star sign and iCal link for Address Book contacts) was added to the Address Book section.
2. LinkABoo (hyperlinks to Apple Mail messages in other apps) was added to the Added Functionality Section.
3. “Show Emails from…” (a quick way to list in Mail.app all the emails you have received from a particular contact) was added to the Address Book section.
4. MsgFiler (a “quick file” plugin for Mail.app) was added to the Added Functionality section.
5. IMAP-IDLE plugin (provides support in Mail.app for IMAP’s IDLE command) was added to the Added Functionality section.
6. Google Calendar plugin for Address Book (auto-fill Google Calendar events with contact information from your Address Book) was added to http://www.hawkwings.net/plugins.htm#address.
7. Signature Profiler (enables enhanced signature functions in Mail, HTML and image insertion) was added to the Added Functionality Section.
8. Mailsmith to Mail.app export script (a smarter way to get your emails out of Mailsmith into Mail) was added to the Switching section.
9. Portable Mail.app (a version of Mail that will run from a removable drive, flash drive or iPod) was added to the Added Functionality section.
10. Mailing List Burster (an applescript that splits mailing list digests up into individual messages) was added to the Added Functionality section.
11. rooSwitch (separate profiles for settings in Mail, Safari and other iApps) was added to the Added Functionality section.

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Java podcaster Tim Shadel is going the other way , dumping Ubuntu after using Linux for years and stretching his legs into Mac OS X.

Since Mail.app was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Mark Pilgrim, it’s extra interesting to read Tim’s experience with Mail, compared to Evolution, his Linux mail client:

Mail.app is great. Evolution almost works. I have to use exchange at work (I have Ubuntu installed there, too). Evolution has a module to integrate with Exchange, and it sorta thinks about working. It’s slow, and frequently it hangs. So much so that I got sick of typing

ps -ef | grep evolu | grep -v grep | awk ‘{ print $2 }’ | xargs kill

that I put it in a batch file shell script. I ran it no less than twice a day, sometimes more. Calendaring almost worked, except when it didn’t. Frequently I’d send out an appointment only to figure out that my colleagues version of the appointment didn’t repeat over the right interval. I don’t blame anyone for having trouble integrating with a Microsoft product. But at the end of the day, it was still annoyingly brittle. On Mac, there’s Entourage — an M$ product to work with the M$ server. As it is, Mail.app rocks for processing my personal email really efficiently. Oh, and it can export your mail to mbox. Duh. On Ubuntu, mail almost works.

He goes on to list many more ways in which Mac OS X simply provides a superior user experience—searching, wireless, GUI, audio effects, bluetooth and more.

In the end, it’s all about an OS that (wait for it…) “just works”:

My reasons for choosing to dump Ubuntu for a Mac are almost entirely about the experience. After years of Linux work, I’m tired of fiddling. I’m tired of things that almost work. I’m ready for a change. I’m sick of the war to get things to work. I’m ready to simply Get Things Done.

mail.app, apple mail, switching, Mac osx, linux, ubuntu, apple, open-sourceSimilar Posts:

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In short, he says, Andreas Amann’s app is “flawless, perfect”, although he takes the opportunity to point out a few things.

In particular, he recommends patience:

The first part—dragging it all, setting up folders, etc, and then dragging the whole ‘Eudora folder’ onto the cleaner only took about an hour or so, but the script to rebuild boxes can take longer. It took me a couple of hours. Do NOT interrupt it. My advice is to turn off all other programs and just walk away and let it do it’s thing.

Secondly, he notes something specific to Eudora for Windows switchers:

For nicknames: Many Eudora for Windows users will be scratching their heads about ‘nndbase.txt’ in the instructions as it doesn’t exist in the new version. It’s actually a different file type. I pinged Andreas about this. What I did (and yes, this worked flawlessly) was drag the entire Eudora for Windows into the folder that I had created called ‘eudora folder’ (as per Andreas’ instructions). Then when I dragged that whole thing onto the cleaner the dialogue box popped up. I simply deselected everything except ‘import nicknames’ and voila, they were all inside my address book within about two minutes. I did this last, after doing all of my mail and attachments.

Anyone reading this and teetering on the edge, might like to know that Eudora Mailbox Cleaner also does a terrific job for people coming over from Thunderbird.

I’m not going to make any snide remarks about someone who runs a Gmail site switching to Mail.app. No, not one.

I’ll just join with him and many others in thanking the developers who make such great plugins and utilities available to normal users like me. Mail.app wouldn’t be half the app it is without them, and they don’t get thanked enough.

Soppy, but true.

“Thank you a million times over, Andreas,” David says.eudora for windows, thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, gmail, email, switching, nicknames, kiss a developer daySimilar Posts:

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Last year a poster on macOSXHints provided a script for importing KMail mailboxes into Mail.

Now another poster has produced an updated script that preserves the time stamp on the original emails.mail.app, apple mail, kmail, linux, switching, mailboxes, importingSimilar Posts:

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It covers a wide range of pretty persuasive arguments, from the obligatory “it just works” to the best apps for Mac, web sites, useful blogs and how to get the most out of your Mac for education, finance management and work. He also presents a great rebuttal of myths about the lack of inter-operability and the much debated question of “value for money”.

Of course, this would make excellent reading for those teetering on the brink of switching. Buy half-a-dozen for family and friends whom you would most like to rescue from themselves.

But it also contains plenty of good info for seasoned Mac users. For example, I didn’t know about the Mac modification site MacMod until I read about it in 101 Reasons.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that Hawk Wings gets a listing (which is nice) and that Mark gave me a free copy to review (which is extra nice — I’ve only had six freebies before).

So, you can also read Mark’s kind words about Hawk Wings (and its helpful, knowledgeable readers), which comes in at number 92, just under 43folders.com and just above iPod mecca iLounge.com

More to the point, you can read about 100 even better reasons why will be/are glad to be a Mac user.

It’s a steal at just USD 3.49, which works out at slightly over 6 cents a page. My wife tells me that’s the price of half a salad sandwich at the deli near her chambers.

The book is produced by the IT and technical book specialists QUE Publishing in its Shortcuts to Knowledge series and is available from Mark’s web site mail.app, apple mail, tips, switching, apple, resources, bookSimilar Posts:

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