So I’ve upgraded my late-model Powerbook to Tiger, and I’ve decided also to give Apple’s built-in Mail app one more chance. Switching email programs is a risky business—different products store messages on you computer in fundamentally different ways. I myself have been burned more than once, so please allow me to share what I’ve learned…
The email apps that I’ve encountered use one of three basic filesystems: Databases, Mbox and Emix.
Databasics
These include Microsoft Entourage and Bare Bones’ Mailsmith. I jumped on board with Entourage as soon as I got my copy of the Office 2001 Suite for Mac; though its email functionality is no different than the Mac version of Outlook Express, Entourage could sync my addresses, calendar events and other good stuff with my Palm PDA. The arrangement worked out perfectly, until some cheap RAM on my computer corrupted my mail database, and destroyed all the email I had accrued since my last backup.
Entourage stores your mail in a proprietary database, which you can only access using Entourage. You can compact it, rebuild it and sometimes even repair it from within the program, but if something bad ever happens then there’s little you can do. To be fair, you can export your mail into other readable formats, but if you can’t easily re-import them then what’s the point?
I’ve also downloaded a 30-day trial of Mailsmith, but trashed it as soon as I realized that it too stored mail in a proprietary database. Fool me once…
Enter the Mbox
After my Entourage email disaster, I found myself reunited with an old friend called Eudora. Eudora uses the “mbox” format, just like Mozilla and Thunderbird. The big advantage here is that these mboxes are more or less text files, readable by any word processor. I’ve got archived Eudora mail from eight years ago, and I can still open it with my current version without issue. I can even open a Eudora mailbox in another computer across a network, with the necessary permissions, of course—and that’s pretty cool!
Sadly, Eudora’s interface is anything but. It hasn’t changed all that much since I first started using it, and with Mac OS X’s shiny new buttons it looks downright hideous. So I decided to give Jaguar’s built-in Mail program a try…
Version 1 of Apple’s Mail app also stores mail in mbox format, but with separate preferences and other proprietary files added to the mix. One day I booted up my mail program and got a message that one of these files was corrupt, and that was that. All my mail, gone. I suspect that Apple’s mbox files weren’t really up to standards, as I had a 3MB one sitting on my computer that I couldn’t do a thing with. So back I ran into Eudora’s ugly embrace.
Emixology
Arguably Apple’s most innovative new feature in its Tiger OS is Spotlight, giving the user the ability to quickly find anything on the computer, including specific email messages. To accomplish this, version 2 of Apple Mail stores each individual message as a separate file, with .emix suffix tacked on to the end. Certainly not your standard file extension, but it works—I’ve tried searching for obscure keywords hidden deep in long emails, and Spotlight has caught each and every one.
For this alone I’m willing to give Apple Mail another chance. If something goes wrong you’ll be sure to hear about it here. In the meantime, if you’re using or thinking of switching to one of the other products mentioned above, hopefully you can learn from my pain and not repeat any of my mistakes!
Ed Miller are discussing. 
Ed Miller 11:05 AM on October 14, 2005 Permalink |
AC:
The video iPod is a pretty interesting wrinkle in this whole “convergence” thing. I don’t think the big media or telecom companies realize how easy it will be for little people to become major players through easily-accessible technology. Like what has happened in the music industry, I think film and TV are about to see the start of a major shakeup in how things are done, what people watch, and who makes the money. Count me in!
Ed
Andrew Currie 11:16 AM on October 14, 2005 Permalink |
Hi Ed,
That’s exactly my question… Who makes money?
I agree 100% that having home-grown video programming available alongside content from major broadcasters is a wonderful thing. But those episodes of “Lost” are already paid for; how’s the little guy going to make a living off of this?
Andrew Currie 1:21 AM on October 16, 2005 Permalink |
Here’s another take on the situation, by some guy named Mark Cuban:
http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000617063228/
Ed Miller 11:16 AM on October 17, 2005 Permalink |
AC:
Sadly, I think it’ll be a different set of big companies making the money. The telecoms, cable companies, Apple and Microsoft, and the current film/TV/DVD conglomerates will probably fight it out. Of course, we’ve had Bell here in Canada already become a content creator with CTV and the Globe & Mail, so I’m probably raising an out-of-date point. but it would be nice, though, to see someone make enough money from an indie site to pay a mortgage….
Ed
Andrew Currie 11:56 AM on October 19, 2005 Permalink |
Of course, how silly of me… Here’s how vidcasters make money from the new iPods:
http://povpod.com/
