One of the longest-standing complaints of the BeOS user is the fact that the available web browsers are all sub-standard. If BeOS had appeared a couple of years earlier, Netscape probably would have built a BeOS version of Navigator. But it didn't happen that way. For years, the only real browser for BeOS was the bundled NetPositive, which is fast and highly efficient (a joy to use in many ways, in fact), but does not handle JavaScript, Java, DHTML, or CSS. No matter how modern or futuristic BeOS' underpinnings may be, they aren't worth jack without modern apps to run on top of them. Opera 3.62 is available for BeOS, but it remains unpolished. Regular builds of Mozilla appear for BeOS, but are bloated and crashy. The browser scene is dismal.
In contrast, Apple is riding with the devil. OS X ships with IE 5.5 as its default browser. While not identical to the Windows version, it's very slick, renders all sites perfectly, and is perfectly fast. It's biggest failing in my book is its mysterious lack of support for the increasingly popular PNG image format.
If you can't bear the thought of running MS software on your Mac, there are alternatives -- good ones. OmniWeb is a bit slower, but renders what are probably the most beautiful pages I've ever seen in a browser by tapping into OS X's native PostScript capabilities. iCab, Opera, and Navigator 6 are all highly capable modern browsers. The browser choice comes down to personal preference under OS X, rather than compromise and sacrifice, as it does under BeOS.
Point goes to OS X.
On the email front, Be had a wonderful idea: Provide a single, sanctioned email format, in a single, shared message store with all of the header meta-data (To:, From:, Subject, etc.) stored as attributes. Store each message in the user's home folder as individual files. There are two big advantages to this approach:
- Users can find messages on any criteria via system Find -- canned queries can pull up mailing lists and associated messages instantly without even having to sort them into folders first.
- All email apps can use the same message store. There is no such thing as a proprietary email message format on BeOS, and users often switch back and forth between email clients at will, without ever having to worry about converting between formats. Users can even use the Tracker itself as the email organization app, utilizing the simple but clean BeMail viewer / composer to read and write.
Architecturally speaking, point goes to BeOS.
BeMail messages are individual files stored in the Tracker. Sort them however you like, or create virtual mail folders via system queries (not shown). The BeMail reader simply displays and creates BeMail messages, while other apps give more advanced functionality on top of the central message store. Click for larger version.
Trouble is, none of the email apps available to read this central message store are quite finished. There are several that are decent, and BeatWare's Mail-It is a pretty darn good Eudora replacement. However, BeatWare abandoned the platform long ago, so the bugs and limitations in Mail-It are permanent.
On the other hand, Qualcomm ported a beta version of Eudora to OS X long ago, and the beta is 98% complete. Having used Eudora for many years at work, I jumped on the OS X version. But out of curiosity, I gave Apple's "Mail" a whirl for a few days, and never went back. It's super-clean, handles multiple accounts, has adequate (but not great) rules/filters, and color-codes quote levels -- a feature shared with Mail-It, and one I've grown addicted to (which is why I've sadly abandoned Eudora).
Apple's "Mail" is a bit underpowered but does a nice job and looks great doing it. I'm addicted to the multi-colored quoting mechanism that makes longer threads much easier to read. Mail also does a good job of rewrapping quoted text, so you never end up with jaggy right edges in the text as mail threads grow longer.
As if that wasn't enough, Office X includes Entourage, which is the Mac version of Outlook/Express. I haven't tried it but hear great things about it. Between these three and the choice of half a dozen other mature email apps, the actual usability point goes to OS X. If only there was some way to get all these vendors to discard the proprietary message store bull-hockey and agree on a single mail format, I'd be in heaven.
- "Out of the Frying Pan..."
- "... And Into the Fire..."
- "Smells Like Home Cookin"
- "A Lot To Like, First Impressions"
- "Networking Nirvana"
- "CD Burning, Disk Images"
- "Applications"
- "iMovie, iDVD"
- "Browsers and E-Mail"
- "Power Editors"
- "Community"
- "The Bad and The Ugly"
- "File System Shoot-Out"
- "Application-Binding Policies"
- "Alien Filesystems"
- "Miscellaneous Moans and Groans"
- "All Told, Life Is Good"
