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Apple's OS X mail catches spam better than any separate spam blocker I've ever tried.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
T h e R o a d L e s s T r a v e l e d
Computing is fun again, thanks to Apple's slick new version of OS X
Nov. 19, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
Panther, the latest version of OS X, has given me sleepless nights. I haven't had such fun in a decade, and I find myself glued to the keyboard day after day.
Unhealthy? Maybe. But I'll catch up on my sleep. Life isn't supposed to be dull, and I can't imagine a personal computer as much fun as a modern Mac with its Panther operating system.
Panther, officially numbered OS X 10.3, makes me wonder what Windows users do for fun. Watch blue screens? Click the close button on Windows Messenger popups?
Panther is slicker than an ice storm. Windows XP is creaky and garish by comparison. I'm not talking about how Mac OS X 1.3 lacks such Windows "essentials" as viruses and security holes; I'm referring to the delightful way OS X 10.3 just plain works.
The software that comes with Panther would awe the most hardened Windows users. The OS X mail program and the Web browser that's installed by default are both at the top of my list of the best Internet programs for any computer.
Apple Mail, the OS X e-mail software, is fast and easy to figure out. It's clearly superior to Microsoft's Outlook Express without even factoring in the virus-magnet feature of the Microsoft program.
Real-life operations are superbly easy. Attachments can be dragged out of a message onto the desktop, mail can be deleted by dragging to the desktop trash can or by pressing the Delete key, messages can be searched with one click, e-mail threads can be organized without hiring a rocket scientist and -- get this, fans of smileys and emoticons -- dropping a photo onto someone's address-book entry automatically inserts the picture into the top of every letter that person sends you. And it doesn't have to be a photo; it can be an icon or a cartoon. My brother's "picture" is a Windows logo, for example. (Yes, he's one of those.)
Apple's OS X mail catches spam better than any separate spam blocker I've ever tried. Microsoft got wind of what Apple was planning and put spam filtering in its new, expensive version of Outlook, due out shortly, but it left out one of the best features of Apple's method: The Outlook spam blocker can't be trained to recognize new spam. Apple's Mail can be trained simply by clicking a button.
Apple's standard-issue Web browser, Safari, lacks nothing. It's faster than any of the other browsers I've used in the last five years and handles Web pages (including images, animations and sounds) as well as Internet Explorer does. Tabbed windows make browsing much easier than standard all-over-the-desktop windows, and Safari's tabs are the best implementation yet. (Mozilla and Opera both do tabs in Windows, OS X and Linux, but they're lame; Microsoft has fallen far behind, ignoring tabs completely.)
Panther's DVD player would give a film buff a new life. Not only does it do a perfect job showing DVDs -- I didn't have a dropped frame even when I doing file transfers in the background -- it even knows how to save your place if you have to get back to earthly chores. The next time you put the same DVD into the drive, the OS X DVD player will ask if you want to resume where you left off.
OS X 10.3 would have been a worthy upgrade without all these features. The file system is now self-healing (turn on "journaling" to get that function) and the Finder, which you could think of the file-and-folder system, is much faster, as I discovered when I sorted through a folder containing 140,000 files.
But the added gems in Mail, Safari and the DVD player make Panther a tough cat to beat. Will Microsoft try to catch up? Maybe. But as long as Windows draws viruses like garbage draws flies, OS X is going to remain on top.
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