Day-to-Day Operations
GETTING THE MAC RUNNING WAS (UNSURPRISINGLY) MUCH EASIER THAN SETTING UP MY LINUX
BOX. BUT HAVING LOTS OF APPLICATIONS TO CHOOSE FROM MADE THINGS MORE DIFFICULT
As a recovering Outlook user, I really
enjoyed time I spent on Linux, using
Thunderbird for email and keeping my
calendar on an old-school piece of paper.
I missed syncing my day-to-day activities
to my cellphone and PDA, but I gained
access to an application with much better
spam fi ltering and more usable rules.
On my move to the Mac, I was pre-
sented with a tough choice: stick with
Thunderbird, move to Apple’s built-in Mail
application, or admit defeat and crawl
back to Microsoft’s Outlook-for-OS-8 app,
Entourage. After I imported all my old mail
from the Linux box into Thunderbird I was
ready to experiment. I fi red up Entourage
to see how it differed from Outlook. After
a few hours spent trying to cope with the
scary-slow interface, I ditched Entourage
for iMail.
The difference was astounding.
The app is lightning-fast, handling even
my super-size 1GB IMAP mailbox with
ease, and it has one of the best spam
fi lters I’ve tested.
Lest you think I’m just blowing smoke
here, I get a lot of spam. Every day, I’m
sent about 3,000 messages, percent of
which are fi ltered by the company’s anti-
spam software before they hit my Inbox.
Of the remaining 0 messages, about half
are spam of one sort or another. iMail’s
spam fi lter m ags between 40 and 43 of
those 45 messages as spam. That’s a bet-
ter ratio than any other app I’ve tested.
40 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2005
THE MAC SWITCH
ICHAT VS. THE WORLD
One of the fi rst things I do on a new rig is install an IM client
or two. iChat, Apple’s built-in IM client, features support for
AOL Instant Messenger, the open-source Jabber protocol, and
Apple’s own special server-less local IM, Bonjour—formerly
known as Rendezvous. Bonjour chat uses Universal PNP
network discovery to connect to all available clients on your
local LAN. It’s basically IM that connects you to others at your
physical location, rather than your friends.
As a longtime Trillian and Gaim user, the one thing I immedi-
ately noticed about iChat is that instead of just listing usernames
in line after line of conversation windows, iChat uses the graphi-
cal buddy icon, and places your text on one side of the screen,
and your buddy’s on the other. I fi nd that the separation makes
it much easier to follow long,
detailed conversations.
&or the rest of my IM accounts
(9ahoo, MSN, and ICQ) I use
AdiumX (www.adiumx.com). Adium
uses the same libraries as Gaim,
and works reasonably well, but its
windows lack a lot of the visual
panache of iChat. That said, it’s just
as tightly integrated with the OS,
pulling your IM contacts from the
Address Book app.
Apple’s iChat presents even
the weightiest IM conversa-
tions in an easy-to-follow
graphical format.
iMail includes one of the best spam filters I’ve
ever used. The interface is clean, simple, and fast.
While I’m on the subject of productivity apps, I want to call out the deadly
duo—iCal and Address Book. iCal is a bare-bones calendar app that lets
you use as many calendars as you want. The Address Book stores virtually
everything you need to know about all of your contacts, and makes that info
available to every app on the system. Both apps use standard fi le formats:
ICS fi les for iCal and vCards for Address Book, which makes it a snap to
move your info to any other app. Naturally, all the info stored in both appli-
cations is easy to synchronize with my phone and PDA using Apple’s inte-
grated phone- and PDA-syncing utility iSync. Unfortunately, I had to buy a
third-party application for my Blackberry, (available at http://www.pocketmac.net).
Using iCal, I created separate calendars for different types of tasks—one
calendar for personal appointments, one for work-related appointments,
and one for my curling club’s schedule. Each calendar is color-coded and
you can upload any or all of your calendars to a website or .Mac account.
9ou can even subscribe to third-party calendars hosted on the Internet that
include tons of useful information, ranging from your favorite baseball team’s
schedule to TV listings.
ICAL AND THE ADDRESS BOOK
ENTOURAGE VS. MAIL
Setting up multiple calendars in iCal gives you lots of flexibil-
ity, and the ability to post your calendars online kicks ass.