Ugh, I already posted to this story, but now your post is the first thing people see when hitting the link. And it's crap!
Mulberry was DEFINITELY NOT THE FASTEST IMAP CLIENT except in VERY UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES (such as being on the same gigabit Ethernet LAN as your mail server).
And while "best" is obviously not something you can hash out a consensus about on Slashdot (or most other places for that matter), you should try and defend that statement if you want it taken seriously.
Q: For example: which apps lock the whole app up modally most often?
Q: Which apps have a human interaction design that features the fewest app-modal dialogs and nested-Nested-NESTED modal preference panes!!!! (That's triply nested, in case it is not clear to those who've never used and app with such an insane UI design.)
A: Um... Thunderbird, Outlook, or Mail. Definitely not Mulberry, since that's the only app I have ever even seen to commit those UI sins.
Q: Which app features the fastest interface to DISCONNECTED MODE features like reading your mail offline, etc.?
A: Dude, totally not Mulberry.
So man give it up. Mulberry is a LOT closer to the "slowest and worst" than the "fastest and best". (Although, there have actually been worse email clients than Mulberry in both respects. But thankfully, they died much quicker and more appropriate deaths.)
You say you "used to use Mulberry". I assume you don't mean that you just now gave it up because it's been discontinued: so, if it is the "FASTEST AND BEST IMAP CLIENT EVER" (capslock emphasis mine) then WHY DID YOU STOP USING IT?
I know a bit about this. In former times I went on an annual IMAP pilgrimage, looking for a client that didn't suck the proverbial donkey balls, for Mac (and Linux, though that was hopeless in those days).
Mulberry was hella not it, although I tried out every new version as part of my quest.
Somebody said it was fast--that's true, if you happened to be connected directly to your mail server on a local gigabit ethernet link. Otherwise, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Mail.app, and Eudora were all faster (in their respective times). Plus a bunch of others.
In fact, the only true claim to fame Mulberry ever had was the undisputed title for the Worst Software Interface Of Any Mail Client (Or Perhaps Any Type Of Application) Ever. Even after the "interface overhaul" they did with those unpaid college students! (Not that I blame them: your average college kid was SURE to know more about human-computer interaction than Cyrusoft apparently ever did...)
Mulberry did have FEATURES though, which is why your average thinking user hated it even more. You always wanted to believe, because you wanted the 89,734 features it had--more than any other client ever, 'm pretty sure--but after a week (or maybe a day) of seeing the whole app modally lock up for ten minutes while checking mail, the disjointed and otherworldly user interface, the crashes, and the general 80's-ness of it, you went back to Thunderbird, Mail, or Outlook or whatever.
Goodbye Mulberry, and my condolences to the 9 poor slobs who will actually miss you. Software that sucks that bad shouldn't really take so long to die.
How about the fact that there has been no mention of the massive US rights violation that happened in utah this past weekend? it's all over other news about how lots of kids (15-21) had their heads bashed in...how about the video of a kid having a machine gun mashed in his head because he asked a question?
Uh... how about a link so that readers could have some clue what the fuck you're talking about?
For fuck's sake, mod the above post the fuck up! I read every >0 post on this booch, and this one is the most insightful (writing notwithstanding).
Not only does this cat realize that AJAX isn't any kinda new (as several others point out), he makes the amazingly heretical but totally fucking undeniable point that THE WEB SUCKS THE PROVERBIAL DONKEY BALLS.
Whatever the (highly debatable, apparently) case may have been in 1998, modern times have caught up with the worldview of Steve Jobs: the PDA concept is yesterday's news.
It's natural successor is the smart-phone concept--or, in other words, the "everything-a-PDA-was-ever-supposed-to-be-PLUS-A-C ELL-PHONE-AND-WIRELESS-INTERNET-(STUPID)" concept. (And throw in a digital camera and pocket mirror etc etc NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY!?!)
In those old Newton days, the PDA concept worked (witness the Palms, etc.) but whatever, Apple was hemhorraging money, Jobs hated Sculley and wanted to kill his baby, he just didn't get it, or blah blah blah. Whatever, man. Water under bridge.
He may not have been right then, but he is now. These devices MUST have cell phone built in (which, conveniently, also comes with wireless 'net access).
Apple obviously realizes this, because Jobs admitted to analysts that Apple recently took a new PDA all the way to the functional prototype stage, but decided not to market it. Of course!! Who would want a modern version of the Newton without wireless Internet and phone? Not very many people.
(The obvious counterpoint is that a *LOT* of people would want a smart phone with the elegance of the Newton but smaller color hardware....)
Those Newton freaks are right, you know; there *still* is nothing even half as cool as the Newton OS in the handheld space...)
Everybody (who knows anything about the Newton) knows that battery life is one of the key "cool!" things about it. Not only does a StrongARM-powered Newton kick the ass of anything competing with it in its day, but it also kicks the power-consuming ass of virtually anything on the market now (including all Palm OS machines, laptops, etc) on 4 AA batteries.
Many many hours, which translates into many days of normal (fairly heavy) use.
>I'm typing on a PC right now and will do so until
>something else that I can fix pop's up. BTW I can
>crack a Mac case anytime i want.
Not only are hyperdrives still around, they've gotten a lot cheaper! My old one cost me $2200 for 10 megs, but you can get 10000% the storage for 10% of the price now...
It should have either happened long before now or not at all. The words "kilobyte", "megabyte", "gigabyte" and so on ALREADY HAVE EXPLICITLY DEFINED MEANINGS.
The powers-of-two magic of the binary world is reason enough to keep these terms with their established (base 2) definitions.
This is one of those things that makes absolute and perfect sense and is totally wrong.
I know about eight people who still use Newton 2000 series machines on a day to day basis. I recently dug out my old mothballed MP2000, after I broke the screen on yet another Palm OS unit.
It's been a funny and interesting experience, because the damn thing is so eminently more *usable* than ANYTHING on the market right now including any Palm unit (they're different kinds of machines, though) and including the iPaq. I had forgotten.
Things you routinely can do on a Newton--jot down a quick "ink" note and fax it from the airport between planes, take *real* notes in a meeting on its half-VGA sized screen, read the latest issue of Slate (converted to NewtonBook) while eating lunch, look up a phone number, download a usenet newsgroup to read on the plane, track a package with your cellular modem, actually convert print handwriting to text and *work*--these things as a combination still elude the most modern PDA-type devices. Palms are great for looking up numbers, and WinCE is not really great at anything but it *can* do a lot of this stuff if you really need to. Newton can do it all easily, quickly, and without requiring the user's brain to even really engage in the task of making it work.
Palm units just do not have the horsepower to do it all. 16Mhz and a tiny display. The current crop of WinCE machines can do some of this stuff, now that they also use StrongARM processors, but they remain significantly more cumbersome to use.
The Newton is sort of a sad story--only the MessagePad 2100, the very last of the species, was the first Newton device that lived up to the Newton's promise, after the line's laughable start.
But for a surprising number of people (those who don't really need good desktop synchronization), these last Newtons still are more *useful* than anything currently available.
If there were a reasonable desktop companion app for the Newton, I would probably keep on using it for a long time, maybe even until 2010--when the Newton's "2.01K" date problem kicks in and they really become obsolete. (OK, probably not that long.)
The solution for this problem that you have quick reflexes and good driving skills.
Driving very fast does the trick. But you have to do it for a long time. A trip from San Francisco to LA, or equivalentt, will do the job.
You need a decent car, but not a great one, like say a Honda Civic Si.
You need to drive faster than 120 MPH for extended stretches. Therefore, you should probably do this at night on an uncrowded freeway.
When you are done, whatever happens to your brain will have probably cured your block. Perhaps other activities which require INTENSE CONCENTRATION ON IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL REALITES (not abstract concepts and whatnot) will have similar effect, I don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Ugh, I already posted to this story, but now your post is the first thing people see when hitting the link. And it's crap!
Mulberry was DEFINITELY NOT THE FASTEST IMAP CLIENT except in VERY UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES (such as being on the same gigabit Ethernet LAN as your mail server).
And while "best" is obviously not something you can hash out a consensus about on Slashdot (or most other places for that matter), you should try and defend that statement if you want it taken seriously.
Q: For example: which apps lock the whole app up modally most often?
A: 1. Mulberry, 2. Thunderbird, 3. Outloook, 4. Mail.app
Q: Which apps have a human interaction design that features the fewest app-modal dialogs and nested-Nested-NESTED modal preference panes!!!! (That's triply nested, in case it is not clear to those who've never used and app with such an insane UI design.)
A: Um... Thunderbird, Outlook, or Mail. Definitely not Mulberry, since that's the only app I have ever even seen to commit those UI sins.
Q: Which app features the fastest interface to DISCONNECTED MODE features like reading your mail offline, etc.?
A: Dude, totally not Mulberry.
So man give it up. Mulberry is a LOT closer to the "slowest and worst" than the "fastest and best". (Although, there have actually been worse email clients than Mulberry in both respects. But thankfully, they died much quicker and more appropriate deaths.)
You say you "used to use Mulberry". I assume you don't mean that you just now gave it up because it's been discontinued: so, if it is the "FASTEST AND BEST IMAP CLIENT EVER" (capslock emphasis mine) then WHY DID YOU STOP USING IT?
Be honest. It sucked.
I know a bit about this. In former times I went on an annual IMAP pilgrimage, looking for a client that didn't suck the proverbial donkey balls, for Mac (and Linux, though that was hopeless in those days).
Mulberry was hella not it, although I tried out every new version as part of my quest.
Somebody said it was fast--that's true, if you happened to be connected directly to your mail server on a local gigabit ethernet link. Otherwise, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Mail.app, and Eudora were all faster (in their respective times). Plus a bunch of others.
In fact, the only true claim to fame Mulberry ever had was the undisputed title for the Worst Software Interface Of Any Mail Client (Or Perhaps Any Type Of Application) Ever. Even after the "interface overhaul" they did with those unpaid college students! (Not that I blame them: your average college kid was SURE to know more about human-computer interaction than Cyrusoft apparently ever did...)
Mulberry did have FEATURES though, which is why your average thinking user hated it even more. You always wanted to believe, because you wanted the 89,734 features it had--more than any other client ever, 'm pretty sure--but after a week (or maybe a day) of seeing the whole app modally lock up for ten minutes while checking mail, the disjointed and otherworldly user interface, the crashes, and the general 80's-ness of it, you went back to Thunderbird, Mail, or Outlook or whatever.
Goodbye Mulberry, and my condolences to the 9 poor slobs who will actually miss you. Software that sucks that bad shouldn't really take so long to die.
Uh... how about a link so that readers could have some clue what the fuck you're talking about?
I didn't find anything.
For fuck's sake, mod the above post the fuck up! I read every >0 post on this booch, and this one is the most insightful (writing notwithstanding).
Not only does this cat realize that AJAX isn't any kinda new (as several others point out), he makes the amazingly heretical but totally fucking undeniable point that THE WEB SUCKS THE PROVERBIAL DONKEY BALLS.
And he's right, man, he's fucking totally right.
Whatever the (highly debatable, apparently) case may have been in 1998, modern times have caught up with the worldview of Steve Jobs: the PDA concept is yesterday's news.
C ELL-PHONE-AND-WIRELESS-INTERNET-(STUPID)" concept. (And throw in a digital camera and pocket mirror etc etc NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY!?!)
It's natural successor is the smart-phone concept--or, in other words, the "everything-a-PDA-was-ever-supposed-to-be-PLUS-A-
In those old Newton days, the PDA concept worked (witness the Palms, etc.) but whatever, Apple was hemhorraging money, Jobs hated Sculley and wanted to kill his baby, he just didn't get it, or blah blah blah. Whatever, man. Water under bridge.
He may not have been right then, but he is now. These devices MUST have cell phone built in (which, conveniently, also comes with wireless 'net access).
Apple obviously realizes this, because Jobs admitted to analysts that Apple recently took a new PDA all the way to the functional prototype stage, but decided not to market it. Of course!! Who would want a modern version of the Newton without wireless Internet and phone? Not very many people.
(The obvious counterpoint is that a *LOT* of people would want a smart phone with the elegance of the Newton but smaller color hardware....)
Those Newton freaks are right, you know; there *still* is nothing even half as cool as the Newton OS in the handheld space...)
Well, sorry man, but your Newton is broken.
Everybody (who knows anything about the Newton) knows that battery life is one of the key "cool!" things about it. Not only does a StrongARM-powered Newton kick the ass of anything competing with it in its day, but it also kicks the power-consuming ass of virtually anything on the market now (including all Palm OS machines, laptops, etc) on 4 AA batteries.
Many many hours, which translates into many days of normal (fairly heavy) use.
Not only are hyperdrives still around, they've gotten a lot cheaper! My old one cost me $2200 for 10 megs, but you can get 10000% the storage for 10% of the price now...
And, uh, it's a lot smaller...
...than rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.
Maybe you people should just talk about Caps Lock some more.
This is one of those sad things.
It should have either happened long before now or not at all. The words "kilobyte", "megabyte", "gigabyte" and so on ALREADY HAVE EXPLICITLY DEFINED MEANINGS.
The powers-of-two magic of the binary world is reason enough to keep these terms with their established (base 2) definitions.
This is one of those things that makes absolute and perfect sense and is totally wrong.
I know about eight people who still use Newton 2000 series machines on a day to day basis. I recently dug out my old mothballed MP2000, after I broke the screen on yet another Palm OS unit.
It's been a funny and interesting experience, because the damn thing is so eminently more *usable* than ANYTHING on the market right now including any Palm unit (they're different kinds of machines, though) and including the iPaq. I had forgotten.
Things you routinely can do on a Newton--jot down a quick "ink" note and fax it from the airport between planes, take *real* notes in a meeting on its half-VGA sized screen, read the latest issue of Slate (converted to NewtonBook) while eating lunch, look up a phone number, download a usenet newsgroup to read on the plane, track a package with your cellular modem, actually convert print handwriting to text and *work*--these things as a combination still elude the most modern PDA-type devices. Palms are great for looking up numbers, and WinCE is not really great at anything but it *can* do a lot of this stuff if you really need to. Newton can do it all easily, quickly, and without requiring the user's brain to even really engage in the task of making it work.
Palm units just do not have the horsepower to do it all. 16Mhz and a tiny display. The current crop of WinCE machines can do some of this stuff, now that they also use StrongARM processors, but they remain significantly more cumbersome to use.
The Newton is sort of a sad story--only the MessagePad 2100, the very last of the species, was the first Newton device that lived up to the Newton's promise, after the line's laughable start.
But for a surprising number of people (those who don't really need good desktop synchronization), these last Newtons still are more *useful* than anything currently available.
If there were a reasonable desktop companion app for the Newton, I would probably keep on using it for a long time, maybe even until 2010--when the Newton's "2.01K" date problem kicks in and they really become obsolete. (OK, probably not that long.)
I think that is obviously an error by the transcriptionist; even sjobs@apple.com is not that dumb.
The solution for this problem that you have quick reflexes and good driving skills.
Driving very fast does the trick. But you have to do it for a long time. A trip from San Francisco to LA, or equivalentt, will do the job.
You need a decent car, but not a great one, like say a Honda Civic Si.
You need to drive faster than 120 MPH for extended stretches. Therefore, you should probably do this at night on an uncrowded freeway.
When you are done, whatever happens to your brain will have probably cured your block. Perhaps other activities which require INTENSE CONCENTRATION ON IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL REALITES (not abstract concepts and whatnot) will have similar effect, I don't know.
This also works for writer's block and boredom.