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This week has seen upgrade releases of two of my heaviest-use applications - Eudora and Safari. Eudora 6.0 6.0b24 Beta I've been using Eudora 6.0 since the first public beta (6.0b18) came out half a dozen weeks ago or so, and I've found it great. At least as stable as the current Eudora 5.2 final, significantly faster, and with the very cool new Junk smap-filtering feature. To recap, new features in Eudora 6 include: Spam-Fighting Tools. A whole suite of ready-to-use tools to stamp out unwanted junk mail. Right out of the box, most junk mail will be quarantined by SpamWatch, whose large dictionary of words can be simply added to by the user. Furthermore, Eudora's junk mail system is open to third party developers, so that other anti-spam tools, including those running at your site or ISP, can be simply and smoothly integrated. And, in true Eudora tradition, you can tweak and tune the system to your liking. Content Concentrator. Junk mail is only half the story when it comes to wasting your time. You know how hard it can be to unravel a long email thread, or to find what the sender actually SAID in the midst of all the quoting, signatures, and other junk that's inside the mail you do read. The Content Concentrator will help, by giving you a streamlined view of your email. Easily get to the meat of your email, and see whole threads at a glance. Mailboxes Drawer. (Mac OS X 10.2.x only) Jaguar users now have a convenient way to access their list of mailboxes from any mailbox window. Of course the rich feature set from previous versions of Eudra is carried over. I downloaded Eudora 6.0n24 on Tuesday, and so far it's performing admirably. For some reason I also find that Eudora seems to benefit mightily from the Quartz Extreme support on my iBook, on which the annoying sluggishness in window opening and general response that plagues this application on my 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook is pretty much eliminated -- certainly to a degree not explained by 200 MHz more processor speed alone. The most significant visible change in beta 24 is that the Junk feature now has its own "Junk" Settings pane. However, there are a whole raft of enhancements and bugfixes in this beta release. 
If you're still using an older version of Eudora, the spam-filtering feature is reason enough to upgrade to version 6.0. Don't be scared of its beta status. As I noted above, it's proved every bit as stable for me as the latest final release was, and maybe even a bit better.
New in version 6.0b24:
System requirements:
Eudora may be operated in a $49.95 paid version, an ad-supported version, or a reduced-feature light version -- all available in the same download.
For more information, visit:
Safari 1.0 Final There is so little difference in this first final release from the beta 2 release, that one is obliged to imagine that Apple more or less just arbitrarily redesignated the browser as a final with a few tweaks and bugfixes thrown in. This was no doubt partly precipitated by the Microsoft announcement that development of Internet Explorer for the Mac is being terminated, which meant that Apple had to hustle to make Safari the default Mac OS browser (beginning with the G5 towers which will begin shipping in August) perhaps sooner than they would have preferred. I downoladed Safari 1.0 on Monday. I haven't noticed any major differences from beta 2, other than that I've had both an unexpected quit and one return of the old spontaneous page reload glitch which annoyed me in the early betas, and which had disappeared in beta 2. Consequently, if you're happy with the performance you're getting from the beta 2 build, there's no rush to upgrade. On the other hand, if you're still using Internet Explorer, isn't it time you checked out Safari? (One caveat: some online banking and financial services sites are still problematical for Safari, so check out how yours works before trashing IE. Personally, I use three Web banking sites. One works fine with Safari, but for the other two I still need to resort to iCab. I don't use IE)
System requirements:
Safari 1.0 is localized for English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, French Canadian, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Korean and Simplified Chinese.
Safari 1.0 is available as a free download at:
Panther, the new Finder, and "le Sigh" From Dan.Johnson
Hi Charles,
Hi Dan;
The fax thing will be cool. I’m still using OS 9 for the occasional faxing I do because nothing I've tried in OS X works as slickly as the old GlobalFax software left over from the ‘90s. Here’s hoping the built-in solution will be usable.
Speed is the big Panther question. I hear rumors that Panther is “faster,” but will you need a high-end machine to realize it?
Charles Panther, the new Finder, and "le Sigh" From Peter da Silva OK, there's a new Finder. OK, it's nifty. Fine. Its also "metal" themed, and it chews up a lot of screen space with all those big window borders and sections. So... Is it mandatory or optional. Can you still use the old interface?
Beats me, Peter. I hope that it will be optional, but the history so far doesn’t make me very optimistic.
I just hope it doesn’t add more processor overhead that will slow things down.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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