Excellent Software on Mac OS X
I know I've said it before, but here's another reason to switch to Mac OS X - the Mail client that comes with Mac OS X is the next generation of the mail client that was in OPENSTEP/NeXTSTEP. The advantage is that in these earlier versions, there was the capability for developers to add plug-ins into the Mail application simply by placing their plug-in bundle into the proper directory and restarting the application.
The developer of httpmail plugin has used this capability to add to OS X's Mail the capability to download mail sitting at Hotmail. This means that email sent to a properly configured Hotmail account appears as though it was sent to your normal email account - be it IMAP, POP, whatever. Since I have a Hotmail account for the MSN Messenger (really Fire which does a lot more than just Hotmail) I end up getting a bit of spam to the Hotmail account. Normally, I'd have to pull up the web page, login, and then delete the emails. Now with this plug-in, I can let OS X's Mail application get the spam and let it's spam filtering take care of it.
While this isn't like getting a new machine for free, it's a very nice little functional addition to an already excellent application. I don't have to hassle with the problems of getting to Hotmail, and yet I don't have to worry about having hundreds of junk emails there that need to be cleaned out every month or so.
It's really an incredible platform - OS X... I haven't found something that I wished it could do that it can't. And then there are these wonderful little surprises like
httpmail plugin that makes something good really extraordinary.
Let's not forget that in the past few days Apple has released the second version of X11 for OS X in an elegant little package. I'm really not able to think of something that I might want to do that I can't do with this machine. Wow... that's nice.