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| Author | Another unappreciated Microsoft App (Read 9284 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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68040
512 MB  Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done ! 
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on: December 08, 2021, 22:25
I just decided to utilize Linux's stunnel to setup my e-mail client on classic Mac and I find MS-Outlook to be my app of choice here. For I see it as having a far suprior user interface to Eudora or other often touted e-mail clients for the classic (68k) Mac environment. I know that old school MacBoyz just hate the entire Microsoft product suite with a vengeance. But just like with MS-Office for 68k, I fail to appreciate why that is. Windoze sucks for sure and don't even get me started on Microsft's corporate ethics (or the lack thereof). But as far the user apps of MS are concerned, I find them to be at least equal in usabillity (which is what I care about) to their often cited MacOS endemic rivals. So why do I never read about MS-Outlook for classic Mac as being a(ny) choice for an e-mail client? |
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #1 on: December 09, 2021, 04:07
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I assume you are referring to Outlook Express, I do not think Outlook itself made it to the Mac until Office 2004. MS apps on Mac were always met with skepticism on the Mac. There was Apple's lawsuit. Word 5 was well received, but Word 6 was a disaster. MS Works never really held a candle to ClarisWorks. Email in the mid nineties was pretty new and there were lots of eMail applications to choose from and each had a pretty unique approach to how they handled eMail. Claris eMailer was very popular, with V2 introducing the 3 pane interface which became the norm for a long time. I was personally very fond of how the Newton handled email. An email was simply a document you create and "emailing" was just a transmission method, same as faxing. Being seen as just another document emails were simply files in folders put where ever you want. I used Cyberdog for all my internet work. Its email part did rich text which I still find a nice format to work with. Mac has always had to many fan boys hanging around, but I think most users tended to use the apps they liked. Fitting well on the Mac desktop however did seem to be universally appreciated and certainly during the mid nineties that did not seem to be a high priority at MS. Did Outlook Express ship along with Explorer in Mac OS 8 and beyond? I am a firm believer in using whatever it is you are comfortable using. I do think though if you go asking for suggestions for an eMail client for Mac, Outlook Express will probably not be mentioned because it was just not that popular.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #2 on: December 09, 2021, 13:29
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Oh boy, you would have been soooo stoned to death on 90's Mac newsgroups  But guess what, I see your point. Given you come from a MS background these programs probably feel very natural. And Outlook Express isn't a bad client either. Knezzen and me are still testing our way through e-mail clients for System 7 in order to provide a complete list with pros & cons. We were pretty impressed with Outlook Express, especially given the low popularity. We found some drawbacks which didn't make it our favorite but given that most users of modern gear are familiar with the way Outlook looks & operates, it's a good choice. +1 for actually using System 7 for e-mail. So do I and it is something it is very well capable of (if utilizing a tunnel for SSL)
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #3 on: December 10, 2021, 03:35
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Yup, I am referring to Outlook Express and as far as I can se its the *only* M68k e-Mail client for the Mac offering a tabbed GUI + a tree like arrangement for listing multiple accounts + spell checkers for English+German+... and IMAP+POP support. The competitors offer some of these features, but never all of them in combination, which makes OE superior in my view. And I was never fond of "fan boy" culture, for it only distracts from technology.
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #4 on: December 10, 2021, 19:25
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And just to pour oil into the fire: I have been using MS-Word 6.0.1 on Mac 68k for a *long* time now and find it far superior to any of its vintage competitors. I am certain that Mac FanBoyz back in the day cut themselves short (and their platform with it) by willfully ignoring the very killer apps that had allowed Windoze to succeed in the office world.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #5 on: December 11, 2021, 00:14
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TeachText was always sufficient to handle my text needs. Word 6 was received somewhat poorly in that is preformed worse than the prior release Word 5. If I remember correctly that whole "Office Package" was received poorly. I have a friend that does a good deal of writing and he swore by WordPerfect, saying it was faster than other word processors and handled longer documents much better. Nisus was also very good at long documents, and was much liked by people who needed to produce documents in multiple languages and was especially noted for handling right to left languages of the Middle East. Mariner Write which is produced by a local company is well regarded for handling Chinese and Japanese languages. I think that overall Mac both the classic and OS X systems, has been home to excellent text handling applications. DPT applications, word processors as well as notebooks and outliners have always had a good presence on the Mac platform.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #6 on: December 11, 2021, 20:43
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Your post @wove reminded me of MORE 3.1, an amazing Outliner from 1991 that I had used for many years before I had to switch to PowerPoint for compatibility sake. I had used MORE 3.1 for years on Mac OS to do all kind of things school / college related, from handouts to presentation to organizing thoughts before writing a paper. A true gem.
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #7 on: December 13, 2021, 02:45
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I am still using More to outline the plots of my novels, no idea how that could be done in PowerPoint and still be usable for writing. But as far as the competitors to Word are concerned, I tried out *all* the ones wove is meantening (and more) and some of them got very close to reach my finish line. But in the end they all failed at one point or another. They were good - if not excellent - in some aspect(s) but had next to nothing to offer in another. Be it spell checking for just one language, be it faulty RTF import/export or lacking picture/table handling - only MS Word offers satisfactory results in all of these areas. Yes, it seldomly *excells* at anything, but it covers all parts - something that none of its competitors does. Apple Works being a classical example: Trying to import a lengthy Word or RTF file from Windows into AW is like asking for your app to crash. Word is mouch, more more reliable there - and it does have spell checkers/Thesauri for both English and German.
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