Michael Tsai brought to my attention that QUALCOMM is rewriting Eudora to update it to the latest Mac OS X technologies, etc. While it is exciting to know that Eudora for Mac OS is still supported by QUALCOMM, and even being modernized, I hope that QUALCOMM is appropriately cautious about making gratuitous UI changes. It may not be pretty, but the interface is highly usable.
An example is the use of menus for accessing mailboxes, instead of everyone else’s sidebar / side panel. I use my Inbox 98% of the time (and I’m sure I’m not too unusual here); accessing other mailboxes is comparatively rare. So dedicating a ton of screen space to a sidebar with a list of mailboxes seems stupid to me. By comparison, Eudora’s Mailbox and Transfer menus, although not pretty, hide all my mailboxes most of the time, while making it very quick to open one when I do need to go there.
My own hopes for the upgrade would be to get the usual Cocoa text display and editing goodness (in-line spell checking, etc.), as well as (greatly) improved display of received HTML emails via WebKit. I also hope they figure out a good way to make Eudora messages searchable via Spotlight. And, although it’s not related to OS X technologies, it would be really nice to see Eudora get improved filtering capabilities (in particular, the ability to test attachments, so I can pitch the Windows virus enclosures), and support for signed and encrypted email.
And if that’s where they stopped, well, I’d be thrilled. I actively hope they will not make big, poofy toolbar buttons, or otherwise gratuitously fuck tart up the display to “compete” with Mail.app, or make formatted (non-plaintext) email the default for sending, or — god forbid — allow “fake email bounces”.
I’ve been using Eudora for more than 10 years now, and while I’ve tried to leave it a few times when it looked like QUALCOMM was abandoning it, nothing else has taken. I have my fingers crossed that the new version of Eudora will keep me happy for many years to come.
Looking forward to this! Nothing like Eudora for industrial-weight email work. Built-in spam filter, possible minimalist interface (I have no buttons, only menus), x-settings to configure everything under the sun, ultrafast search.
I’ve actually stopped filing email except by time received as the search function is quick enough that I can bring up anything I need fast enough just by searching on the right six mont period.
I totally agree that no slowdown or user interface candy required. Just bare cocoa functionality and look.
That’s very interesting news indeed. Since Eudora was my first and pretty much only email GUI client until about 5 months ago, I’ve been missing some of the UI and feature-set.
Lord knows the new interface on Mail with its rather ugly chicklet-style buttons is not getting me all that enthused. I would’ve thought for sure QUALCOMM would kill Eudora before investing in a complete Mac client rewrite. Glad to know I’m wrong!