WebApp Consulting

Mutt is a powerful text-based email client. It is used mainly by system administrators and/or those who work remotely in terminal sessions. I wanted to try mutt as an email client for my daily work. And after a week of use I don’t want to return back to Apple Mail.

I have two email accounts and a dozen of aliases. In my configuration together with mutt I use the following applications:

• fetchmail – to retrieve messages from different email accounts
• dropmail – to filter and to save received messages locally in maildir format
• msmtp – to send messages using smtp servers
• mairix – to index and search emails
• emacs – to edit new messages and replies
• aspell – to spell check messages
• lynx – to view html attachments

The result is a small, powerful, and flexible email client. I can name a few inconveniences though:

• It takes time for mutt to parse big maildir boxes (during startup and when changing boxes only).
• There is no simple way to view another email (in a separate window) while you reply to a message. As a workaround you can keep another instance of mutt running just to view emails.

In overall mutt fits very well in the way I manage my daily emails.

I was looking for a system that had Unix power under the hood and a polished Desktop interface, plus I wanted a laptop to add some mobility to my work. A MacBook was a viable option. So I went for it.

I’m a power Windows user and I spent about 3 years working in Linux. However I was impressed by MacOS speed and efficiency, by Expose and Spotlight features, and by preinstalled software such as iLife. Still I couldn’t find a lot of tools I’ve got used to. Having Unix under the hood was a big saver. I added Terminal.app to the Dock, installed MacPorts and XCode tools, and then a lot of packages and command line tools from MySQL server to Midnight Commander. Another plus, MacOS comes with Java preinstalled and optimized. So I could install NetBeans right away.

Then I had to find my way with a different keyboard shortcuts and a slightly different keyboard layout. I remapped CapsLock key to work as Ctrl and turned off option in the preferences for function keys to control hardware settings. After one week the MacBook keyboard is natural for me.

One component that I still cannot understand is the Dock. When you open 30 applications at the same time and want to launch an application quickly from a list of 100 that you use every day — it becomes hard to manage. I searched through Mac forums and found that there exist tools that can help me with Dock. LaunchBar, Butler, and QuickSilver were their names. And I hope that Stacks feature in Leopard will be helpful as well.

After I installed all the tools I needed for my work and learned MacOS a little I started to really enjoy my MacBook. However I lost several pieces of my hardware. My old laser printer had only LPT port which is not supported in modern computers. And my satellite receiver PCI card also wasn’t supported. But that’s all right because I’m going to upgrade them anyway.

The next thing I’m going to try is to plug an external display for more convenient daily work at the desktop. Also I want to try different office suites (from Microsoft, Apple, and Sun) and Adobe applications for work with graphics.

In overall I’m happy that I made the switch. In Windows I always was struggling with the lack of powerful command line support found in Linux. I used cygwin, but it wasn’t well integrated and had its glitches. In Linux I was spending a lot of time configuring the interface, installing different packages, drivers and servers. In my opinion Mac offers the best from the two worlds.