Updated on December 10, 2021
In week five of the Mac Mini ownership, I thought I’d try moving over to the Mac’s default browser and email programs, Safari and Mail respectively.
I’d been using Chrome and Thunderbird, but thought giving the Apple-written programs a go might be worth trying. Additionally, Chrome isn’t 64-bit for some reason, while Thunderbird’s development has been discontinued, save security updates. (While Thunderbird’s perfectly usable, I’d have to wonder about its long-term future, or what happens when a newer version of OS X comes along…). So far, Safari is running smoothly, and seems fairly fast. I do have some nitpicks, listed below.
Importing bookmarks from Chrome to Safari went smoothly, achieved by exporting bookmarks from Chrome, then importing them into Safari. One downside is that Safari imported (or Chrome exported) the HTML unicode for apostrophes in bookmark names, requiring me to manually edit them.
The only other major downside is Safari’s lack of support for RSS (stripped by Apple from Safari and Mail with Mountain Lion/upgrade to Safari 6), with RSS links clicked resulting in a message asking users to use a separate RSS reader. Not sure why Apple would remove something that’s still widely used (and isn’t in danger of being obsolete anytime soon) from their browser, but I do have other RSS means available, namely Google Reader. A Safari extension called “RSS Menu” (by Calum Benson), available from Safari’s extensions archive, will place an RSS button on the toolbar. Clicking on that while on a page will send one to the RSS reader of choice (or Google Reader, in my case). Finally, there’s a lack of pinned tabs for Safari, which might be useful for my Facebook access; however, since Safari’s capable of reopening the same tabs upon relaunch, this might not be much of an issue.
Mail, meanwhile, I have fewer nitpicks about, as it imported/set up my usual email accounts without problem. I customized the toolbar slightly and without issue, and also set up email address signatures, etc., without problems. The only nitpick is I don’t see a way to hide the preview pane, other than double-clicking the divider between the preview pane and email list pane to auto-hide it.
Meanwhile, I’m considering a stand-alone RSS reader program. Will let you know how that goes…
