I’ve been super happy with MaiMaven for my mail app since I discovered it in summer 2025. It’s powerful, lets me configure it to my way of working. Zero friction. And for those who need it, it now has POP.
I just had a situation with MailMaven. I contacted support, and Scott Morrison gave me full attention, even sending a test build that would help to identify the problem – which turned out to be a corrupted database (probably related to another problem I reported here that required an erase and full migration from backup). He took me through the steps of fixing that. MailMaven is again, after only 24 hours, purring along.
This is what Macs are all about. A fantastic app supported by an attentive, helpful developer. Worth every penny I pay for this app.
Well, I am sure there are also very helpful developers helping with their Windows apps in case a problem occurs, sending a test version or so. And, I am also sure, there are developers so Mac apps who would never respond or add your ideas to their app (I had this case a few times), and the apps are not maintained anymore.
I think … It is not what Macs are all about, it is what a good developer is all about.
Of course, I use Mac only, I do not own a Windows device. So I also understand why you mean …
I think the point is that this is the kind of behavior that has kept the Mac community going for 40 years despite having been “the underdog” against IBM and Microsoft for so long. Those of us who used Macs in the '80s and '90s remember that without this kind of camaraderie and responsiveness between developers and users, the platform might have withered away into irrelevance. The PC/Windows world was backed by big corporate money from the start; the Mac world relied on its users supporting each other.
This durable, grass-roots Mac community, of which TidBITS is one of the longest-running surviving examples, carries a spirit of mutual support that the Windows community as a whole has never had. There have been segments that echoed this, but it’s never been a primary foundation for Windows’ success. The PC was “business safe” because of IBM. There used to be a saying, whose exact wording eludes me now but the gist of which was, “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM.” That sentiment later was transferred to Microsoft. That’s what has kept Windows dominant, not its developers or its user community.
Apple is a corporate powerhouse now because of the community that believed in it during the bad years. And that community was sustained by responsive small developers. That’s the spirit of Macintosh.
I do miss the vitality of the 80s-90s shareware environment (not to mention the roles that Info-Mac and TidBITS played in it). It wasn’t perfect, but it really was a bit of a golden age. I yearn to find something that has a bit of that feeling again.
I miss that environment too, but those were in the days when computing was a small business and if you had a problem with an app, you might wind up talking with the person who wrote it. I was writing about lasers and fiber optics for industry trade magazines, those were small companies back then. Now we have companies who think they are so powerful that they can ignore their customers to do what they want to do to make the most money. That is neither fun or a good thing.
A founding member and name-giver of the Kinki Net Mac Users’ Group in Japan—Kinki being the name of the wider Osaka - Nagoya region—for me our First Class net was a godsend, especially following the devastating Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake!