I did try Claris but was already pretty invested in Eudora (both Win and Mac) so it didn’t last long. With Eudora it was really easy to move mailboxes and mail back and forth between Windows and Mac machines. I reluctantly switched some of my accounts to Apple Mail in 2012, still using Eudora on an older machine for the others. I moved the rest over in 2016. I still have Eudora on an older machine for archives.
I am still on a Sierra machine though (although I have a Big Sur Mini) - not sure how much I’ll like the newer versions of Mail. That may be a winter project, to move client emails over to the Big Sur machine.
Quicken was one of the best investments I made in my 20s. I had started budgeting on Excel but really enjoyed Quicken when I first started using it. I gave it up for SEE early last year (and I don’t like SEE nearly as much, it’s a bit of a step backwards for me). I am pretty sure I still have a box with the old Quicken disks and all my yearly backups - I seem to remember the program did better that way for a long time.
My favorite app is Nisus Writer Pro followed by Tap Forms 5 and DEVONthink 3.
Nisus is fantastic and never fails me. There is so much you can do with it including the ability to create PDF’s with hyperlinked table of contents. I have used it for years and it has been a life saver (not the fruity kind lol).
Tap Forms is an easy to use yet very versatile database that allows you to design all kinds of databases. I use it for creating databases of medical information like blood pressure, daily diabetic blood tests, books collections, library of video/audio teaching programs, etc. Easy to use, has iOS version and synchs with ease across all my devices.
DEVONthink3 has been a constant with me for years. The developer is a fascinating gentleman with whom I communicated a few years ago when I was able to obtain the app because I worked for a very not for profit - a church lol. They changed their policy for good reasons and I connected up with him. Fantastic person and someone I admire. The program is wonderful and it allows me to keep all sorts of data and information, including documents such as receipts, articles, and all sorts of materials. I frequently go back to databases created years ago and immediately find the item I’m looking for and can download it or just consult the data.
Eudora was great, even when it was a paid app that Qualcomm abandoned. But if you really want old, how about clients for the Gopher protocol, which was a kind of forerunner of the Web? The first floppy I received in the mail for my first internet provider (NSTN - the Nova Scotia Technical Network, for whom I was client #27, I think, and was later bought out by iStar and then BellAliant) had a client on it (along with Eudora and Newswatcher, but no Netscape/Mozilla as the web wasn’t worth looking at!) had a Gopher Mac client on it. Was it called Gopher? I’m no longer sure. Things were fluid for a while, and that’s when radical ideas like OpenDoc and Cyberdog got a look in. Pity the Mac couldn’t handle it well then. I could make my IIsi and PB520c run Cyberdog for a while by playing with the memory settings, but it always crashed in the end. Regretfully, Netscape Navigator turned out to be a stable and reliable alternative. And here I am, still using Firefox!
My gosh, Drmoss_ca, you must have a pretty good memory, because I have forgotten most of the apps that I used way back then, except for a few. I did use Netscape back then. I seem to recall that there was an original Netscape before they souped it up with more features, and it became Netscape Navigator. Back then, I also used the Mac version of Internet Explorer.
Yes, there was a predecessor, Mosaic, before Netscape and then Navigator. And if anyone cares, the name ‘Mozilla’ was a contraction of ‘Mosaic Killer’! Not quite so harmless as they might like us to think now, is it?
Jose, maybe it was TurboGopher. I just recall there were less than 50 places it could reach then, and this was early 1990’s.
Ah, yes! You are correct! Mosaic was the other one I used back then. In fact, back then I operated a Macintosh-based BBS which ran Hermes II BBS software. I collected and offered all kinds of Mac Classic freeware and shareware on my BBS. Later, I added OSX software as well.
Eventually, I also started a Macintosh-centric Hotline server. No, we weren’t all pirates and porno pushers as some people wanted to believe.
As far as I know, I was the very last Hermes II SysOp. I continued to run my BBS under OS X Mountain Lion using the VirtualBox emulator, within which I ran Sheepshaver, so that I could install Mac OS 9.0.2, and thus run my Hermes II software.
I still consider 1Password 2 to be one of the best software purchases I ever made. I mainly bought it because keeping track of passwords in a text file kept on a encrypted disk image was a pain. I’d often forget to update passwords or to add info for new accounts.
1Password solved a bunch of problems for me. It automated the process of keeping track of account info. It worked across browsers, so I could set up an account in Safari and the info would be available if I needed to use Firefox instead. Plus it could autofill credit card info, so I didn’t have to keep getting my card out to fill out a form when making online purchases.
I’ve used 1Password virtually every day since then. There are a lot more options available now, but nothing else so far seems to offer anything better to make it worth switching.
I still use Sheepshaver, although for a very specific purpose. When electronic billing for fee-for-service docs came to Nova Scotia, there was one Mac provider, and the rest were DOS-based. That wasn’t a hard choice! But when the PowerPC Macs came to an end, it became harder to stick with it. I bought a G5 PowerMac (still have it) and used it until I had to retire. I helped the author of the app get a few offices to keep going with Sheepshaver on Intel Macs in those days. But when the leukemia came along I had to quit, but I still fire up Sheepshaver now and then to see from old billings when I last saw a patient and whether their chart has been shredded rather than delve into that stacks of garbage in the garage to get at the filing cabinets. Sadly, I am supposed to keep the patient files for anyone I saw under the age of 18 until ten years after they reach 18. Which is to say, 28 years after my last day in the office, assuming I saw a newborn then. Well, that won’t be my problem by then, and I doubt if my wound-up estate will give a hoot. Especially as I understand the clinic that took my patients has sent all their paper files to Iron Mountain for curation (ie patient must pay $300 for a hard copy if required). I’m glad I’m out of that, but as long as I’m here I’ll send a chart on for free to anyone who has a right to it.
Yes, not only did they break it apart, but they also dumbed down some of its features as I recall. I didn’t like it at the time.
Of course, they have done the same thing with their computers. Many of us still recall the old solid beasts we used to own that had a zip drive, CD-ROM drive — later DVD superdrive — extra bays to add more hard drives, extra memory slots, etc.
My favorite app from the past was the original CricketGraph 1.x from Cricket Software. I consider it to be one of a handful of “perfect” software programs in that it performed its important and sometimes sophisticated tasks as simply and intuitively as possible. To this day, I don’t think any other program has approached its ease-of-use for creating charts and graphs.
It eventually was acquired by Computer Associates and became CA-Cricket Graph. Unfortunately, while the “CA” versions did add some useful features, the simplicity and elegance was lost.
Remember HyperCard? It was included in the apps that were shipped, or were downloadable, with new Macs in the very early days. Even a not technically oriented person such as myself could put together a relational database that could even include images. It was just about hasta la vista for clunky, expensive, PITA Rolodexes:
After a few years Apple offered it up for $$$$ sales along with purchases for new Macs. After a few years it dawned on the Powers That Be that there was a big demand for database apps. So along came FileMaker and hasta la vista HyperCard. FileMaker was a million times more flexible, faster, and easier to manage.
I only enter this one because I still miss it after 17 years. It’s the Fluid screen saver by Concept House. I’ve never seen another screen saver that can touch it, but it was gone with the shift to Intel. You can still read about it and see pictures, though. I’ve settled for Lotsawater, but it really isn’t very close. I’m editing the post because I should’ve mentioned that it was free (donation ware, so free of registration entanglements. For me, that’s a basic requirement for any worthwhile screen saver).
Nobody said KeyboardMaestro or QuicKeys? KeyboardMaestro has since far surpassed QuicKeys, but I had lost my ability to master the complex features by that time.
