It turns out that Eudora and Netscape were the only major clients that used mbox format, BUT they had their own variations:Įudora used an mboxo variation where a sender’s email address is replaced by the constant string Most mbox clients store incoming messages as received. There is an RFC-essentially a proposal for a standard-which stated: The mbox database format is not documented in an authoritative specification, but instead exists as a well-known output format that is anecdotally documented, or which is only authoritatively documented for a specific platform or tool. Simply put, an mbox file is the raw source of every message in a mailbox, strung together into one large file. Well, unless you’re the intern! Mail’s first importerĮven though there was a loosely defined file format for mailboxes called mbox, it wasn’t a standard.

Since everyone was busy with even more important stuff, this became a great summer intern project. We felt we couldn’t ship without an importer, yet there was a long list of things we felt we couldn’t ship without. At that time, IMAP wasn’t yet a big thing, so you couldn’t just configure your account and have your messages magically appear. Without an importer, you were left running your existing client, probably in Classic, and having your email split between clients. Everyone was keen on using Mail because it sported the fancy new Aqua look and feel (pinstripes! drawers!). One of the big holes we wanted to fill in Mail was the ability to import messages from other email clients. macOS (previously Mac OS X)-WikipediaĪn accurate and fair description! I previously wrote about the first day we first printed something in Mac OS X a month before the ship date! Everyone knew the operating system had large areas of missing functionality, and Mail was no exception. Simply releasing Mac OS X was received by the Macintosh community as a great accomplishment, for attempts to overhaul the Mac OS had been underway since 1996, and delayed by countless setbacks. On March 24, 2001, Apple released Mac OS X 10.0 (internally codenamed Cheetah). The initial version was slow, incomplete, and had very few applications available at launch, mostly from independent developers. While many critics suggested that the operating system was not ready for mainstream adoption, they recognized the importance of its initial launch as a base on which to improve. We shipped the first “real” version of Mac OS X (10.0) nine months later.

Note: I joined the Mail team in June 2000, three months before the Public Beta.

Download eudora mac