Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory / Ram for your Mac. Top Quality, Competitive Prices, Lifetime Warranty. Expert Support and Video Installation Guidies too! 4.0GB Matched Sets from $87.99, Options up to 32GB. Click here

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight .

Review: Digest Viewer

2001.01.22 - John Allan

There are a few fact of life any low-end Mac user has got to concede. First, you are going to end up at Low End Mac. Second, you are going to join an email list (or maybe several lists) relative to your computers and end up addicted to the good community you find there. Third, downloading and wading through 450 separate messages when you come back from a few days away from your computer is no fun, and trying to remember who said what three weeks ago is impossible.

As much as some find the thrill of the chase in being the first to answer a post on an email list, for most people list digests are easier to manage, especially on busier lists. As a dedicated digest browser, Digest Viewer is a powerful, mature, uniquely feature-laden application that cannot be recommended highly enough.

Digest Viewer handles practically any type of digest and interfaces with most email clients and web browsers. Using a minimal, classic platinum interface, it fits perfectly with the Mac OS and turns a folder full of past digests into a mine of quickly searchable information.

The browsers has one main window for messages and a choice of two or three small windows above it to list the subject, sender's name, list name, and the names of responders to an active thread. At the bottom of the window it has a neat little Trash icon to do just that. There are no distracting graphics; everything is kept simple and low key.

Features allow digest posts to be viewed by date sent or by subject thread. The Viewer strips all headers and hexadecimal code from the messages, the bane of reading digests in email form. However, by preference they can also be seen.

Quoted sections of emails can be rendered in the colour of our choice, making them less visible than responses. I chose a light grey, easily allowing me to pick out new replies even in the middle of a distractedly quoted message.

URLs and emails can be made active, making referenced websites or participants one click away. Options are included to reply to the sender, the list, all members of one particular thread, or to the sender and the list, as is common courtesy. Font and font size are the user's choice and are previewed in the preference panel. It prints and has a filter function.

One can chose to display single digests, only new digests, or even an entire back catalogue as one big digest. All are instantly searchable, a boon when one wants to recall advise given three weeks ago or remember who said exactly what at the start of a flame war. This can be a frightening little tool that gives some idea of what the powers that be must have over all of our digital lives.

Digest Viewer is currently in development and at present at v.3 beta, written by Matthew Hershberger of Lumbering Fool Productions. Matthew has been using Macs for seven years at his home. Firstly a 475, lately a 9600.

Matthew came up with the idea for Digest Viewer soon after starting to learn to programme. Subscribing to a REALbasic list taught him what a pain digest could be - and instead of just sitting back, he set out to fix it for himself. And he did.

At the request of his brother, he developed it to read other digests, and Digest Viewer was born, rewritten from the ground up, which was then "naively" (by his own admission) released to the public. "I assumed that if it worked with two kind of digests, then all digest must use more or less the same format, right?"

The application was made in REALbasic, a much maligned tool the developer considers has made the Mac world a much better place. It is also AppleScriptable.

Within a weeks he had a lot of email, a lot of new digest formats to support, and Digest Viewer took on a life of its own. Version 2 was almost a total rewrite, and since then it has been steadily improving, because, as Matthew says, inspired on by the Mac OS, "if you're going to make something, you might as well try to make it good!"

"I love Mac and I'm just not too fond of Windows. Aesthetically, I think the latter is garbage. And I don't care what anyone says, looks do matter when it comes to an OS. This is something you have to sit at for possibly many hours each day, it shouldn't look depressing. "

"Anyone who says that the appearance of your environment has no effect on your creativity or productivity just doesn't, for lack of a better term, 'get it'."

What makes this all the more remarkable is that Matthew is 16 years old.

Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.

Recent My Turn articles

Using Low End Macs for Internet Radio, 08.18. When the local public radio station moved classical music to HD radio, it was time to find another way to listen. An old iMac with iTunes solved the problem.
'That's Not a Computer', 07.30. Salvaging a broken PowerBook by turning it into a desktop computer.
Upgrading a Digital Audio G4 to work better in Leopard, 06.02. In its original configuration, the dual 533 MHz Power Mac G4 was slow with Mac OS X 10.5, but add the right upgrades, and it runs Leopard quite nicely.
My 4 favorite PowerBooks, 05.28. The PowerBook 150 has a big screen for a vintage PowerBook, the 165c has color, the 100 is diminutive, and Lombard has USB and a great keyboard.
More in the My Turn index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: 15" MacBook Pro Core Duo, Jan. 2006 - The first Intel-based MacBook launched at 1.83-2.0 GHz, had several teething problems.
Group of the Day: System 6 is the email list for those who choose System 6.
November 22 in LEM history: 99: Gradebooks - 00: Leveraging Apple design - Quadra 630 to Power Mac 5200 - 02: Laptop or desktop? - 04: SuperDuper: Quick, easy, efficient backup - Cross-platform programming for the rest of us - 05: Mac video surveillance on the cheap - Which OS is best for my vintage Mac? - No 'best browser' for the Mac - Sorry state of browsers for classic Macs - 06: Core 2 means cooler running 'Books - 2.0 GHz G4 upgrade
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Best eMac Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz Combo, $100; SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 GHz Combo, $119; SD, $319; 1.42 GHz Combo, $289; SD, $498.
Best Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac Box Set Deals, 11.18. "Snow Leopard", single user, $25; 5 users, $45; Mac Box Set, single user, $139; 5 users, $180; Server, $414. Shipping included.
Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 11.17. Used 1.83 GHz, $750; 2.16, $800; 2.33, $900; refurb 2.4, $1,299; 2.53, $1,449; 2.66, $1,699; 2.8, $1,899; new 2.53, $1,579; 2.66, $1,799; more.
Best Power Mac G4 and AGP Video Card Deals, 11.17. Used 400 MHz, $50; 933 MHz, $80; 500 dual, $60; 867 dual, $90; 1 GHz dual, $150; 1.25 GHz dual, $225; 1.42 GHz, $499.
Best Mac OS X 10.5 Deals, 11.17. "Leopard" upgrade, $80; single user license, $135; 5 users, $173; Mac Box Set, 5 users, $230; Server, 10 users, $340; unlimited, $850. Shipping included.
Best Mac mini Deals, 11.16. Used 1.42 GHz G4 mini, $379; 1.66 GHz Core Solo, $419; 2.0 Core 2, $450; new 2.26 GHz nVidia, $580; 2.53 GHz, $769; Server, $990.
Best iBook G4 Deals, 11.16. Used 12" 1.07 GHz Combo, $210; 1.33 GHz, $298; 14" 1.33 GHz, $398; 1.42 GHz, $479; SuperDrive, $498.
Best iPod shuffle Deals, 11.16. Used 1 GB, $35; 4 GB, $65; refurb 1 GB, $39; 2 GB, $59; new 2 GB, $55, 4 GB, $75. New and refurb prices include shipping.
More deals in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.