Goodbye Faithful Servant

You might think it odd that I feel nostalgic about an email program. If you do, you’ve probably never used Claris Emailer. Folks that don’t know me will be surprised to find out I’m still using a email program first copyrighted in 1995. Folks that do know me (especially those that worked with me) won’t be the least bit surprised. If something works, I stick with it. And boy, does Claris Emailer work.

I’m not about to go counting files but I have dozens of folders with thousands of messages still stored on them. In the “Sent” folder, there are 10,109 messages. I’ve been trying hard to think of what has ever gone wrong with Claris Emailer and I can’t think of anything. As far as I know, it’s never crashed. When you consider the fact that it isn’t even .html compliant, Apple stopped supporting it years ago and the last system it ran on was OS 9 for Apple...it’s pretty remarkable.

But all good things must come to an end. Santa brought me a brand new Apple laptop. The latest version of the Apple Operating System no longer emulates OS 9, which means Claris Emailer will no longer work. (I’ll probably get a letter telling me how to work around all this. I’m not the only person that thinks Claris Emailer is the greatest email program ever made.) But I’m not handling nearly as much email now that I’m retired. I’ll probably just stick with the email program that comes with the Mac. Besides, I’m using Gmail too.

I could go on but I have a new laptop waiting on me.

Don Brown
December 31, 2008