From the earliest origins of AOL -- which briefly existed as "AppleLink Personal Edition" way back in the late 1980s -- the Mac has been a full-parity player on the service. Nowadays, you may notice that the AOL Mac client is getting a little bit long in the tooth (last updated November 2005) compared with the Windows version.Enter the AOL Greenhouse beta farm with Cheshire, a stripped-down and modernized 'lean client' version of the AOL software that integrates with iLife, Safari, iChat and Mail.app. It appears to be the next take on the existing AOL Service Assistant setup tool, and includes standalone Parental Controls, AOL Pictures and AOL Radio tools. Cheshire, while still in early beta, is a Universal Binary, while the OS X full client is still PPC only.
The download appears to work best with Safari at the moment, and be careful when installing; Cheshire will probably try to reset your associations for the http and mailto handlers. Let us know how it works for you.
[via Versiontracker]
Note: TUAW is a member of the Weblogs, Inc. network, which is owned by AOL.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-17-2006 @ 5:46PM
Hamicide said...
OH GOD IT'S HORRIBLE!!!
Get this spyware off of my Mac!
Opened it straight from the .dmg and deleted it off of my drive in less than one minute.
If you want to make a Mac program, don't welcome first time users of the app with a bunch of pop ups and have programs randomly open by themselves.
I'll stick with Adium and Intel build of Firefox for my IM/Email/Browsing needs.
(...And yes, I know it's just a beta)
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12-17-2006 @ 5:47PM
annon said...
Dang, I thought this was going to be an upgraded, feature complete Triton beta for Mac.
Carry on, nothing to see here.
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12-17-2006 @ 6:14PM
Shawn Christopher said...
Hamicide,
You have no clue what you're talking about. I've been using Cheshire for quite a bit and enjoy doing so.
Cheshire uses AOL Radio, AOL Pictures, and AOL Service Assistant, and the webbrowser is built (if I remember correctly) using Webkit.
Please don't call it spyware, it doesen't behave, act, or look like spyware...and calling it as such is just immature.
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12-17-2006 @ 6:21PM
Shawn Christopher said...
For those that want to get a preview of this, or more information I've done a small review on my blog
http://shawnsblog.wordpress.com/2006/12/15/cheshire-review/
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12-17-2006 @ 7:06PM
Hamicide said...
Shawn, after going back for a second try, I still dont like it.
Plus, the spyware comment was my first thought upon opening the program.
I had bad experiences with PCs, and it was bringing back unwanted memories.
Come on...I open ONE app (Cheshire alone) and suddenly I have a huge toolbar at the top of my screen, a browser window, and iChat tries to automatically log on.
Sure...you can go into the preferences and turn off two of those annoyances, but that still leaves me with an AOL toolbar/dock. Correct me if I am wrong, you can change the size of the toolbar, have it only show you Icons, or only text, but there isn't a setting to comepletely get rid of it.
Congrats if you like this program.
It is great for AOL Mac users that have been waiting for a new way to check email and browse the net, but there are better ways now. This isn't 1999.
As for me, I think I have made it clear that my first experience with Cheshire was not a pleasant one (But that's just me).
I still recommend that all AOL Mac users give it a shot.
I did, but I guess I was just hoping for something a lot better.
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12-17-2006 @ 9:26PM
Shawn Christopher said...
Hamicide,
So I guess the question is, what would you do to make it better? Going "OMG! it sucks and is spyware" is one thing, however what would you do to make it better?
That's the one thing that the article doesn't mention. The Greenhouse is for "proof of concepts" and other "testing" for first adopters on Internet. If you think about it, it's the Google Labs of AOL...if something makes it big...great! If not then we try to figure out where we went wrong, and try again...
If this where a true beta...then it would show up at http://beta.aol.com
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12-17-2006 @ 10:56PM
Ichiro said...
I still have my original screen name (and account) from when AOL was AppleLink on my Apple //e. I purchased my first Macintosh on AppleLink's Classifieds.
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12-17-2006 @ 10:58PM
Ed said...
Hamicide - you're right in figuring the audience for Cheshire. It's really for existing AOL users and for people who want something small & simple. There are a lot of folks like that around.
Your perception of spyware is interesting, and we'll take that into consideration. As Shawn pointed out, the Greenhouse lets us experiment and learn. We haven't released anything new in the client area in years so we're keen to listen . To your point, Cheshire's totally clean of spywarish crap and it'll stay that way. The only odd thing it does is to open iChat - the toolbar is part of the app and wouldn't you expect an internet app to open a browser window?
Ultimately this app isn't for you, which is fine. There's other stuff that might be - you might take a listen to AOL Radio, the player's in the Cheshire dmg. Good streams, most of which are now broadcast at high bitrates to even free AOL members (and I think mac.com as well).
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12-18-2006 @ 9:04AM
Ralph Daily said...
As a longtime AOL user, I appreciate AOL continuing mac development. I don't think I need this app since I use mail.app for my AOL mail and have AOL radio in my dock. But glad to see AOL continuing to develop for mac.
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12-18-2006 @ 10:59AM
Dave said...
I've been waiting for a new mail client for literally years now. AOL is making it harder and harder to stay with them. I'm very hopeful that this new client will be the answer. However I have a request. The old AOL for Mac client shows the number of new emails with a number inside the dock icon. The icon also bounces every time you receive new mail. Please please add this feature or something similar to it. I don't expect to use the web browser at all, so the big menu bar at the top of the screen doesn't bother me since I won't be looking at it very often. But unless you're using the app, there doesn't seem to be any notification that you've received mail. If nothing else, how about making it "Growl" compatible?
--Dave
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12-20-2006 @ 10:18PM
bill said...
Eh, not a fan of AOL!
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