MacOS: Mail from 1993

[ReleaseTheGeese]

While playing with the command line in MacOS 12.7 (Monterey), I made a startling discovery. I was playing with the mail CLI utility, which I believe was created so local users could send messages to each other on the same machine.

I first sent a message to myself using mail <username> (it is a lonely life) then ran mail again to get a listing of my inbox. Most curiously of all, this also showed the copyright date of the mail utility. It dates from the 6th of June 1993:

Mail (built in June 1993) on Mac OS 12.7, an OS from 2021.

That's right, the mail utility on Mac OS 12 is over thirty years old!

But I was mistaken about something! Mail wasn't just for messaging local users. Looking at the manual page, we see the mention of long dead networking protocols like ARPA and UUCP mentioned:

Yes, mail can contact other machines, just none of the living ones.

Originally shared on my blog, if I may link.