Carbon Emacs

Yes, it is the best Emacs on OS X, because it's more of an Emacs than Aquamacs, the only credible competitor. It is actually not a "port" at this point. Emacs built from source is almost exactly the same thing as Carbon Emacs. I think Carbon Emacs still bundles some elisp that isn't part of the standard distribution. Otherwise, the differences are mostly cosmetic. I wouldn't swear to his, but I seem to remember reading that the current Mac codebase, called nextstep in the cvs tree, actually uses Cocoa interfaces, not Carbon. No doubt someone else here can shed some light on that subject. Anyway, this is the OS X Emacs of choice.

Why no 10.4 (Tiger) version? Not all of us have the hardware to upgrade to Leopard.

Yes, it is the best Emacs on OS X, because it's more of an Emacs than Aquamacs, the only credible competitor. It is actually not a "port" at this point. Emacs built from source is almost exactly the same thing as Carbon Emacs. I think Carbon Emacs still bundles some elisp that isn't part of the standard distribution. Otherwise, the differences are mostly cosmetic. I wouldn't swear to his, but I seem to remember reading that the current Mac codebase, called nextstep in the cvs tree, actually uses Cocoa interfaces, not Carbon. No doubt someone else here can shed some light on that subject. Anyway, this is the OS X Emacs of choice.

I've been using Carbon Emacs since March 2006 and to me this is by far the best emacs port to OS X. Updates are frequent and current. Kudos to the developer!!

This is my preferred Mac port of Emacs: it is frequently updated, comes with many packages, and stays true to the original Emacs.

The latest version fixes the problem I had where numeric-keypad actions looked just like typing on the main part of the keyboard. Shame that the lisp load-path doesn't include anywhere not contained within the application package (so that you can store your extra lisp libraries in a safe place which isn't replaced when you upgrade the application). Also strange that '/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/share/emacs/site-lisp' isn't in the path.

The best implementation of single-window emacs in active development that I have found. Many distributions of emacs for OSX have fallen by the wayside and haven't been updated to work with system upgrades, but this is being actively developed. Unlike Aquamacs it holds all files/buffers in a single window, a 'limitation' that I actually require.