The Weekly Review

Long time mail users are most likely aware of all the great features of Mail.app, which is included with the operating system. But I still find new small touches that impress me.

Today’s great moment by design is focused on one of those. Specifically, the data detectors in Mail that recognize an address and attach a link to Google Maps. Simply click on the drop down arrow that appears when you hover the mouse over an address in Mail, and you can select the option, “Show map.”

This feature also gives you options with dates and names, allowing you to add contacts to Address Book or events to iCal. All from within Mail.app. I like the feature and find it an example of good design.

There are some folks who are annoyed by this though. In that case, these data detectors can be turned off.

After my log file post last week, I had a few people approach me with questions or good suggestions. So I’ve made a few updates and thought I would share them once again.

Formatting

Reader Patrick Mosby sent me an email in which he asked this:

I just read your article “Track Yourself With a Custom Log File” and wondered how you get the formatting of the entries like you showed in your screenshot. Are you typing this everytime by hand or do you also have some kind of automation?

I tried to use TextExpander to expand “ttime” to the current time but it seems that it doesn’t work in Quicksilver’s text input field.

Good question. Patrick was referring to the time stamps in each entry. In the beginning I was entering them in by hand, but since I have TextExpander, I wanted to make use of it. He was right though—it doesn’t work by default in the Quicksilver text input field. But with a bit of playing around, I found that if you prepend your TextExpander snippet with a period, they work just fine. The period invokes the Quicksilver text input, but also is the character for invoking your snippet.

In this example, typing ‘.ttime’ works perfectly.

Automation

In my original setup, I had created an iCal event that had an alarm that would trigger an apple script to run. This apple script updates a few different text files with the current date.

Jamie Phelps asked me via Twitter if I would consider using using a launchd daemon instead of an iCal event. Why? Well, most importantly, this event clutters up iCal. Using a daemon would be a cleaner solution.

I’m always up for increasing the UNIX skills, so I took on this challenge. After several hours of research and tweaking, I’ve got a solution that works nicely. Hardcore command line geeks can start laughing here—for those in the know, this type of automation is elementary. But I’ll include some details for those folks like me—people who are comfortable working in different applications and the command line, but are not familiar with all the commands and utilities.

First off, the idea with a plist file is that it tells launchd what to run and when to run it. I found out that much before getting to some documentation. Here’s a list of resources I used:

• Started with launchd on wikipedia and apple.
• Moved on to the OS X man pages, specifically on launchd.plists and launchctl.

After all that reading, I had a plist file that looked like this:

After creating this file, you have to load it from Terminal using launchctl:

Unfortunately, even though the plist file appeared to be working, the log files were not updating. After much playing around and testing, I gave up and posted my issue on the Apple support forums. After a couple more hours and several replies back and forth with some very helpful folks, I had all my questions answered.

You have to love the Mac community. This whole process would have been much faster if I had started on the forums rather than starting with Google. Here’s what I learned from these people.

plist Creation

When creating a plist file that will launch an app or script file, rather than build it from scratch in Property List Editor (an application included with OS X), it was strongly suggested to create them with an open source third party app named Lingon. The app gives you a couple of options (what do you want to run and when etc.) and adds in all the correct elements for you. This is much easier than the guessing I was doing, trying to figure out which parameters to include.

Here’s a shot of Lingon in action:

Here’s how the plist files looked after creating it from scratch in Lingon:

You can see there were a few more parameters included this time.

Console

Even after creating the plist file in Lingon, the whole process still wasn’t working—the text files were not updating. I was asked to use Console (another application in OS X) to look for any messages being generated by launchd. Sure enough, error messages were being generated:

Permission denied? I couldn’t guess why that would be the case, since all the files involved had the same permissions set. But again, the folks on the forum led me in the right direction. Turns out launchd will run an application with just the path, as long as the file ends in ‘.app’. Otherwise, if you have a script file with an extension of ‘.scpt’, you need to add the string value of osascript as shown in the last screenshot of the plist file (this is the command you would use to run a script file from the terminal). Added that parameter and presto—it works perfectly.

Making a short story long, I would have saved myself some time if I had known to use Console to troubleshoot this. But that’s how learning goes, yes?

So finally I had an automated solution to add a daily date stamp to my log files. Sounds like a lot of work, but I like to learning this type of thing. So I consider it time well spent.

One last thing to mention.

Display

Although I’ve seen a lot of people use utilities like GeekTool to display files on their desktop, I’ve never been much interested myself. But with this log file, I thought it would be handy to be able to see my activities without having the file open all the time (I never have it open because I’m adding entries via QS). In addition, I created a MIT file, drawing upon the idea of having a big rocks or most important tasks list for each day.

So I installed and configured GeekTool and now have a visual of these two lists always on the desktop.

So there you have it. A lot of learning and twiddling just to keep a simple text file. But for me, these are skills that, once learned, make things easier—and faster—down the road. And I hope that the idea of the text based log file will prove itself years from now.

Heck, I even got an email from Matthew Cornell, he of the big arse text file that started this whole thing. Ask him how valuable his log file is after all these years.

I think that’s worth the time up front.

Now that it’s been almost two months since the opening of the iTunes app store and all the related chaos, I’ve been thinking about the apps that I’ve purchased. I’ve most likely purchased less apps than the average iPhone user—ten to date. Interestingly, out of those ten apps, only three get any regular usage. Those three apps are Twitterific, Scrabble and Things Touch.

The app that I was most excited about when the app store was prepping for launch was Things Touch from Cultured Code. I purchased it as soon as I could access the store, even though the original release did not have the ability to sync to the desktop version. A big reason I bought the app anyways is simply because I have faith in the developers—they have proven themselves in the way they keep their customers (and potential customers) informed of what’s happening. I knew syncing was coming soon.

And true to their word, Things Touch 1.1 was released on the app store on August 19th and syncing was the main addition. Although tagging and areas of responsibility are still missing, the application is functional enough for regular usage.

Nailed It

What is good about Things Touch? One word—syncing. Long time users of .Mac can attest to how hard it can be for a company to provide bullet-proof syncing. After a week and half of usage, I have not encountered one error with a sync. It appears that this has been implemented well.

Other positives for this app include the clever methods for moving tasks from one source list to another (or from one project to another). For example, to take an existing task and have it display in the Today source list, you do the following.

Tap the star at the bottom of the screen and watch the checkbox icons change to a star shape. Then press the star icon to turn it yellow:

Press the star icon at the bottom of the screen to turn off the ‘today edit mode’ (not sure how else to describe the state of the application at this point and the Cultured Code website doesn’t give it a name). The icons return to the checkbox state, but this time shaded yellow:

This may seem like a lot of steps, but on a small form factor without a lot of space for drag-and-drop type functionality, this strikes me as good design.

Interface

The other overwhelming positive with this app is the attractive interface. This comes as no surprise—the designers at Cultured Code did such a good job with Things that I fully expected Things Touch to be aesthetically pleasing as well. And it doesn’t disappoint.

As with the desktop version, you can see that the developers put a lot of thought into the user interface. Things Touch shows the same … touch … as its predecessor.

Room for Improvement

It’s not all peaches and cream though. As good as syncing is between the desktop and your handheld device, it could be improved. I don’t actually refer to the syncing itself, but rather the initiation thereof. To initiate a sync, you must have Things open on your computer, be on the same wifi network and then open Things on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Having to be on the same network doesn’t bother me, but there are times when I head out without opening Things on the touch and it is always a few tasks off from the desktop.

The sync process is basically manual—it would be much better if it was handled automatically.

My one other complaint has nothing to do with the application itself, but more with the device. It’s too small. A lot of tasks cannot be read in their entirety because they are longer than the screen is wide. This isn’t a killer issue, but more of an annoyance.

And if you add this inconvenience to the fact that it’s easier to write something down on paper than it is to add a new task to Things using the iPhone keyboard and one thing becomes clear—the usefulness of having a copy of your task management data with you at all times may be fairly minimal. At least in this form factor.

So far, my preference has been to use whatever pocket notebook I have with me rather than my Touch.

Overall, this is one of the best apps I have tried from the app store. From a design perspective, it’s of higher quality than a lot of the other task management applications available. If you are a gadget person and prefer to capture everything on a digital device, this app is for you (and you don’t even need to have the desktop version; this app works well all on it’s own).

But from a GTD/productivity perspective, paper might fit your need just as well. Or better.

A while back, Patrick Rhone posted on Work.Life.Creativity about the idea of keeping a text file to track miscellaneous bits of information. I was intrigued by the idea, read the linked pages he had included and got thoroughly engrossed in a web induced bunny trail.

The idea is simple—keep a text file that includes any piece of information that may be useful to you in the future. Exactly what information that includes might be different from one person to the next. But most likely we’ve all had those moments when we realize we need something from the past—a phone number, a web address, a snippet of code, the date on which we emailed so-and-so, what was the change I made in that code … you get the idea.

This text file is not intended to replace more robust tools. It is not a code repository. Nor is it a CRM tool. Not even a replacement for a bookmark organizer. It’s simply a file that is easily updated, giving you a brief history of what you’ve done and includes information that you may want to have in the future.

Wouldn’t it be productivity bliss to have that information stored in an easily searchable solution? I wanted to find out, so I decided to set up my own ‘logging system’ and give it a trial.

Criteria and Intended Usage

First thing needed here is some definition. What do you want to save and how are you going to save it? Exactly what kinds of data/information are you going to stick in this file. Like any productivity tool, this will have three requirements to be successful: consistency, perseverance and ease of use.

First off, just like any application that supports tagging, you need to be consistent in your usage. If you end up putting in vastly different types of information everyday or format the text inconsistently, it becomes harder to find that one piece of info you need. Being consistent will enable you to know what expect in your file and make finding things much easier. And consistency also leads to the next requirement: perseverance.

In order to make this tool useful, it’s going to take some work. I’ve heard it said that it takes 21 days to form a habit. It will take some perseverance to make updating this log file a habit.

There will be days where hours pass and you’ve completed many tasks, but have not updated the file. To make this work, you will have to go back and add those updates and work on forcing yourself to develop the habit of updating as you go. And that leads to the third requirement: ease of use.

The easier and more simple a new tool is to use, the easier it is to add it to your existing workflow. Updating this file needs to be quick and intuitive and must not take you away from the flow, from the zone of creativity you may have entered into.

Like tools that allow quick entry of items (Things or Yojimbo for example), your setup should allow you the ability to update the file without navigating through multiple folders, opening the file and then switching back and forth between multiple applications to copy and paste various bits of text.

A simpler workflow will help this habit to form more quickly. And there are a lot of possible options to give you this simplicity.

Some Options

I can hear some people saying, “Why not just keep the file open on your desktop? Aren’t you making this more complicated than it needs to be?” Possibly. But one of the reasons I use a Mac is for the cool tools that are available. Just keeping the file open is a possible solution. But I wanted the chance to automate this a little.

When I first got into this idea there were three options that came to mind for OS X: Automator, Applescript and Quicksilver. Between those three tools, there should be a simple solution that makes this text file idea work.

And make it cool to use.

So I started with Automator … and quickly moved on. It simply doesn’t have enough options for working with different types of files (I had played with the idea of using OmniOutliner to save this file, but later decided to stick with plain text). The included work flows are limiting and at times maddening. When you expect an action to pass it’s data to the next action, and it doesn’t for no apparent reason … well, you can fiddle forever trying to guess how to sequence the actions together.

I moved on to Quicksilver. It is a proven tool for appending information to an existing text file. Very early on in my experimentation, I had tried using Quicksilver (QS) to update text items in Yojimbo. This proved to be a failure, and I was frustrated by the lack of documentation available for the application (adding new items to Yojimbo is possible with QS, but not updating existing ones).

But once I decided on a plain text file, QS was the choice for the quick entry of items into the file. Adding an update is as easy as follows:

Invoke QS | Type “.” to invoke text entry | Type your update | Tab to next pane | Type append to | Tab to next pane | Type in name of your log file.

Here is a screen shot of this action:

So after some experimenting, I decided on the combination of plain text and Quicksilver.

My Solution

All the bits of information I talked about at the beginning were to be included in my file. I think of this almost as a journal—tracking the highlights of what I’ve done each day.

As for formatting, here is an example of how the files looks:

There was one last piece of configuration I wanted to tack on. I felt like this was a good opportunity to learn some more Applescript. And, as seen above, I wanted to format the file in a way that each day was separated differently than each entry. This was a good item to automate.

So I wrote an script to do that. Here is the content of the Applescript:

It simply adds a string to my aptly named file, log.txt. And in order to have this script run automatically each day, I created an event in iCal. This event has an alarm that is set to run this script. Here are the details of the calendar event:

Each day, this task runs at 2:00 AM. If the macbook is asleep, this runs upon awakening. It appends the date to the log file, and when I’m ready to add some entries, the file is already formatted for my purposes.

With this setup, I can add to the file for days without having to open the file itself.

There are so many ways to implement this idea, but it’s the idea itself that’s important. The fellow who wrote the original article that Patrick linked to had been using his text file consistently for five years at the time of writing. When reading his post, it’s clear that this is an important tool in his arsenal.

It will be interesting to see if productivity gurus like the folks at Work.Life.Creativity will adopt this practice as well. In a time when productivity applications are in such abundance, can a simple text file compete?

Like anything GTD related, it depends on the individual.

Thanks to Patrick Rhone, I’ve been playing with the idea of using some type of log file to keep track of miscellaneous bits of information. A few options seem to have risen to the top, and I’m testing them out to see which will fit my workflow the best (more on this in a couple of weeks).

In the meantime, I came across a site last night that offers this very type of service in a web app. It’s called ididwork. It’s a simple idea—anytime you do anything, you write a short entry and hit return. It offers a few other options as seen below, but it’s a basic tool.

While I was checking the app out, it made me think of the new Journal option added to Backpack in May. The gang at 37 signals used a similar type of tool to track what each team member was working on. They liked it enough to add it to the Backpack application.

These tools are good options, but are lacking in a few ways that make a local desktop solution more appealing to me. Searchability is the first thing that comes to mind—Backpack search doesn’t include Journal entries.

Anybody else using some kind of solution to fit this need? Let me know—there’s not a lot things I enjoy more than reading about other people’s productivity systems!

It’s easy sometimes to overestimate the intuitiveness of OS X and it’s bundled applications. Case in point, I moved my iTunes library when I purchased my Time Capsule. Due to my smaller Macbook hard drive, I wanted to move my library to free up space.

And I did so without reading any instructions or Googling. I figured I was familiar enough with the tools and the concept wasn’t that complicated. So I updated the iTunes Music folder location setting under Preferences - Advanced - General tab in iTunes. Then I closed iTunes and moved all the music to the specifed folder on my Times Capsule. Done.

Oops

Turns out a lot of people make this same mistake. Now this method can sometimes just happen to work out. But, as I can attest to, it most often does not. The problems I had were this: many times I would open iTunes and every song in the library would have the little exclamation mark next to it, meaning that iTunes could not find the file.

I could still use iTunes in this state—when trying to play a song, the application will ask for the location. After you locate the file in it’s new home, iTunes will update the rest of the library. But that takes time, and it didn’t take long before doing that a couple times a week got old.

So I finally went about fixing the issue, and thought I would share my findings. It seems a common enough problem that others might be interested.

Resrouces

Here are a few articles that I used. The first is Apple’s official instructions on how to correctly move your library. The second and third give the same instructions and also explain how iTunes manages your content.

• Apple’s official instructions
• Macworld’s summary
• iLounge’s summary

Of course, none of this was helpful to me after the fact—I’d already buggered up my library. But I happened upon the site of Paul Beard where he has a tutorial on how to fix a library.

Summary

Please feel free to get all the details from the links above, but I thought I would summarize as well.

The issue I had created was this—by not using the Consolidate Library option in the Advanced menu in iTunes, I had moved the files, but had not updated the path that is included in the iTunes library file.

In your iTunes setup there are two files: iTunes Library, which is the binary file that iTunes uses when running, and iTunes Music Library.xml, which is a backup in case anything happens to the first file.

In the screenshots below you can see how these files store the path for the library. They also store the path for every content file in your library—songs, podcasts, movies etc.

Old setting:

New setting:

So following Mr. Beard’s tutorial, I kept these files in their default location under my user directory, but I did a find and replace within the backup xml file for every instance of the path, adding the new location. The I opened the binary file using an app named Hex Fiend and deleted all the contents. In essence, you break the binary file.

The next time iTunes opens, it rebuilds that binary file based on the contents of the backup xml file.

This worked well and my library now works correctly. But the best option—take my advice on this—would be to move it correctly the first time.

Don’t be like me—read the instructions.

One of the new features I appreciated most about Leopard was Quick Look. An easily accessible tool that allows you to preview files without having to open specific applications—what’s not to like?

Here the description from Apple:

Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. Just tap the Space bar to see a file in Quick Look, or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window.

But there’s a key item missing from the list above. Folders. How does Quick Look display folders?

It basically shows a larger version of the folder icon. Here’s a sample:

Not all that helpful. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the folder structure, but wouldn’t be easier if you could view the contents of each folder first?

And that’s where today’s Great Moment by Design comes in. Some time in the past I came across a link to a Quick Look Folder plugin, available here. Here’s how Quick Look handles a folder after this plugin is installed (requires a Finder relaunch):

Not only does it give a visual preview of the contents of a folder, but you can navigate through your folder structure while leaving Quick Look open. It’s a handier way to see the contents of your computer without slowing you down.

It seems clear that we’ve seen the direction that Steve Jobs and co. are heading. It’s emerged over the past couple of years—continue to polish the desktop OS, create and improve the world’s best handheld\mobile experience with the Touch OS, and provide the service that ties it all together (we’ll leave out Apple TV for now).

And for the past two weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to test this integration. With the release of Touch OS 2.0 and MobileMe, Apple’s early attempt at ubiquitous computing is here.

Prelude

For those who had never used .Mac, these offerings bring a new learning curve to using Apple products. I’ve been a Mac user for about three years now. But when I made the switch from Windows\Linux, I’d heard so many bad stories about .Mac that I was happy to stay away. Paying $99 a year for a service that rarely worked and caused a lot of problems sounded like a headache I didn’t need.

So I continued to make use of the many free offerings from Google to enhance my desktop computing experience. And before the launch of MobileMe, I was happy with what I got from Google and a few other sources. Below is s a list of the web services I used to make working on multiple computers more seamless:

• GMail – Sometimes accessed by Mail.app, sometimes not.
• Google Calendar – Synced with iCal via BusySync, it’s always available.
• Google Docs – Still using it, loving it more everyday.
• Google Bookmarks – Occasional sync of bookmarks on different computers.
• Google Reader – Only used at work where NetNewsWire is not available.
• iGoogle – This is simply a web page, my home page, but it gives nice clean access to all the services listed above.
• DropBox – File sharing and accessing documents between work and home.
• Flickr – Sharing pics of the kids with the family, as well as blog related images.

I’ll be the first to admit that slick marketing works on me, so I was intrigued when MobileMe was announced. And after purchasing an iPod Touch only weeks before, it seemed that this service was the perfect fit between my Mac and my handheld. So I signed up.

Here are my initial impressions.

MobileMe Web Interface

Here’s where the biggest outward update to .Mac occurred, so it’s where I’ll start.

General Observations

Overall, other than the initial launch, the service has been pretty slick and responsive. From everything I’ve heard about .Mac, this seems to be much improved. The speed of the web interface is comparable to Google (GMail or GCal), and switching between services is smooth.

However, the service does not seem robust. Leaving it open in the browser for more than a couple of hours often results in a loss of connection. For users who are accustomed to leaving a GMail tab open all day, this might be a turnoff. But this may just me a carry over of the troubles at launch—in another month the issue may be resolved. This seems to have improved over the past week, during which I was documenting performance.

One other general observation worth mentioning is the Help pages—these are nicely designed. The navigation is logically aligned and the animation Keynote-esque. There is some insightful content in the Help documentation; letting you know both what features are missing as well as what you can do with the service. But for the most part, the information provided is aimed at beginners.

iDisk

The offering here is much the same as other comparable inline services like Dropbox. There are folders, folders contain files or other folders—you get the idea. Of course, it’s looks better. The interface is, for lack of a better word, lickable. But it is an Apple product, so you come to the party expecting to be surrounded by beauty.

A key factor with iDisk would be speed. How long would it take to upload several music albums or all of the websites you are currently working on? Well … … … … *sigh*. It doesn’t look like things have gotten much better in this regard. .Mac was slow and after two weeks it looks MobileMe is headed down the same path.

Calendar

Again, the interface for MobileMe shines in the calendar. If you like iCal, or Google Calendar even, you should enjoy the calendar GUI. Working with events is just like iCal, right down to the mini calendars and To Dos menu.

There is one glaring omission with the calendar though—sharing. This is 2008 and online services are built around the idea of sharing information with others. The MobileMe gallery is sharable, as is iDisk. It’s curious that there is no similar option here.

One more improvement I’d love to see here is to add an agenda view like Google Calendar—but that’s more a critique of iCal than MobileMe.

There’s not a lot more to say about the calendar—it’s on par with other offerings out there, with one bonus. It syncs with iCal with no 3rd party software necessary.

Contacts

This is another area where Apple has done a good job if your remember that the idea is to provide an address book, not a CRM. The web interface is again spot on. In fact, it’s better than its desktop counterpart—the alphabetical grouping is aesthetically pleasing in a way Address Book never has been.

Working with your data is also straight forward and fairly intuitive. I did have to look in the help to find how to email a contact from the Contacts interface, and emailing multiple contacts at once seems to just not work sometimes, but all other features were solid.

Gallery

I liked the gallery so much that I deleted all family photos from my Flickr account and moved them to MobileMe. The performance when uploading photos has been fast for me. Certainly comparable to Flickr.

When I envision the grandparents viewing the kids in the slideshow, they’re having fun. And I’m betting that is exactly what Apple was shooting for here. The sharable galleries are among the best that I’ve seen from various other sources.

There’s only negative I’ve come across with the Gallery—the information button in the album slideshow view gives so much info, anyone who knows anything about photography will instantly see that I know nothing about photography … if the crappy picture didn’t already give that away.

Mail

Here’s where Apple really messed up. Like all the other components, the interface for MobileMe mail is nice and sparkly. Unfortunately, it’s so crippled by a lack of features that it’s almost unusable. I’m no power emailer, so I’m probably missing even more features, but here’s what bugged me every time I tried to use mail on the web:

• No rules. It must be tiring to hear me incessantly compare Apple’s offering to Google’s, but it’s what I’m used to. GMail has rules (aka filters).
• No ability to group emails by conversation like GMail. Mail.app has this—why not the web version?
• Poor search capabilities.
• No option to send from another address. More on this below.

Search is where Google started, so it makes sense that search in GMail is a strength. But MobileMe search is so limited … well, the help files say it better than I can:

Only the selected folder is searched.

Make sure you don’t use logical operators (such as “and,” “or,” or “not”) in your search text.

The last line shocked me—this is not how OS X works. I can’t fathom why the search would be so limited in a web version. I hope this will be addressed soon.

So those are the missing or limited features. There were others that are supposed to be available that just were not—address autocompletion for one (works great in Mail.app and the iPod Touch) simply doesn’t work. The help says otherwise:

As you type someone’s name or email address, Mail displays matching names from Contacts and messages you’ve previously sent. To select a name from the displayed list, use the arrow keys, and then press the Return key to enter the address in the selected field.

Another feature that was stressed in the demos but struggled out of the gate was Quick Reply. For the first week it only worked half the time for me. This has has improved in recent days.

Overall, MobileMe mail and the push concept is made to work with Mail.app and Mail for the Touch OS. But when those options are not available, the web interface is all that’s left for the user.

Apple had an opportunity to catch up with Google in the world of online email. It looks like that ship has sailed—and Apple left themselves standing on the Dock (sorry).

Syncing - The Heart of Living in the Cloud

This is where .Mac fell down and never got up. The Intertubes is filled with stories scary enough to keep the kids up at night—data lost, beach balls spun and a loss of confidence in Apple’s ability to compete with the online giants.

It must seem crazy to outsiders that many hard core Apple fans—many of whom were burned badly by .Mac—would be licking their lips to get their hands on MobileMe. But there we were, crashing the servers before the product was even officially launched.

I’d love know how many times Command+R was typed in the days leading up to July 11th.

But now the dust has settled. Service has been restored and heartbeats are once again pumping at a normal rate. And syncing has been … reliable.

Contacts—good. Calendar items—check. Bookmarks—great, and to Safari on Windows XP to boot.

[Disclaimer] Now I’m not the most knowledgeable source here, because I only have one Mac. I can’t test the syncing of app preferences, dashboard widgets or dock settings. But I sync enough items that I have an opinion.

So again I say, syncing has been reliable.

On a Mac. And on an iPhone or a Touch. But the web interface is still trying to catch up. Oh, it hasn’t been all that bad. Wait long enough and things will catch up. But is that good enough?

I guess we each have to decide for ourselves. If you work on a Mac all day and carry your iPhone\Touch around with you everywhere, you’re doing great.

For those of us without that luxury, we’re stuck with the limitations of the web interface.

Using Multiple Mail Accounts

I’ve had my GMail address for almost five years now. All of my other addresses are also accessible from GMail. And I can send from whichever address I want.

And since changing addresses is a flat-out pain, if I’m to move to MobileMe, I need to be able to appear to others as if nothing has in fact changed. I want the right people to see the right address. ALL of the time.

After all my testing and fidgeting, this works well from Mail.app and Mail on the Touch OS—just set your smtp server to whatever alternative service you use.

But the weak link is once again the web interface for MobileMe mail. There is no option for using alternative addresses.

There is the option in the Mail preferences to create up to five aliases, but they all have to end in me.com. This doesn’t help if you want to continue using your GMail address or an address for your particular domain (i.e. [email protected]).

This is almost seals the deal for me. If I had the option to work in my mac in Mail.app all day, I think I’d be okay. But I have to go to work five days and week and use XP. I need web access to my email all day long. Right now I have to use GMail to send any messages and I’m having to essentially keep two inboxes up to date. Will I do this long term? No way.

My only hope here is that Apple adds this ability. And soon.

To Switch or Not

So, having said all that, does MobileMe offer enough to switch from other services?

Truthfully—it depends.

If you’re on a Mac all the time, the sync appears to be solid enough that you’ll get your money’s worth and more. If you are also a heavy iPhone\Touch user, you’re also going to enjoy this service. And if you were previously a .Mac user, you’re most likely to keep using Apple’s online service.

But if you have to use the web interface regularly, you have a decision to make. This user is still on the fence—I’m sorely tempted to just switch back to using Google only. IMAP GMail access works fine on the Touch and in Mail.app. BusySync does a great job keeping my calendars in sync. And most of all, I have control over my email addresses. This is proving to be a tough decision.

To sum it up, MobileMe is a good service. If Apple can improve on a few key areas and performance, it’s probably the best total package there is for keeping your digital life integrated across multiple devices.

It will be interesting to see in the coming months how they respond to critiques of this sort.

The next week is going to involve a good deal of testing in regards to MobileMe. Especially with syncing. As a new user to this service, I had hoped that all the horror stories I’d heard in the past about .Mac would be that—a thing of the past. After the initial launch—and the delaying thereof—last week and some of the stories since then, I’m a little cautious with my expectations.

I’ll be researching and testing over the next while to get a better idea of the performance. And I came across a great resource today—Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings posted a large list of knowledge base articles focused on MobileMe and syncing. An interesting read—the articles range from detailed and insightful to amazingly short of anything resembling help.

If things are as bad as they were with .Mac, I’ll most likely stick with my current setup and my Google tools. Check back in a week to see how things are going.

Just wanted to share a trick I’ve had to look up a couple of times in the past months. After last week’s update to 10.5.4, the .Mac syncing icon was back in my menubar. Since I don’t use .Mac, I’ve never wanted this item there.

After a search through system preferences, there didn’t seem to be a way to remove this. But some digging online turned up the trick for this—simple of course. Just command-click on the icon and drag it off the menubar.

Boom.