Several people in the Apple Discussion forums have reported that they are unable to connect to their mail servers after applying the 10.4.7 update.

The problem is (usually) that Mail.app’s new ability to connect through a SOCKS proxy had been turned on during the update.

The fix is simple.

Open up your the Network pane of your System Preferences. Choose your current method of connecting to the Internet (Built-in Ethernet, Airport, etc) and select the Proxies tab on the configuration dialog.

Make sure that the SOCKS proxy box is unchecked:

10.4.7, tiger, mail.app, apple mail, socks proxy, update

Mark Pilgrim made some waves recently by announcing his switch to Ubuntu and pondering (unfavourably) the nature of Apple’s relationship with open file formats.

Today he posts a very funny video on his blog, involving bunnies (not ducks), Ubuntu (not Apple), WinFS (not) and more.

Give it a spin.

[Via Tao of Mac].Mark Pilgrim, ubuntu, apple, not apple mail, zefrank, bunnies, WinFS, laughing my butt off by the end

The new Cube Interface in Quicksilver is very nice, almost nice enough to tempt me away from the Bezel that I have used since I first stumbled across the app.

But the icons on each side of the interface are very small. I can only make out what they are by squinting.

So, emboldened by playing around with the look of Letterbox, I thought that I would see if you can make the icons bigger with Interface Builder. And you can.

Here’s a screenshot (poor quality, apologies) of the default layout and my tweaked one, which makes the central icon smaller and the ones on the side a little bigger:

It’s not hard to do. Interface Builder comes with the Mac OS X Developer Tools.

These tools are not installed by default, but you can find them on your installation discs, where they live in a folder called “Xcode Tools”. After installation you will find them in a folder called “Developer” in the root directory (this may not be the right word, but a hangover from pre-Mac days) of your harddrive.

Once they are installed, you can navigate to the Cube Interface.qsplugin file which is your ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Plugins folder.

Command-click (or right click) on the file and select “Show Package Contents”. Then navigate to the QSCubeInterface.nib file in Contents/Resources folder. You might want to back it up before you start playing with it, just in case.

Double click on the nib file to open it in Interface builder.

You will see the layout pictured here on the left. The squares are just like image place-holders or text boxes in any other app. You can resize them to your heart’s content.

Save and close Interface Builder and you are done. You might want to save a copy of your modified nib file somewhere else. I think Quicksilver’s update service will overwrite it when a new version of the plugin is installed.

No more squinting. Enjoy.quicksilver, productivity, interface, hacks, tips, cube interface, interface builder, who dares wins

The latest OS update is out.

According to the technical notes , 10.4.7 offers Mail.app users the following new features and bugfixes:

• Updates Help links within Mail alert messages so you are linked to useful content instead of a “No pages with your search words were found” page.
• Resolves a sync alert issue that could appear if Mail accounts were in different order on the different Macs that you were syncing.
• The Mail POP account option to “Remove copy from server after retrieving a message…” is no longer turned off after performing a sync with .Mac.
• POP accounts you create will no longer begin with the “Remove copy from server after retrieving a message…” preference setting turned off.
• Redirecting message to only a BCC: address no longer redirects the message to the original To: recipients as well.
• Improves results when retrieving IMAP messages with attachments over unreliable connections.
• Mail now supports connecting to mail servers through a SOCKS proxy. [Potential problems here]

Users with POP accounts should note the changes carefully.

I’m looking forward to seeing how that second last one pans out.apple, OS X, 10.4.7, mail.app, apple mail

Like some other people, Matt Simerson decided that the cost of renewing his .Mac subscription wasn’t worth it.

He wanted to retain the good things about the service though, “iDisk, iSync (between computers), iCal sharing, and Backup” and if possible make them even better:

Simply retaining the useful features would be an utter failure. The most value can be found in addressing the shortcomings of each feature. For iDisk, speed and disk space are the impediments to its usefulness. iSync already works quite well. iCal sharing works well but publish and subscribe updates are terribly slow. Backup is hamstrung by the iDisk space issue.

In the rest of a long and detailed post he outlines how he achieved this using WebDAV.

He even goes as far as fooling his Macs into believing that his local WebDav server is Apple’s iDisk server.

It’s a technical post demanding a fair bit of coding skill. I don’t think that I would attempt this myself, but people with the background will find it a useful guide.

I’m not sure how I missed this back in February. Perhaps I was at the beach..Mac, dotmac, idisk, webdav, ical, isync, tips, hacks

See “Cube Interface” in the plugins list of the latest version – β49 (Borzoi) 3776.quicksilver, interface, cube, productivity, not apple mail

A French site offers fifty mail stamp icons featuring the faces of characters drawn by the well-known Anime artist Masamune Shirow.

Shirow is responsible (I read) for such hits within the genre as Black Magic, Appleseed, Dominion, Orion, Ghost In The Shell, Intron Depot and Ghost in the Shell2:Manmachine Interface.

The icons themselves are mostly girls (or possibly boys, I find it hard to tell):

Unlike the last lot of icons I posted, these work fine on a Mac.

Changing the Mail.app’s icon is easy. Hawk Wings maintains a list of over 254 alternate stamp icons for Mail.app, so you are spoilt for choice.

[Thanks, Paul]mail.app, apple mail, icons, stamps, dock icons, hacks, tips