Hawk Wings » mac osx

Snow Leopard’s shrinking mail.app: Mystery solved

Tim Gaden — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:01:45 +0000

Someone, who seems to have some personal knowledge of Snow Leopard, claims to have solved the mystery of Snow Leopard’s shrinking mail.app.

In a post that details the various myths doing the rounds on the shrinking apps—no PPC code (false!), smaller binaries (false!), missing language files (false!)—the writer spills the beans:

When you look in Mail.app you see that language files use up most of the disc space. Inside the language folder (e.g. “German.lproj”) are a lot of .nib files (the extension of Interface Builder). Inside normally are two files. One is a very small “keyedobjects.nib” and the other is very big “designable.nib” file… Now the “designable.nib” is gone. It seems like it had no reason other than to give hackers a chance to mess with the application’s UI design.

I guess he is referring to these two files which are inside each (c. 84) folder within every (18) lproj localisation folder, as in this example from the English.lproj GeneralPreferences.nib folder:

Perhaps this is as false an explanation as all the others.

Still, it has enough specifics, specifics that only someone with access to a build of Snow Leopard could know, to lend the story credence. mail.app, apple mail, snow leopard, interface, nib files, apple, mac osxSimilar Posts:

Quicksilver is back!

Tim Gaden — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:38:21 +0000

As Quicksilver fans all over the world know, the Blacktree web site has been down since at least last Friday.

Now it’s back. Developer Alcor says that the site was down due to “a plugin downloading bug (and a subsequent server overuse)”.

You can now download the latest Leopard-friendly build of Quicksilver and install all the plugins your heart desires (quite a lot in my case).quicksilver, productivity, leopard, mac osx, 10.5Similar Posts:

Correo: A new Camino-flavoured mail client

Tim Gaden — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:03:20 +0000

Nick Kreeger has released the first version of a new open source email client for Mac OS X, which “blends technology from two popular Mozilla projects, Camino and Thunderbird, to create a polished native Macintosh application”.

The “Welcome to Correo” email waiting in the inbox describes it as “Mac essence, Gecko powered”.

Extra user interface polish is provided by Jon Hicks , who has provided the icons and other bits and pieces.

And it does look nice:

As Nick admits, it is pretty basic at the moment, although multiple POP and IMAP accounts are supported.

It also features a quick switch between the classic “Mail.app” layout and an Outlook-like “wide-screen” view.

He has big plans for the app though:

There are many planned features for the mail client, including plugin capability (to allow development of extensions such as PDA synchronization), tabbed window interface, address book support, keychain access, and various other to-be-determined features.

A roadmap on the app’s wiki gives an additional sense of where the app is headed.

I sense the end of unqualified “Wildebeest’s butt” wisecracks about Mozilla mail clients.

Correo 0.1 is free and available from Nick’s web site .

[Thanks for the tip-off, Bronson!]email, thunderbird, camino, gecko, mac osxSimilar Posts:

Mail.app on Mac trumps Ubuntu hands down

Tim Gaden — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:03:12 +0000

Remember a few months ago there was an apparent stampede of people, headed by Mark Pilgrim, who were abandoning Macs for Ubuntu? (Although some later came back.)

Java podcaster Tim Shadel is going the other way , dumping Ubuntu after using Linux for years and stretching his legs into Mac OS X.

Since Mail.app was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Mark Pilgrim, it’s extra interesting to read Tim’s experience with Mail, compared to Evolution, his Linux mail client:

Mail.app is great. Evolution almost works. I have to use exchange at work (I have Ubuntu installed there, too). Evolution has a module to integrate with Exchange, and it sorta thinks about working. Itâ€™s slow, and frequently it hangs. So much so that I got sick of typing

ps -ef | grep evolu | grep -v grep | awk ‘{ print $2 }’ | xargs kill

that I put it in a batch file shell script. I ran it no less than twice a day, sometimes more. Calendaring almost worked, except when it didnâ€™t. Frequently Iâ€™d send out an appointment only to figure out that my colleagues version of the appointment didnâ€™t repeat over the right interval. I donâ€™t blame anyone for having trouble integrating with a Microsoft product. But at the end of the day, it was still annoyingly brittle. On Mac, thereâ€™s Entourage â€” an M$ product to work with the M$ server. As it is, Mail.app rocks for processing my personal email really efficiently. Oh, and it can export your mail to mbox. Duh. On Ubuntu, mail almost works.

He goes on to list many more ways in which Mac OS X simply provides a superior user experience—searching, wireless, GUI, audio effects, bluetooth and more.

In the end, it’s all about an OS that (wait for it…) “just works”:

My reasons for choosing to dump Ubuntu for a Mac are almost entirely about the experience. After years of Linux work, Iâ€™m tired of fiddling. Iâ€™m tired of things that almost work. Iâ€™m ready for a change. Iâ€™m sick of the war to get things to work. Iâ€™m ready to simply Get Things Done.

mail.app, apple mail, switching, Mac osx, linux, ubuntu, apple, open-sourceSimilar Posts:

xCut: Keyboard Shortcut Reference widget

Tim Gaden — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:19:47 +0000

The Dashboard widget xCuts is a keyboard shortcuts reference that lets you easily browse the shortcuts for Mac OS X, Quicksilver and more.

A recent update adds a section for switchers, which gives them easy access to the Mac OS X equivalents for the Windows shortcuts they already know.

To save space, the widget can be collapsed to the small size of the graphic in the top right of this post. When you need it, click on it to expand to the full interface:

Searches can be focussed by category, scope and object. The magic is powered by a MySQL database, accessed over the web with Ajax.

xCuts is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .

[Thanks, Adrian]keyboard shortcuts, mac osx, productivity, quicksilver, widget, dashboard, not apple mail, apple, switchingSimilar Posts:

Why Apple Mail makes Leander smile

Tim Gaden — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:28:40 +0000

Leander Kahney loves the way that Apple Mail reformats the date of an email on the fly as you resize the Date column in the List Viewer.

Other clients display an ellipsis or just chop the date off, but Mail is in a class of its own:

…only Apple’s Mail actually changes the format. When I first discovered this, I sat there delighted, making the column wide and then narrow, beaming as the date format switched smoothly and seamlessly between numbers and text to perfectly fit the space allocated.

Part of the magic of this discovery was the serendipity. If it had been a “feature” — a behavior purposely brought to my attention by Apple — I would have shrugged and said, “so what?” But because I discovered it by accident, it struck me as artisan touch; a craftsman’s attention to detail.

For him it is a reminder of the repeated way in which “Apple delights with its focus on the user experience”.

Surely it is just coincidence, but it is nice to read Leander’s epiphany after a month in which Mail.app gave Mark Pilgrim an excuse to switch away from OS X altogether.mail.app, apple mail, user interface, usability, happy users, apple, mac osx Similar Posts:

More security flaws in Mac OSX

Tim Gaden — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 13:38:42 +0000

Californian Security Researcher Tom Ferris has found another seven security flaws in Mac OSX.

They mostly involve the handling of images and decompression of zip files.

He expects that they will be addressed in the next Apple security update.

A St Louis Post-Dispatch article on the flaws urges caution , “Avoid opening strange or unusual e-mail attachments, and beware of Web links embedded in unsolicited Web correspondence.”

As many people pointed out during the excitement of the last round of security flaws, this has been pretty sensible advice since, like, forever.security, exploits, zip files, mac osx, images, attachments, mail.app, apple mail Similar Posts:

10.4.6: Mail, GPGMail and MailStamps issues

Tim Gaden — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:57:58 +0000

The 10.4.6 update has been released.

According to the release notes , the only improvement for Mail.app “resolves an issue in which Mail could unexpectedly quit when lowering the quote level within a reply message”, something I’ve never noticed.

A user in the Apple Discussions reports that the update breaks GPGMail, so that Mail crashes when an encrypted message is selected.

On my PowerBook, it also overwrote the Panther Mail icons inserted by Mail Stamps, which gave me a fright.

Fortunately, running Mail Stamps after the update has removed the lozenge-shaped buttons again.mac osx, apple, mail.app, apple mail, mail stamps, GPGMail, update, 10.4.6Similar Posts:

Mail.app too dangerous to use?

Tim Gaden — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:51:58 +0000

The recent security flaws in Mac OS X have produced a range of responses. But in a lengthy article, IT columnist and Unix administrator John Welch sets a new high point.

It’s not enough to be (extra) careful about opening attachments in emails that you are unsure about. More drastic action is required:

If you are using Apple’s Mail, I’d consider switching to another mail program, at least temporarily. The problem with Mail is that it allows you to open a file with a single click, and there’s no warning from the application to give you a second chance to cancel that action. Neither Thunderbird nor Microsoft Entourage allow for this, so you might want to think about switching until Apple fixes that.

Oddly, later in the article he suggests: “Just take the common-sense steps that we all should be taking anyway, and you’ll be fine.”Mac osx, security, vulnerability, mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, entourage, attachments, scripts Similar Posts:

First Worm for Mac OS X?

Tim Gaden — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 13:46:09 +0000

Symantec has announced what may be the first virus written to target Mac OS X.

Called OSX.Leap.A, the worm-like virus spreads itself as an iChat file attachment.

But is it a real worm or just a clever script, a genuine threat or a false alarm like others in the past?

Leander Kahney on Cult of Mac considers the options , offering the conclusion that “it may be mostly harmless now, but will likely lead to much nastier versions in the future.”Symantec, ichat, worm, virus, mac osx, OSX.leap.A, false alarm, Leander Kahney Similar Posts: