10.5.1 is out! You can find it in Software Update and on the Apple web site .

It brings – as it needs to – a raft of fixes and patches for everything from Disk Utility to the Finder “data loss bug” to Time Machine. You can read the full list in the Apple tech note that accompanies the update.

What interests us most, perhaps, are the changes to Mail.app and iCal:

It promises more reliable iCal email alarms, that is, they should work now.

UPDATE: And they do! Excellent. Am I becoming hard to please, or is it a little annoying how the alert brings up a new message window and fills it in front of your eyes, interrupting whatever you happen to be doing? I seem to remember in Tiger that these email alerts were created “behind the scenes”.

Let me know how it goes for you. apple, ical, mail.app, apple mail, alarms, update, smart mailboxes

Mail.app’s version number changes from Version 2.1 (752/752.2) to Version 2.1.1 (752.3) after an update to 10.4.8 (Intel , PPC ) on an Intel Mac, but it’s not immediately clear what new features or improvements (if any) the update brings.

Apple continues its campaign to enforce the lozenge icons introduced with Tiger, overwriting any modifications with the default Tiger icons. Luckily, Mail Stamps soon removes them again.

Other plugins appear to be unaffected by the update.

Presumably, Mail users will benefit from added security to WebKit, but I can’t discover any changes in Mail.app itself. Can you? mail.app, apple mail, apple, update, 10.4.8, WebKit, icons

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

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, 10.4.6

Apple has updated a tech note about disabled rules following the release of 10.4.3.

It now reads (in part):

If you’re using Mac OS X 10.4.3 and use .Mac to sync information, any Mail rules that you created before installing Mac OS X 10.4.3 will be disabled.

It then explains how to recreate any disabled rules by duplicating them.

It’s a bit confusing. My rules all look fine after the update. The title of the tech note says that the rules “may be disabled”; the content of the note now suggests that they “will be disabled”.

They can’t both be right.

UPDATE: Although my rules look fine, are active and work through my Mail Act-on shortcuts without any problem, some people report problems in the comments to this entry. (I think I’ve worked out why I’m not having problems and why they are, and it’s got nothing to do with .Mac synchronization).10.4.3, rules, sync, update, apple tech note, mail.app, apple mail