Tao of Mac

Apr 13th 2004 · 2 min read

The Mail Thing

A word of caution regarding the Security Update 2004-04-05 and the I usually do: The updater did not update my main copy of (/Applications/Mail.app, which remained at 1.3.4) but updated my private copy (/Users/me/Applications/Mail.app) to version 1.3.7, modifications and all.

Considering I don't even run updates as myself (I keep to my of setting everything up under an administrative account and running as an unprivileged user), this is most likely a serious bug lurking somewhere inside 's updater mechanism (which I've duly reported, by the way).

The only way around this is to remove all custom copies of , re-apply the update and reboot. Then you can re-patch MessageViewer.nib.

True Colors

1.3.7 seems way slower with SSL connections, by the way. Must be due to the OpenSSL update or some other bit of wierd mojo I haven't yet figured out. Oh, and I'm finding myself missing 2003's multi-colored message flags (i.e., not just a red one).

Fortunately (and not many people know it's this simple), I can just open the color picker and drop a color smudge on any message to color it appropriately.

Which means I can now color my messages with any of 16777216 colors. Less is more, indeed.

Feedback

Miscellaneous feedback that I've found flagged deep in the nether recesses of my Inbox (and a couple rescued from the spam filters):

  • Justin sent me a nice mobile phone roundup and a few sanity tips regarding purchasing phones (this last only really applicable to the US, but hey, it's from most of y'all come a-visitin'). I'd only make one correction: The T650 is actually the , and judging from what I've experienced from handling a few samples, it's going to be the "just works" phone to have this year. No stupid features, no bloated applications, and great functionality.

  • Dev Anand Teelucksingh pointed me to wxMusik, which looks simple, efficient and practical - besides being Open Source and inherenly portable due to its wxWindows underpinnings. One little gripe, though - no ID3 album art tagging. Still, if I'm ever stuck at my laptop for any extended period of time, I'll give it a whirl, since Muine requires Mono and the kitchen sink to install.

  • Thomas Kollbach sent me a few hints on getting SSL over IMAP - I was actually ranting about getting S/MIME working on , the solution to which I didn't publish due to some PGP zealotry (everyone's reverted to plaintext in the meantime, so the craze is past - not much point in encrypting anything these days). Now that OpenSSL has been updated to 0.9.7b, I guess it's time to clean up the draft and write a fresh .

  • Matthew Wilson (of wmlbrowser fame) pointed me towards version 0.6, which I'm happy to report working correctly with Firefox under Windows (my main WAP testing environment) and (the one where I'm most productive).

  • Last but not least, Zeno Crivelli (he of PRC-Tools fame) dropped me a note on his neat :

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