Tag: mail

apple, Mac, os x

Apple releases 10.5.1 update to Leopard

Apple released an update to OS X 10.5 (Leopard) today. The standalone update is 110mb but when I downloaded it this morning through Software Update it was a 38mb download for my machine.

According to the Apple info page on the update, it:

includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac

The page goes on to include details of fixes for Airport, Mail, iCal, System and Finder as well as other fixes.

Personally, I love Leopard. I know some people have had issues with it but I have had the opposite experience. The upgrade to Leopard has actually fixed two previous problems I was having with 10.4 and my laptop is now running faster too. Hopefully 10.5.1 will resolve most of the early issues people have had with Leopard.

Email, Microsoft

Gmail adds IMAP support

I noticed that Chris Gilmer reported this morning that Gmail is now supporting IMAP for getting your mail as well as POP.

I quickly logged into my GMail account and Lo!, there was the IMAP option – wohoo!

Gmail adds IMAP

Why is this a good thing? Well, previously if you wanted to read your Gmail in your email client application (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) you had to use the POP protocol. IMAP is a better protocol for doing that because as Alex Chitu pointed out:

you’re always connected to the server, more clients can connect to the same account, you can obtain the text from a message without the attachments and the state information is synchronized (you can add labels from the client, read or delete a message and Gmail will synchronize).

Of course Hotmail (or as it is now mis-nomered Windows Live Mail) still doesn’t even allow POP access (unless you pay for it), never mind IMAP. This leads to many people’s accounts being deleted and losing all their email (happened to me last year).

Hotmail used to be a ground-breaking product until Microsoft got their hands on it and slowly squeezed the life out of it.

Email

Speeding up Mail.app

108,741 emails!

I read a posting on how to speed up Mail.app (my email client) which involved deleting the Envelope file and allowing Mail.app to re-import all emails and rebuild the file.

On doing this I got the dialog box above – 108,741 emails? Wow! I know I have around 10 years email stored but I never realised it would come to over 100,000 emails!

I’ll update this post with the results of the rebuild (in about an hour!).