Miklb's Mindless Ramblings

So my mac mini took a dirt nap on Friday, (I’ve yet to fully diagnose the problem, suffice to say it won’t boot, and I wasn’t able to find the hard drive in target disk mode) so I purchased a new iMac to replace it. Unfortunately, iLife09 wasn’t installed on it, but I’d already read that I’d be eligible for a free upgrade. Well, it seems iLife09 will be available tomorrow. What sucks is that I’m going to have to pay the $10 for shipping and handling for the disc. I can’t just go into the Apple Store with my receipt and get a copy that they will be dropping into boxes, even though I made the purchase 4 days prior to the release. Certainly not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but as much as Apple prides itself on it’s retail experience, this seems to slip through the cracks. Couple that with the less than obvious link to the page you actually need to claim your copy, and I start to get the feeling that they aren’t really making a priority to get the copy in the hands of owners of new machines. From the press release, it took me 3 more pages to actually find the link to qualify my purchase and upgrade, which included going through the Apple Store. Maybe rather than try to push MobileMe or a printer bundle, the salesperson could have provided me with this information?

With the recent buzz around the ‘net about gmail adding IMAP, I was anxious to finally give it a go. I’ve read a bit about IMAP, but had never had the opportunity to try it out. My work requires almost constant monitoring of email, and since I employ Google Apps for your domain to manage my email account, and prefer to use Apple’s Mail, I’d all but stopped using my old, but reliable clamshell ibook. Thus the excitement of being able to monitor my email from my laptop, the Nokia e62, and the desktop computer.

After seeing post at Lifehacker about Thunderbird, I figured it would be worth checking out. I knew that Thunderbird had reecently been updated; I hadn’t tested it in over a year. Being a quasi Mac fanboy, after following the instructions for using TB with the gmail IMAP, I sought a more “Apple” type theme. The only two I found, were outdated, with a max verson of 1.6. A couple of failed attempts to change the version number, I went hunting the intarweb for another version. (I also was having problems connecting to addons.mozilla.org, lots of times outs. Not sure if it’s a latency issue, or what.) (update)seems to be resolved, not sure what the problem was

After a few failed links, I found one that works. Twister MC had a beta version that worked just fine. It’s not an exact replica of Apple Mail, but certainly a better feel (not that the default TB theme is as bad as the default FF theme). I’m still not sold on TB, as it doesn’t integrate with Address Book, and I haven’t found a good solution for importing mine into TB, but I certainly like it better on this older Mac than the Panther Mail. I’ll continue to use TB on the ibook, keeping my eye out for extensions and improvements. As soon as I can afford Leopard, I’m sure all bets will be off though on the desktop, as I’m anxious to give that a whirl. Any TB extensions I should look for? I read another post @ Lifehacker, but none of the ones mentioned got my fancy.

update: This MR Tech will allow you to override the max version check and install either of the more common Apple Mail-like themes.

Can someone please tell The Unofficial Apple Weblog to start a new iPhone blog, and leave my feedreader free of half a dozen or more posts everyday about the iPhone? I appreciate the need for constant updating, but certainly, you don’t have to post everytime someone who owns an iPhone coughs.

If you’ve ever set up a wireless network, especially one with Airport Express stations, you’ll get a chuckle of this tale from Dave Winer.

So, I’ve been toiling away for years now with outdated G3 macs, and kept hemming and hawing, waiting for the “next wave” of new Macs. Well, I couldn’t take it any longer, and broke down and grabbed one of the new dual-core Mac Minis as I had a 17” VGA monitor for the window’s box, as well as existing USB keyboard and mouse from the old imac. So it’s up and running, albeit I need to find someone locally who can install 3rd party ram, as I’m not paying Apple $300 for a gig stick of ram so than can install it for free. Maybe Comp-USA? Anyway, one thing that I noticed right off the bat was FireFox was not liking running on Rosetta, the built in conversion for older apps to the new intel processor. So I was all but switching back to Safari, as FF was just choking. That is, until today, when I found an “unofficial” build of the soon to be released universal binary of FF. Sweet. All of my extensions work with “DeerPark”, and things load as fast as they should be, no hang ups. (so far). I’m really loving the move to Tiger as well, not to mention the shear fact of having a processor and HD meant for this century :). I haven’t really had to time to play with any of the iLife apps, or use Front Row, but all in due time.
No to start saving for when the new 17” macbook pros come out.