Snow Leopard introduced many welcome changes to Leopard and one huge annoyance. When copying an email address from Mail, Snow Leopard wraps the address in "< >" brackets, for example, "<annoying@email.com>". When pasting, you've got to go back and remove the brackets.

Mac Daddy World has identified the preference setting and posted the simple Terminal commands that will eliminate the brackets. I tried it and it's working perfectly! Thanks, Mac Daddy World. That was very simple and most welcome.

While most users are happy with Snow Leopard, there are these annoyances. Is there something bothering you?

The Pixelmator team has released another update to my favorite little photo editor. Pixelmator 1.5 Spider brings a host of web exporting and sharing options, including a new "Save for Web" feature and the option to send a picture straight to Mail or iPhoto. Additionally, there's a new Trim tool that will cut off transparent or background pixels, and a new Slice tool that will let you cut an image up into pieces and optimize each for the 'net. There's also the usual round of bug fixes, including support for full compatibility with Snow Leopard.

As usual, the new version is available for update from right within the current app. For new users, Pixelmator is available for $59 over on their website, complete with a free trial if you want to check out this photo editing powerhouse before buying. I really enjoy using Pixelmator -- it's lightweight and easy to use, and while it's not quite as full-featured as Photoshop (though with every big version release like this, they get closer), it's a great app to do a little image editing in.

One of the things touted in this latest incarnation of Mac OSX was its ability to work with Microsoft Exchange using Apple's Mail, Address Book and iCal applications. Well, I'm happy to report that Snow Leopard does, in fact, work pretty well with Exchange 2007.

Granted, this is only after limited testing, and it doesn't, as yet, work as well as Outlook for Windows, but it is a step in the right direction. One thing to consider before we go on is the fact that Snow Leopard will only play nicely with Exchange 2007 so if you don't have it or are not planning on having it, these new Exchange features in Snow Leopard won't work for you. You'll have the same access to Exchange 2003 from Mail (via IMAP) and Address Book that you did under Leopard.

That said, these new features of Snow Leopard offer a nice alternative to using the previous version of Entourage or the new Web Services Edition. Fortunately, if you are running Snow Leopard and Exchange 2007, setup could not be easier. All you need to do is launch Apple's Mail and select "Preferences" from the "Mail" menu.

Read on for more...

Earlier today, I posted about the ability to find previously deleted emails using the Spotlight search on the iPhone, adding to the already intense swarm of news surrounding this issue. My findings were that, by ensuring your trash folder was emptied and refreshed, the problem appeared to be solved.

However, many of you responded indicating that this did not work for you, and that you were still seeing cached messages. Then Cult of Mac posted an update to their original piece, suggesting that the problem was more specific to POP accounts. Although I had tested both POP and IMAP accounts with similar results, I decided to investigate further.

First, to clarify: The problem here is *not* with Spotlight caching the contents of your email, as many have suggested. Spotlight simply indexes the available content on your phone, and logs a pointer to it. When you tap a search result, it opens the associated application and tells that app to view the content. In this case, it sees an email message and asks Mail.app to open it, which it does, because Mail.app still has the message content stored locally. Secondly, this appears to be specific to POP accounts. On IMAP or Exchange accounts, deleted email messages do appear in Spotlight results until the trash folder is emptied, as described in my earlier post.

I created a fresh account and configured it for POP access, then downloaded the mail. Searching spotlight, I could see the message I was looking for. I then went back to the message and deleted it, and that's where the fun starts. I conducted this same test multiple times, and found that sometimes, the message would now show up in Spotlight twice, one result opened the message, intact, with the Inbox listed as the folder to return to; the other displaying a message in the trash folder, but with an error displaying the body of the message. Other times, I would only see one result, pointed directly to the trash.

Note: The problem discussed below behaves differently depending on the type of email account being used. Users of POP mail accounts are indeed noticing a problem with deleted email messages appearing in Spotlight search results. Please see this post for updated information.

Our friends over at Engadget have highlighted a Cult of Mac post that, at first glance, appears to have found a bug in Spotlight's caching of email search results on the iPhone. The idea is that after you delete an email from your inbox in the iPhone's Mail.app client, you can still locate and open the e-mail using Spotlight search, if you know the subject of the message.

What's really happening, though, is what Apple might otherwise call "user confusion." When you delete an e-mail message in most mail clients, the message isn't magically deleted, but instead moved to a "trash" or "deleted messages" folder. Being a folder, it is indexed by Mail to provide an unread count, as well as by Spotlight so that you can easily find messages in the folder. When you search for the email, it shows up in Spotlight and opens in Mail because the message still exists in your trash folder.

All right, so what can you do to avoid this? Well, you need to empty the trash folder from your email. With many providers, you can just go to the trash folder, and delete the message from there to permanently remove it. The problem there is that, if you use a service like Gmail, the message doesn't really get deleted when you do this because of the way Gmail translates its labels into folders. Gmail's Trash folder is also set to purge itself after 30 days by default.

Your options? You either have to use the Gmail web interface in Safari, or if you don't mind tweaking your Gmail settings, you can enable the Advanced IMAP Controls Lab and then change your Gmail settings to immediately delete messages instead of using the trash folder. (Note that if you have your "All Mail" label configured to show up in IMAP, you will need to either disable it, or delete the message from that folder on the iPhone as well. See this thread for more information.) Once you've deleted the message, go in to the Trash folder and hit the refresh button to ensure that the message is no longer listed, which will remove it from the local mail cache. This should also clear up Spotlight's index so that the message no longer appears.

By now, you're probably wondering if this is really something to worry about. In my opinion, it really depends on how you manage your email. If you rarely delete messages, or you just delete things that are not of interest to you, they will most likely disappear from your trash folder after a specified time period that is set by your email provider (usually somewhere between 7 and 30 days.) However, if you intentionally delete messages with the idea that the message is unretreivable, then you should probably consider testing this out for yourself to see if it affects you. Again, with many providers, just periodically deleting the contents of the trash folder will do the trick. If you use Gmail, or your company's email services are hosted by Google, then you may need to log in to the web interface periodically to empty the trash, or you can look into the available configuration options, if you feel comfortable doing so.

So in reality, this isn't really a bug as much as it is what I would call "intended, but unexpected behavior." Many people simply forget that the trash folder exists, particularly on the iPhone where you don't always see it sitting off to the left hand side of your inbox. Checking your trash folder for any unintentionally deleted items, and cleaning out the old messages periodically, isn't really a bad habit to get into. With that said, however, I do think that Apple could improve this behavior by implementing some simple changes like adding an "Empty Trash" button to the trash folder, showing the count of all messages in the trash instead of just unread messages (so that it's easier to notice there are messages in there), and having Spotlight either ignore deleted messages like Leopard's Spotlight does, or at least indicate that they were found in the trash.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you consider this to be a bug, or do you think it's just a place that Apple could improve the experience on? Let us know in the comments!

Update: Leander Kahney has posted an update to the original Cult of Mac post that clarifies this issue a bit more. It seems that accounts using POP are configured by default to remove messages after one day or one week, thus causing them to continue to appear in Spotlight search results. Unfortunately, there isn't an option to remove them immediately, however, only after a day, one week, one month, or never. Because of this, Spotlight still sees them in the index, and Mail still contains a cached copy of the message until the time limit configured in the settings is reached.

If you'd like to check out this setting for yourself, go to the Settings app, tap on Mail, Contacts & Calendars, and choose the POP mail account you want to modify. Scroll down and choose Advanced, and the retention settings will be at the top of that page under Deleted Messages. It appears the default for a new account is to retain messages up to one week. So this is still the OS doing what it's configured to do, but there really should be an option to remove messages immediately here. If Apple were to add an option there, and/or remove Spotlight's ability to index deleted messages, the problem would be solved.

Update 2: After further investigation, it appears that some messages deleted on POP accounts do disappear from Spotlight, while others show up long after the message is deleted. I have conducted several tests on this situation, including on different versions of the iPhone OS, and have posted an update with details.

This is my week to take a second look at some iPhone apps that were less than thrilling on their first appearance, but have been updated with fixes and enhancements. Earlier, I took a look at VoiceMail, and today I'm taking a fresh look at IbisMail, [App Store link] an email client for the iPhone and iPod touch that offers some features Apple does not. The app is U.S. $0.99.

Although the specs indicate that almost all mail protocols are supported, last time around I had no luck with a simple POP3 account, and a complete fail at working with MobileMe. I'm happy to say it now works with both types of mail, although setting up MobileMe mail is not automatic, and the defaults the program enters are not correct. You'll have to do it manually, copying the same information you use on the Apple Mail app. I tried a couple of other IMAP mail accounts, and they worked OK.

Users of the latest version are having no luck with Gmail, and some POP3 port selections don't work, while others do.

There are two big features IbisMail offers that Apple doesn't. First is the ability to create folders and rules for mail. Second, it works in landscape mode. Apple has addressed the landscape feature in OS 3.0 that will be out this summer. There is no evidence so far that Apple will add folders with rules in all email protocols.

One of the other downsides of this app, pointed out in my last review, is that it can't run in the background, which is a pretty important feature for a mail program. That's not the fault of the developer, but Apple. OS 3.0 has some workarounds for this issue, but they still don't plan to support true multitasking in 3rd party applications. If the developers stick to the new Apple SDK, you can probably get alerts to new mail when you are running other apps.

So in summary, some bugs are fixed, some still appear to be there. If you really wanted landscape view for email, I'd wait for Apple to update the iPhone in a couple of months. If you really need rules and folders, IbisMail is worth a look, taking into account the app may not work with your particular mail setup.

[Update] Check the bottom of the post for a video from Mobile World Congress showing Gmail with offline support running on an iPhone.

The iPhone needs a native Gmail application. There, I've said it. Every time I bring this up with iPhone users, I get one of the following questions:

• What's wrong with the built-in Mail app?
• What's wrong with the Gmail iPhone-optimized web interface?
• How dare you criticize the iPhone!

Okay, that last one isn't a question, but you can tell that some people are thinking it.

Let's tackle the questions:

What's wrong with the built-in iPhone Mail app?

I have to admit that Mail on the iPhone is the best email client I've ever used on a mobile device. But that's really not saying much, since virtually ever app that I regularly use on the iPhone is better than the equivalent Windows Mobile or Blackberry versions I have used with previous devices. The main thing that I find to be missing in Mail on the iPhone is message threading. Gmail is the gold standard when it comes to keeping messages grouped by thread, and Mail.app on the Mac comes a close second, in my opinion. For me, this is a must-have feature, and it drives me crazy that it is missing from Mail on the iPhone.

One other frustration with the iPhone Mail client (admittedly one that native Gmail would not fix) is how many taps it takes to move between mail accounts. It sure would be nice for Apple to include an integrated Inbox that works the same way it does on Mail.app for the Mac.

Everyone pretty much knows the weaknesses of the iPhone mail application. So it was with some excitement that we were able to try ibisMail [App Store link] from some sharp developers in Japan. Alas, while packed with features, it also is limited by its own design, and the shackles Apple puts on applications to keep them from using the full power of the iPhone OS.

IbisMail is US $0.99, and works in English and Japanese on both the iPhone and iPod touch with software 2.2 or greater.

First, the good stuff. ibisMail allows you to read and write in landscape mode, something many people have really wanted for a long time. It gives you a nice keyboard with lots of room, and I do like reading and creating mail in that way. It also supports folders and rules. You can watch for certain characteristics of incoming mail, and send that mail to a particular folder, or even the trash. IbisMail also enables the creation of simple templates for mail replies and mail that is forwarded. Complete details and rather good help files are here.

IbisMail supports POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, and authentications including APOP, POP before SMTP, CRAM-MDS and Digest MDS, as well as SSL connections. IbisMail can view Word, Excel, Power Point, JPEG, GIF, PNG and PDF attachments. So far so good.

On the negative side, I had a devil of a time getting accounts set up. My POP account could receive, but never send, even though I was careful to duplicate all the settings that I have. I've never had such a hassle with any other mail program. Maybe it was me, or they way the stars were aligning, or something about my ISP, but I just couldn't get it to work. I tried to set up my MobileMe account, and had similar problems. The original settings would not work, and when I went back to edit them, they were gone, even though I had saved them. This happened several times. Some people are getting it set up fine, so I'm scratching my head on this issue.

IbisMail also seems to make hash of HTML email that has embedded pictures. They simply don't display. The app also lacks a unified mailbox, just like Apple's mail app on the iPhone, so if you have multiple accounts you get a lot of finger exercise going back and forth through all the accounts to see what mail you have.

Another drawback is that ibisMail can't run in the background (thanks Apple) so you have to open the app to see what mail you actually have.

The developers are very open to improving the ibisMail, and I'm sure they will do what Apple will allow them to do. Frankly, I'm surprised this app was even approved by Apple, given their penchant for nuking any app that treads too closely to the iPhone's built-in functionality.

All in all, I'd rate ibisMail as a good try, but not a compelling upgrade. With some more attention to detail, and some give from Apple, ibisMail could be a very useful addition to your collection of apps.

If you're in the market for a new email client to try, I mentioned Postbox a few weeks ago. Late yesterday, the Postbox team released beta 8, which features an improved conversation view, and new and improved support for QuickLook, Flickr, Hotmail, and Growl.

The beta also fixes many bugs found by users (including myself) and performance enhancements. Also, Postbox is heeding user suggestions to become more Mac-like, including keyboard shortcuts in menus, improved notification for unread messages in the dock, and the aforementioned QuickLook and Growl integration. Full release notes are available on the Postbox website.

Performance appears to be about the same -- which is to say pretty good -- and indexing on my 2006-vintage black MacBook still occasionally ramps the fans up to hurricane strength. I've been using Postbox as my primary email client for about three weeks, and its held up to my demanding workflow, but still has a ways to go before it becomes the killer email app.

Still, if you're a high-volume email consumer, Postbox is a solid option for you. Postbox is free (and will continue to be free, so far as we know), universal binary, and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.

Postbox, the email client built for heavy email users, entered Public Beta on Sunday. Postbox is designed to allow you to search, organize, and manage your email more more efficiently.

Postbox includes a powerful search tool that lets you use Gmail-style search terms (like "from:Steve" or "before August 2008") to easily find messages. The Gmail-like features don't end there: Postbox automatically organizes threaded emails by subject. Messages can be tagged with one or more topics for easy recall later.

Perhaps Postbox's greatest feature is its ability to recognize what's in your email, and keep it front-and-center. For instance, if you're composing a new message, you can use the Compose sidebar to find attachments in other messages to drag into your new message. The inspector panel on the preview window highlights links, addresses and attachments in the message so you can get to them easily.

For me, I use my inbox like a to-do list. Thankfully, Postbox has a built-in Archive utility that lets you specify an archive folder for each account (which I already had set up). Once you're done with a message, clicking Archive or pressing A moves that message (or many messages) right into your archive.

Add to this to-dos, integrated search, social network integration, message annotation, tabbed browsing, and a high-security Mozilla foundation, and you've got an amazing Swiss Army-knife tool for hard-core emailers.

Earlier this week, I noticed that the calendars on my Mac and my iPhone weren't in sync. "More MobileMe nonsense," I thought. However, I soon found the culprit, and it wasn't MobileMe acting wonky. My account had expired, and I was within the 15 day grace period.

I saw the "Renew" button and reached for my wallet like a well-trained Pavlov iDog. Then something stopped me. "Do I really want to do this?" There are so many alternatives that offer nearly the same services. Calling upon my days as a used car salesman (true story), I pulled out a piece of paper and drew a vertical line down the center, labeling one side "Pros" and the other "Cons." Then, I got to work.

Pros

First of all, I should outline what I use MobileMe for. An email account, address book, calendar sync between my Mac and iPhone and iDisk storage. I don't use the photo galleries, though my kids' grandparents wish I did, or the web apps. With that in mind, here are the pros.

Everything is built in. There's nothing to download, install or configure. iCal, Address Book, Mail (OK, I have to set up an account. Nit-pickers) and iDisk are ready to go from the start.

My iDisk is accessible from the Finder, and things like MobileMe Galleries just work. Sounds like an easy choice, eh? Keep reading.

Cons

Honestly, it doesn't always "just work." The synchronization has been flaky in the past, and push notifications have been pokey. Granted, it's light-years beyond where it was after launch, but I don't really trust it 100%.

It's a bit pricey. The standard fee is $99US/year. I've got one additional email address for my wife, so tack on another ten bucks. Before you fly into an iRage, know that I realize that one hundred bucks for push email, contacts and calendar, 10GB online storage, web hosting and so on is not a bad deal. It's just that there are less expensive alternatives.

With Gmail, I can have email, address book and calendar for free. With Spanning Sync, [TUAW Spanning Sync posts here] I can sync Google Calendar and iCal in both directions for $25 per year or $65 as a one-time fee. And I can easily set up my iPhone to send and receive Gmail.

Let's look at the available-anywhere online storage. Here at the TUAW offices, we're big fans of Dropbox [TUAW Dropbox posts here]. Once installed, it's super easy to use. A menu bar item and a Finder window item make access a snap. Additionally, sharing files and folders is just as simple.

The first 2GB of storage are free. After that, you'll pay $9.99US/month or $99US/year for 50GB of storage.

So why not just switch? It's not that easy. My MobileMe email address is in heavy use. Not only among my contacts, but across many places online. Switching would be a hassle. I'm also held back by the "What If Factor."

There's a part of me, deep inside my cynical, self-deprecating heart that's convinced that the very day I cancel my subscription, Apple will release the MobileMe update of my dreams. It's the same certainty that prevents me from buying a DVD player or a Blu-ray player as I watch my VHS tapes.

For now, I've got 14 days to decide. I'll let you know what I chose in a future post.

If you were one of the many users who upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5.6 soon after it came out, then you might have experienced some major problems on your Mac. Fortunately, Apple has admitted there were issues with the update. Now there are more updates to fix the problems.

Last night, Apple released a Mail update for users experiencing problems with Mail unexpectedly quitting. "This can be caused by using a copy of Mail that wasn't updated properly (you may need to install the Mail Update)," the update page states.

If you have been experiencing problems with Mail.app post-10.5.6, then you can install the update by visiting the Support Downloads website and download the installer package.


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

In my post yesterday I whined quite a bit about how it was hard to get control of mail on the iPhone because there was not a unified mailbox. The post obviously struck a nerve, because there were lots of responses and in our little poll most people seemed to agree that mail was pretty much a mess and needed some love from the Apple development team.

There were also many people who made very valid comments about other things that were missing from mail, and I wanted to share those as well. Here they are, in no particular order.

• Mail needs to allow searching. With a lot of messages things are difficult to find. (The people who invented Spotlight on OS X shouldn't find that too difficult)
• People want individual signatures for each email account. Again, not rocket science.
• Many readers wanted to see quick on-screen buttons to move expeditiously from one mail account to another.
• Others wanted to make sure accounts stayed separate. I agree with this, I just wanted a visual or virtual joining of the messages so I would not have to finger dance all over the screen to navigate between accounts. In other words, the way it works in Apple Mail in Leopard.
• Finally, as with all things software, people wanted software switches to turn these features on and off.

It may be that Apple is just getting these features ready for the next iPhone software update, or they may still be ignoring these issues. I have to think if they are using their iPhones at all over in Cupertino, these items will be high on their list of fixes.

Thanks to all who participated in the poll -- even those who thought everything was just dandy in iPhone mail.

I find the Mail.app plugin Widemail extremely useful. At my day job I use Outlook and the widescreen view is very efficient for space management. Prior to upgrading to Leopard, I used the application Letterbox written about here; however in my recent search for a Mail-enhancing plugin I wanted something a little more robust. Enter Widemail. It not only provides the awesome widescreen view from Letterbox, but it provides a means for creating a two-line message row similar to that found in Outlook for Windows and Entourage on the Mac.

Since we last wrote about Widemail the developer has added a preference pane within Mail.app making it easier to tweak settings. Additionally, the Widemail custom column can now have items that are left-aligned and right-aligned within the same row. Everyone's favorite automatic self-update framework, Sparkle, has been added as well.

Widemail makes Mail.app exceptionally more functional for my day-to-day use and is a free download (as in, feel free to make a donation).

[via Lifehacker]

Have you ever been reading an email in Leopard's Mail.app and thought, "Oh, I need to remember that"? If you can right click, then you can remember anything, quickly and easily, using Todos. When you come across something in an email you want to remember, first highlight the text.

Next, right-click on it and select "New Todo." The current message window will then show a notepad-style view of the selected text. From there, you can change the due date and priority. Finally, assign that todo to the iCal calendar of your choice by clicking the orange arrow/circle beside the item.

Mail displays Todos in the sidebar. To see your tasks in iCal, select "Show To Do List" from the "View" menu.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.