Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about arranging icons on the iPhone, installing Windows via Boot Camp, AirPort networks, iMac rotation support, replacing the video card in an iMac, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.

Leah asks:

Is there a better way to arrange icons on my iPhone than by trying to drag them around on the phone itself. I can't seem to get it to work very well and usually mess it up.

Apple provided a better way of organizing iPhone icons in iTunes 9. In the past, I always tried to arrange my icons on the iPhone the same way you do, by dragging them around on the device itself. This isn't as easy as it sounds, especially if you have larger hands.

Now, with iTunes 9 or higher installed and your iPhone connected to your Mac or PC, launch iTunes, click on the Applications tab, and you will not only see the apps you have installed on your iPhone, but the iPhone screens and the placement of the icons as well.

Simply drag the icons around in iTunes and put them in the desired order. The next time you sync, the icons are arranged identically on your iPhone as well. It's so much easier.

I recently bought a new Mac, and I decided not to migrate years of cruft over to a pristine Snow Leopard install. I also decided to shed years of stale workflow and adopt a new way of doing things. Enter the power tools: software that augments the power and performance of OS X to do things faster and smarter. I'll examine some general system enhancements and look at a couple of powerful Mac/iPhone app combos that really work well together.

Step one was finding a replacement for my beloved QuickSilver. I had abandoned QS well over a year ago due to performance issues on most of my Macs, but after a nagging pain in my wrist surfaced, I realized I had to find more keyboard shortcuts. Enter LaunchBar, which fills in for 90% of what QuickSilver used to do for me. LaunchBar is one Ctrl-Space (configurable, of course) away from Spotlight searching, Google searching, application launching, math calculations and much, much more. LaunchBar is $25 around $35 per seat, and worth taking 15 minutes to learn the basics. Go ahead, hate me for giving up QS, but try LaunchBar before you hurl the insults.

Next I needed a better way to juggle 3 Gmail accounts. But I also needed a way to track the metric ton of inbox items that flow through those email conduits. The solution was the combination of MailPlane and Things. I had really dedicated my heart to Toodledo, but there's one trick I couldn't replicate on any setup (The Hit List included): when I get an email in MailPlane, I can select some text and press Shift-Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-0 and the Things HUD pops up and autofills the notes section with a link to the email itself. It is awesome. Not perfect, mind you, but a huge thing for me.

Read on for more power tools and tips.

Apple has rejected another app from the app store because it considers it too similar to one of Apple's own apps, and thus would cause "user confusion."

The app is a front-end for Gmail, called MailWrangler, and allows users to check many Gmail accounts at once (unlike MobileSafari). It offers a similar interface as Gmail's iPhone-optimized web interface, which shows conversation threads in context, and allows for starring conversations (unlike Mail). The app developer says it works much like MailPlane on the desktop.

Nevertheless, Apple rejected the app because of the similarity, in Apple's view, and also due to other issues related to editing account information.

This app's rejection follows that of Podcaster for allegedly similar reasons. As we mentioned in the Talkcast two weeks ago, this could be related to the user backlash from I Am Rich. Whether it's too permissive or too strict, Apple will always have unhappy people when it issues rejections like this.

[Via WebMonkey.]

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird, it's Superman; no, it's Mailplane 2 Beta!

The wizards at uncomplex gmbh have posted a beta of an upgrade to Mailplane. In case you're not familiar with it, Mailplane is a "Mac-friendly" front-end to Gmail with a powerful feature set, and a quick fly-by of the upgrade revealed even more Gmail goodness:

• Full support for Gmail 2
• mailplane:// URLs for accessing and searching your Gmail database
• A free OmniFocus clipping plugin for creating new tasks containing links to conversations in Mailplane
• Better photo attachment customization
• Assign different notification sounds and colors to specific Gmail accounts
• The ability to post Google Spreadsheet forms
• Integration with Mac OS X Address Book
• A "Do Not Disturb" mode
• and a few dozen more improvements!

Once the beta program is complete, Mailplane 2 will be free to registered users or $24.95 for single users.

Thanks for the tip, Chris!

We've discussed the excellent stand-alone Gmail client Mailplane several times. While there remain a few holes here and there, I consider it a must-have application for anybody who needs to manage multiple Gmail accounts. After about half a year in beta, the developer Ruben Bakker has declared the latest Mailplane beta as ready for Leopard. In addition, he has announced that it will soon be released for sale at a price of $24.95. There will also be a "family option" for an additional $8 that allows users to install it on up to 5 machines in a single household.

Mailplane remains in beta "for a short while," and you can still request a beta invitation.

Though Mailplane is still in private beta, you can apply to be a tester.

Mailplane, the email client that integrates Gmail with Mac OS X, has released v1.5 with an updated iPhoto plug-in that brings compatibility for the new iLife '08 version. This now makes Mailplane's iPhoto plug-in compatible with versions 5, 6 and the new 7, which I prefer calling iPhoto '08 to avoid version confusion. You can simply use the Check for Updates command from Mailplane's application menu, and the developer recommends everyone update even if they don't have the latest iLife; turns out the current beta version expires on August 30th. A separate new version with bug fixes and new features is 'coming soon.'

We keep teasing you with news about the as yet unreleased Mailplane, but this excellent dedicated Gmail client just keeps getting better. The latest update to 1.46 adds several very cool features, most importantly multiple account support. You can now use Mailplane to access different Gmail accounts, simply by double-clicking the account name in the drawer. This release also adds a menubar notifier, which very cleverly includes multiple accounts at the same time so you can check for new mail easily from either account. Finally, there's also a new text snippet feature that allows you to easily insert often typed text.

I've been using Mailplane for a few months and I must say that it is shaping up to be a stellar release. It's one that I'll spend my own hard-earned money on when it comes out. Unfortunately, Mailplane is still in closed beta, but you can apply to be a beta tester.

Since we last mentioned Mailplane, the Gmail client that integrates with Mac OS X, it's received a series of minor updates that have fixed bugs and added a few features. The most recent update, however, has added some significant new features such as a 'Mail PDF with Mailplane' print dialog plugin, customizable toolbar, clickable Growl notifications that take you to the specific message and - to my personal delight - simple instructions for enabling rich text editing when composing messages. This is big news because Mailplane uses WebKit - the same open source web rendering engine Safari is based on - to interact with Gmail, which means Mailplane is also limited by WebKit's inability to provide rich text editing features like bold, justification, colors, etc.

Fortunately, turning on rich text editing is as simple as downloading the latest nightly app build of WebKit and telling Mailplane where you put it. This won't overwrite Safari or interfere with it in any other way, so this process is pretty low-risk for gaining rich text editing, but seemingly only in Gmail (either in Mailplane or using WebKit itself as a browser). I tried surfing to a few other sites and couldn't get rich text widgets to appear in any of them.

Either way, this is great news for Mailplane users who want to join the rest of the internet in using some text formatting goodness when composing their messages. If you need a refresher on what Mailplane is all about, check our previous post and photo gallery for a brief tour, or head over to the Mailplane site to read more and sign up for the private beta.

The fusion of web services and desktop software is a holy grail of computing bliss that few can claim. The web can often be clunky and limited by the constraints of a browser, while the data in your desktop software takes a swim with your MacBook when you drop it at the beach. Anyone who has ever gone back and forth on whether to use the convenience and innovation of Gmail on the web vs. the power and integration of a desktop email client like Apple's Mail.app knows what we're talking about. While the melding of these two universes might seem like an impossible hope to some, Mailplane is a new desktop Gmail client in private beta that just may be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Continue reading for the details on just what Mailplane is about, and be sure to check out our screenshot gallery for a taste of how well (so far) Gmail and the desktop are getting along.