Picking on iPhone mail

A few things are making me crazy with iPhone mail

If you have more than one account, you keep having to up the tree and down the tree ... up to folder list, up to mail accounts list, down to folders list, down to inbox ... to check the inbox for each account.

You can only have one signature, which is used for every account. So do I use my work signature, and get all formal on my friends and family, or do I use a personal signature, and get all casual on my work associates and clients?

If you have a bunch of unread mail, you can't just blow down the list (using the up/down arrows in message view) to mark them all read. Rather, you have to wait for each one to get downloaded and rendered before the mail app will mark it read.

And a question I haven't spent the time to noodle through. If I am POPing mail into a mailbox, with "Get 25 most recent messages" checked, will the iPhone keep my mailbox at 25 messages? Or will it continue to download the 25 most recent, but leave older messages in my inbox, eventually causing me to have hundreds or thousands of messages in there? And if so, will I get carpal tunnel trying to swish-delete all of them late one night while drinking a Guiness and watching bad TV?

.Mac doesn't like my friends

.Mac doesn't like my friends,
originally uploaded by billwesterman.

For some reason, about every four months, .Mac decides to delete all of the contacts in my Address Book. When I see this message, I just make a backup of Address Book, let .Mac do its thing, and then restore and resync. Bleh.

Overheard at Anthropologie

"I just ordered a pair of those off eBay. They're cute, but so expensive in here. I mean, they look almost the same, they're knockoffs from China, but they're so much cheaper."

Fistfight: Apple mail.app and IMAP

So I'm trying to get Apple's mail.app to work with an IMAP provider, but having some serious issues with it, and I think it's something going on with Mail. Across multiple service providers - AppRiver, FuseMail, and others - everything sets up and works fine. I can send and receive mail, create and delete IMAP folders, everything. However, when I try to drag-and-drop a set of folders from my Mac onto the IMAP-hosted folder hierarchy, it'll copy a subset of the folder content and then choke, leaving the other folders blank or not copying them at all.

In specific, say you have the folder A, and inside of it, you have folders B and C, and all of these folders contains multiple e-mail messages. If you drag it from Mail.app into an IMAP or Exchange server, it'll copy all three folders, but only copy the contents of folder B. Folders A and C will remain empty, even after hand-forcing a sync for the server, relaunching Mail.app, and/or multiple rounds of swearing.

The only service provider that I've found to date that works fine is - surprise - .Mac mail. I've been able to recreate this other behavior across two Apple machines, both Intel and PPC, so I'm pretty sure it's here to stay. I've giving it about 2-3 more days of poking around mail servers, and then I'm going back to (cough) POP for a while.

Update: First call to AppleCare lasts 25 minutes, of which I speak to someone for a total of 3-4 minutes, who has realistically never heard of Apple Mail, much less IMAP - and then puts me on indefinite hold. Second call to AppleCare lands me in the lap of someone who, when I say "I'm copying folders from my local Mail folders onto an IMAP server, and they're not completely copying", says "Are you connecting to the server from Safari, or from 'Go to Folder' in Finder?"

Update: Apple's suggestion is to re-email myself all of my old e-mail to the new server. *cough*

Migrating from one iPhone to another in 20 easy steps

When my wife and I were in line to get our iPhone (yes, we stood in line, sheepishly), they ran out of iPhones just as they got to her. So she got a 4GB, and I got nothing. However, being the classy girl she is, she ordered me an 8GB on the spot, and gave me her 4GB for the interim. This from the girl who normally doesn't give a flip about technology, but had the iPhone release date on her calendar months in advance.

Anyway, I got the 4GB all set up and worked out some of the kinks with our setup, when my 8GB arrived. So I timidly set out to swap phones, afraid that some obscure activation problem would brick both of our devices. Long story short, it worked quite well. Here's the details on how I did it, and some tips if you're considering doing the same:

Step 1: A few things don't make it through to my new device, notably bookmarked YouTube videos, my Yahoo! mail configuration and e-mails, and if I remember correctly, Google map bookmarks and recent locations. Fortunately, as a precaution I had jotted all of this information down beforehand. Also, check your voicemail messages, in case they get deleted during the transition (they shouldn't).

Step 2: Put the old iPhone in the cradle and let it sync completely. Go ahead and import any photos you've taken for good measure.

Step 3: Shut down both the old and the new iPhones (assuming the new one is on) by holding down the top button for about 10 seconds.

Step 4: Swap the SIM cards from one phone to the other.

Step 5: Startup the new iPhone. It will say "Incorrect SIM. Please connect to iTunes to reactivate iPhone." Put the old iPhone aside for a moment.

Step 6: If you've been monkeying around with your new iPhone, you'll want to reset it so that it doesn't confuse the sync process. On the new iPhone, choose Settings | General | Reset | Erase All Content and Settings. It'll say "This will delete all media and data. All settings will be reset as well." Go ahead and continue, and the phone will eventually reboot. After the reboot, you'll get "Incorrect SIM. Please connect to iTunes to reactivate iPhone."

Step 7: Put the new iPhone in the cradle and iTunes will launch.

Step 8: iTunes will say "Let's get started". Go ahead and continue, and it will ask for the current mobile number (put in the number that matches the SIM), zip code, and last 4 of your social security number. Continue, and iTunes will verify the account information.

Step 9: iTunes will say "A data plan has been created to take advantage of the innovative features of the iPhone...". Scratch your head, and continue.

Step 10: Sign in to iTunes with your Apple ID. Continue.

Step 11: Agree to the iTunes and AT&T conditions.

Step 12: iTunes will ask you to "Review your information", will say "This may erase all voicemail messages" and then "Please wait while AT&T is processing your activation. This may take up to 3 minutes."

Step 13: iTunes will say "Congratulations, AT&T is activating your iPhone. Your iPhone will notify you when activation is complete." Hit continue.

Step 14: You will get "An iPhone has been previously synced with this computer" with the options of "Set up as a new iPhone" and "Restore from the backup of [xxx]". Go ahead and choose the restore option. Hit continue.

Step 15: "Restore in progress" shows up on the iPhone, and eventually the phone will show "Settings have been restored. Please leave iPhone connected, it will appear in iTunes after it restarts."

Step 16: Enter your voicemail password on the iPhone.

Step 17: I noticed here that the new iPhone didn't appear in iTunes. I detached and reinserted it, and iTunes said "Your iPhone contains diagnostic information..." and offered to send it to Apple. I complied, and afterwards the phone began to sync.

Step 18: iTunes synchronized my files back onto the iPhone, with one caveat: my previous settings on the iPhone "Info" tab in iTunes were not restored, and I had put checkmarks next to the things I wanted (Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks), and also chose "Replace information on this iPhone" for those items just for good measure. Selected Sync to finish up the process.

Step 19: Tentative smile, as it appears that all my stuff has been restored, except for my WiFi password, YouTube bookmarks, and e-mail.

Step 20: Since e-mail didn't reset properly, I had to delete and recreate the Yahoo! account, after which my e-mail trickled back onto the device from the server.

After all that, I chose Settings | General | Reset | Erase All Content and Settings on my old iPhone, and did a first-time sync with it on my wife's Mac, which went swimmingly.

Using the iPhone outside of coverage area

So I'm using my iPhone in the mountains where I have wifi but no AT&T cell coverage. It works as expected, but there are two glitches:

• There's no way to turn off the cell radio without also turning off wifi, so it spends the whole day searching for a signal, which is hard on the battery
• Every time I go into mail, it pops up a dialog complaining that it can't connect to EDGE. I think the problem here is that it can see a cell network of some sort, but it's always at 0-1 bars and never has made a connection to this network.

Twitter, Del.icio.us recent, and Del.icio.us cloud

That was much easier than I thought. Just moved a bunch of my bookmarks into Del.icio.us and tagged them, then set up this page to show recent updates to Del.icio.us plus my tag cloud. Then, at around midnight, decided to add in Twitter. Total time for all of this, including HTML customization? Less than two hours. Sweet.

Now iPhone-friendly!

Woot! I've modified the blog template so that it displays nicely on the iPhone. Just added this line right after my DOCTYPE:

<meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=0.75" />

Now when it loads, it's scaled and centered just right. Thanks to these guys for helping get me started.

C drive backed up on floppy

Watching Boiler Room and everything is going swimmingly - I'm all engaged, watching the show, beer in hand - when suddenly the FBI guy tells the main character to back up his C drive on floppy. Floppy? He might as well be talking on a StarTac.

eBay reminders to self

Things I keep forgetting when putting items on eBay for sale:

1. Don't put things on eBay for sale. Don't put them on Craigslist, either. Just don't buy them in the first place.
2. Say "no bids accepted from people with zero feedback"
3. Say "Payment due in 3 days after auction end. No international shipping, no in-person pickup."

Current iPhone project

Ilana let me activate and use her 4GB, but now my 8GB has come in the mail. I had to activate the 8GB under her name with her phone number, so now the project is to get me on the 8GB and her on the 4GB. I know it's more than just swapping SIMs, because of all of the other info on my (her) iPhone. Wonder if the notes and such are backed up to the computer, and if they'll show up on the new one.

Latest Neeko snack

Found him chewing on a dead bird that never made it full term. In the living room.

iPhone Visual voicemail

One would think that visual voicemail would display a photo of the caller, wouldn't they?

Now I want to be a librarian

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers. Mmmm, quiet place, internet access, helping people find information, probably a nice grassy area outside.

Mailing photos from the iPhone

A couple of issues with mailing photos from the iPhone:
- It appears to be resizing photos to 640x480 when I email them to Flickr
- It won't allow me to attach more than one photo to an email

Destroyed by Neeko

Our new Bichon Frise pup, now a one-year-old, likes to eat things.

4 Xbox controllers
1 Motorola bluetooth headset
1 Nintendo DS charger
7 Crayons
5 pieces of clothing
1 Driver's License
3 Pokemon cards
3 cage liner pads
Many, many Legos
A snail or two
12 linear inches of carpeting
7 wicker baskets
2 pairs favorite shoes
8 pairs regular shoes
3 couch pillows
2 pieces makeup products
4 markers
1 stuffed animal
1 lovingly created iPhoto book
4 books
3 comforter covers
1 balsa wood airplane
7 rok'n'bok balls
28 plant leaves

Trainer coming next week.

iPhone buzzkill

Friend: "we were at the medical center yesterday"
Friend: "so many nerdy rich dads sitting in the lounge with iphones"
Me: "ouch, that hurt"
Me: "right in the damn gut, man"