grapefish.org

verizon iphone

2010-06-22T11:23:00.001-05:00

Please, just stop with this. It isn't going to happen as long as Verizon is a CDMA carrier and the iPhone uses SIM cards (GSM).

When Verizon starts using SIMs (likely in 2012 or afterward) as they transition to 4G / LTE, then it's possibility.

Until then, let's just give it a rest.

screen

2010-06-18T12:16:00.000-05:00

If you haven't checked out the man page for the Unix utility screen lately, you may want to refresh your brain on just how many amazing things it's capable of.

review: gyazmail

2010-04-06T08:48:00.007-05:00

GyazMail is a commercial ($18.00 for single-user license), Cocoa-based mail client for OS X published by GyazSquare.

Setup and Configuration

A mail expert would find it easy to set up, although not everyone might. The user must visit at least two panes in Preferences: Accounts to get mail working, and the Receiving tab in particular contains a number of esoteric settings that probably should be hiding behind an "Advanced..." button.

The main dialog includes thoughtful "Required" labels for fields that must be filled in.

Required settings for many, if not most, email servers are here, plus additional

caching and timeout values that many, if not most, email users can ignore.

Probably the most unusual thing about GyazMail, and the first thing that I found frustrating, is its lack of HTML composition - when creating a new email message, you can only do so in plain text. No font selection, styles, colors, or the like are possible. The reason I was confused at first is that I assumed there was a setting somewhere to enable rich text formatting of some kind or another, and I just missed where it was. Alas, there is no support for it at all, although GyazMail does a good job of displaying messages that are received which have fancy markup, images, and links.

After a while I didn't really miss it, but I don't typically embellish my messages with much in the way of bold, green text on yellow backgrounds or the like. Someone used to being able to just italicize or bold a selection of text, though, might find this lack more limiting, and quite frankly, it's just odd in a mail client meant for use in today's world. Support for markup in composition is promised for version 2, but no schedule for that version's release is available.

Other, less common features that are currently not included are built-in encryption and digital signature support, support for Spotlight, LDAP address books, and NNTP newsgroups. The latter two are probably only useful for a tiny percentage of email users today, but digital signatures and full message encryption are likely to become more and more common—and eventually the default—for most messaging on the internet. Today, though, I view inclusion of support for encryption in email clients as a nice plus, but don't take away any points for the lack of it.

Day to Day

Two other annoyances with GyazMail surfaced after a few days of testing. One is that the toolbar buttons for Reply, Reply to All, and Forward are confusingly similar:

Quick - which is which?

The default toolbar includes text labels which help in identification, but I had trouble picking them out at first since one of the first things I tend to do with most applications is switch to a small icon size and turn off text labels for the toolbars. The more highly stylized an icon becomes, the more attractive it may be, but the harder it becomes to identify its purpose. By way of example, here is my toolbar for GyazMail, customized a bit to include functions I use frequently:

How many of these functions can you identify by icon alone?

The last thing to mention about GyazMail is that it sometimes exhibited poor IMAP performance, particularly when synchronizing large folders it hadn't seen before. For example, it took almost twice as long to synchronize my Archive folder as did Apple's Mail. For the most part, its performance is good.

Overall Score: 7 out of a possible 10

I could live with GyazMail as my everyday client, I think. There are a few odd things about it, for sure, but in general it does what it should, in most cases the way it should, and produces few problems. If the promised features for version 2.0 make it in, and 2.0 is released at some point, it'll be worth another look.

It lost points for lack of HTML or other markup composition, confusing and occasionally redundant option dialogs, and lack of Spotlight integration.

culling the herd

2010-03-20T21:11:00.005-05:00

The field of email clients I'm going to evaluate got a lot thinner over the last couple days, due to my decision to set them all up so I could move easily from one to another. Since I use IMAP on my mail server, I can read and send mail from any IMAP client and the view of my mail should be consistent from any other client I choose to use.

I ran into a couple snags immediately, though, with PowerMail, GNUMail, and Zimbra Desktop - all of them failed to authenticate against the server. I don't use terribly complex settings at mail.grapefish.org; the IMAP port is secured with TLS/SSL and runs on the standard encrypted port 993, and the SMTP server for authenticated submission runs on port 587, and requires TLS and user login.

GNUMail was able to read mail from the IMAP port, but couldn't send ("SMTP authentication failed" was the message). Neither PowerMail nor Zimbra Desktop could even manage to get that far; they both failed to even log in to the IMAP server. This is basic stuff. The bare minimum an email client should be able to do is log in and retrieve mail, and log in to send it. Having gone through setting up 10 email clients to do just that in the space of 2 days, I was struck by the bewildering array of options, choices, and errata one is faced with to get mail flowing.

There are, in general, two ways to get email from a server, either via the Post Office Protocol (POP) mechanism, or the mentioned remote mailbox Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP). Both have both unencrypted and encrypted methods that typically run on standard, widely recognized ports. There is essentially only one way to send mail, through the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP. It can also be either encrypted or not, and uses one of three ports depending on the server configuration. The server at mail.grapefish.org doesn't deviate from these standards, and a number of mail clients work without issue using it.

So why all the trouble? I was, as I mentioned, struck with just how many ways software managed to present the configuration options necessary to get email working correctly, depending on which type of server you use. IMAP or POP, with SSL, TLS, TLS if available (whatever that means), or No encryption. This was sometimes described as "connect securely", sometimes just with a bunch of checkboxes or radio buttons and a method to customize the port, if necessary. You could provide a username in most cases, a password in some, with the option to save it or not. SMTP setup was similar, but added the wrinkle of having to know what type of user authentication was required, PLAIN, LOGIN, GSSAPI, etc. etc.

I haven't thought much about this in the past, knowing exactly what to set for my server (having set it up) and moving on with my day. Setting up options for this in your mail client is something you do once, and usually never again. But I couldn't get any of these three software packages to work. I didn't spend much time trying, though, because (and here's where we get to the point of this post) I couldn't fathom why I should have to.

The experience brought to mind a recent article from Matt Legend Gemmel entitled Engineer Thinking:

Software cannot just wash its hands of issues of technical complexity or uncertainty; it’s not remotely OK to simply offload that work to the user. Software intended to help with a given task has an implicit expertise; we assume that our photo-editing software knows more about photo-editing than we do. Expertise carries a duty of care whereby the expert is expected to provide the benefits of expertise without the full cost of knowledge. That’s why experts are useful! The same holds for software.

Why didn't those programs just set themselves up? It's programmatically trivial to detect on which ports a mail server is listening, and whether or not encryption is supported. Once you have the user's credentials, it's further trivial to verify that they're working correctly. If they aren't, detecting which of a couple different reasons are most likely the issue. The only information a mail client should require to set up server access are the user's email address, the login name (if different), and the password.

Postbox, a commercial version of Mozilla Thunderbird, once told the user's email address, will attempt to discover the name of the mail server by trying common URLs. When I provided my email address, it tried "smtp.grapefish.org", "imap.grapefish.org", "grapefish.org", and so on. Where it tripped up, though, was that the email server for grapefish.org is mail.grapefish.net, which is in a different domain. This is a little uncommon, I suppose, but it's getting more prevalent as people move personal domains to services like grapefish and Google Apps. What I found interesting about that is, again, it's trivial to discover what the mail server is for any given domain with a simple DNS query. Why didn't Postbox try? You wouldn't have to attempt connections to many different likely URLs, none of which, in this case, existed.

Matt Legend Gemmel:

The primary expression of expertise is in knowing effortlessly what the right course of action is in a given situation, and carrying it out without micro-management or endless justification. Make your software such an expert, and a guide and assistant to the user. Don’t force the user to make your software’s decisions for it, or to repeatedly bow down before its keen grasp of the vagaries of choice and uncertainty.

Updated: Postbox was the mail client that attempted to discover the mail server URL, not Seamonkey/Thunderbird.

• 2010: an email odyssey

2010-03-18T06:49:00.004-05:00

where I've been

I wanted to claim that the reason I haven't posted in so long was that I was working on this post, but that just wouldn't be true. I don't really have a reason, except maybe that we had a baby. Since that one doesn't require much in the way of justification, we'll just go with it.

I may or may not have posted in the past about trying to find a good email client. Well, truthfully, the perfect email client. There may not be such a beast, and frankly I don't believe that there is yet, but I'm willing to look for it. I've done a bit of evaluation of different mail clients in the past, but this one is going to be as comprehensive as I can manage.

what this is all about

Ever since I switched to OS X on my main workstation I'd been using Apple's built-in Mail client, which is not bad. I grew fed up with it at some point, though, and it was due to it not being able to read mail consistently from the several servers I asked it to do so from. The most problematic? Apple's own MobileMe server. There were a couple other issues that I don't recall offhand, so I'll be re-evaluating Mail as part of this larger project.

First, the ground rules: I'm looking at desktop mail clients for OS X. I don't have a need for my email to be cross-platform, as when I don't have access to my main computer and I want to check my mail, I've found my iPhone to be sufficient. Interestingly, it's the iPhone's mail client that I ultimately end up judging all others against. It's simple, fast, and it works. It meets most of my other criteria, too. But more on that in a minute.

why not gmail?

It's a fair question. The biggest reason I don't use gmail for my primary mail client is pretty simple - I'd have to turn over my mail handling to them, and I run my own mail server the way I want to run it. I don't like how they handle spam, I don't like adds in my mail interface, and I don't know exactly what they do with any information they might collect.

I have a decent web interface to email on my own server, which is nice in the pinch times I don't have access to my desktop app and my iPhone doesn't work for whatever reason. It's not good enough for every day, but then neither is gmail, as far as I'm concerned.

the process

I'll be spending a week with each of the clients I've selected as my exclusive email client, or until I can't stand it anymore, whichever comes first. If that latter bit sounds like a cop-out, well I guess it is, but there are certain fatal flaws that I just can't ignore for a minute, never mind a week. Case in point: GNUMail was going to be in the running, but when I first fiddled with it I found that it couldn't authenticate to my SMTP server, which made it impossible to send mail. Sending mail is not only a critical feature, it's one I never even thought about listing as a critical feature, since it's so basic to the idea of what an email client is. I've since learned that I can probably make it work by adding a setting to the MTA on my server, which handles SMTP: broken_sasl_auth_clients. Anyone who knows me at least a little will know how likely it is I'll turn that on. Not considering GNUMail doesn't exactly leave me starved for choice, though.

the contenders

Apple Mail
Eudora
GyazMail
Mailsmith
Mozilla Seamonkey
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mulberry
Opera Mail
Outspring Mail
Postbox
PowerMail
Zimbra Desktop

Of these, Apple Mail and Outspring Mail are my former and current clients. The deciding factor with Outspring when I chose it last year was that it supported data detectors, like Apple Mail, which I find handy. It's not a requirement, though, since I don't use them often enough to really make a difference.

I also currently use Microsoft Entourage, which is the mail client in the Mac version of their Office suite, but I only use it for work email. Both it and Apple Mail will work with an Exchange server, but since they've released the Web Services Edition of Entourage, it works well and I've found no reason to stop using it. I don't use it for my personal email since I like having a separate client for that. There's a separation of duty, and for whatever reason, a separation of requirements somewhere in my brain that keeps Entourage in it's own space.

Lastly, I will mention that I'm greatly looking forward to the release of Letters, which is a new, open source collaborative effort that comes from some of the best minds in the Mac community. John Gruber of Daring Fireball is heading up the project for his stint as President of the project; his job is to ship version 1.0. I can't wait to try it.

status so far

Since GNUMail didn't even make it out of the gate, I've got GyazMail currently serving as my mail client. I'm not sure exactly in which order I'll try them, except that Outspring and Apple Mail will be last. You might also wonder why, if I've been using Outspring for a year, I'm looking to switch. Well, that's a longer story, but it has to do with the upgrades to my mail server that I've made recently, and Outspring's inability to filter based on custom headers. This wasn't a big issue before, but it is now, since it no longer behaves the way I want. But that's getting into territory I'll reserve for later, when I review that client.

Until then, stay tuned!

windows 7 rc

2009-07-19T23:25:00.000-05:00

The Release Candidate for Microsoft's upcoming version of Windows has been available for a while now, and I have been installing the betas in virtual machines to have a look at what they've come up with.

I fired up the installation of the RC, and was presented with the following choices:

What's interesting is that a choice is given; I suspect this is only true of the RC installer. Since I would plan to use Professional, that's what I selected to install.

The problem is, though, that the product keys that Microsoft delivers to the testers along with these install images is only valid for the Ultimate version. If you select another version at this screen, the install will fail at the product key entry dialog with the vague error "The product key is not valid for the current Windows SKU."

hp calculators available for iphone

2009-06-24T19:55:00.000-05:00

MacWorld reports that HP classic scientific calculators are now available for the iPhone, including the 12c and 15C.

Nifty, but a bit spendy. I'm tempted to indulge myself anyway, those things were just the business back in the day (and in many ways, they still are). A functional—and useful—anachronism is always a delight.

f1 schism?

2009-06-19T06:13:00.001-05:00

The BBC are reporting a possible breakaway championship by the leading teams in Formula 1 for the 2010 season.

Wow.

• "tco"

2009-06-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of talk on the web these days about the new iPhone, and the prices, and what people are calling "TCO" or total cost of ownership.

The people whining about the upgrade pricing from AT&T are usually those folks who bought a new 3G phone last year, and now are surprised to find that AT&T are going to hold them to the contract they signed and charge them for an early upgrade. You know that $199 you paid last June for the iPhone 3G? Well, that's the contract price, and the contract is 2 years. If you want to upgrade early, you pay more for the new equipment. This would be true of any phone bought from AT&T before upgrade eligibility, but all the spin is that it's some mass scheme to rake iPhone users over the coals. That makes me go "Hmm."

However, there is something to whine about here, and it's not the cost of the phone - it's the cost of the plan. And this is partly preface to the TCO whiners, except that it's a legitimate complaint I haven't seen anyone make.

The whole idea behind the contracts the carriers make you sign is that it allows them to charge you less for the hardware upfront. They call this "subsidizing", but what I'd like to know is this: if I get a deal on the hardware for a contract, why can't I pay less per month if I buy the phone outright? I think this is where the real cause for concern is. You don't get a discount if you don't choose a subsidized phone. So you might as well take advantage, even if this means you can only upgrade once in two years.

Well, the truth actually is, you can upgrade as often as you like, but you'll pay full price for the hardware. Which brings us back to the subsidy question, and why you can't have a less expensive monthly plan if you're not paying your carrier back for the low cost phone.

Lastly, our folks who talk about the total cost of ownership. They'll tell you that your new 16GB iPhone 3Gs doesn't cost $199 - oh, no. It costs you a whopping $1,855. Where do they get that from? Well, they add up the cost of the phone itself ($199), the cost of the cheapest monthly service plan available at AT&T ($39 per month for two years = $936), and the required data plan for the 3G and 3Gs iPhones ($30 per month for two years = $720); multiply the service plans by the 24 months in the contract, and your new phone costs you $1,855.

That's a lot to pay, isn't it? Especially when compared to the multitude of phones you can get for free, even from AT&T. But wait - if we're including the monthly service in that iPhone's price, don't we have to include it in the free phone's price, as well? You're not getting that free phone without signing a two year contract, either. So let's add that back in, at $39 per month: your free phone is now costing you $936. While still less than your iPhone, that does change the picture some.

Now, if we compare the iPhone to a more reasonable competitor, like the Blackberry, we'll have to add in that mandatory data plan charge as well. That brings our total to $1,656. The subsidized price of the least expensive Blackberry is $99, for a total of $1,755, which is of course only $100 less than your iPhone costs. Opt for the less expensive $99 iPhone 3G if you don't need the new features, and your price difference evaporates completely.

The point here is that any phone with a 2 year contract is going to cost you some money - almost a thousand dollars, in fact. That's not free by any stretch of the imagination. It's also a good way to see why you should compare carriers and phones, if you're not interested in a specific phone or manufacturer, it's possible you can get the same hardware from T-Mobile or Verizon or Sprint. And then comparing your total cost over the length of the contract is good advice; you could save a significant amount if the fees are lower and the service levels are comparable.

So shop around, but do make sure any comparison is like for like, and includes all the applicable charges on both sides.

why apple wins

2009-06-09T17:40:00.000-05:00

Steve Gillmor has an article up explaining why Why Apple Wins Every Time.

I think he's right. What's been happening at Apple, from the changes in the Macs to the iPhones and iPods, right down to the Airport Extremes and Apple TVs, is all part of a recipe that adds up to changing the way people live with technology.

I said it a couple years ago, actually, but when people tie it all together, it'll be amazing. Parts of it already are. Apple's competition really should be looking at what they're doing, but not enough of them are, and the ones that do are copying, which isn't going to be good enough.

steps to a better world, part III

2009-06-09T17:36:00.001-05:00

Give Fair Warning

This one is pretty simple - give a heads up when something kooky is on the way. You'll know when, and when you know, warn the people it'll affect.

One of the ways in which the world could so easily be made a better place is to have people use their fucking turn indicator while driving a car. Every time.

last day dream

2009-05-21T11:19:00.003-05:00

A brilliant short film from Chris Milk.

"Last Day Dream" a man watches his life pass before him

From Daring Fireball.

computers in the media

2009-05-20T14:37:00.000-05:00

Starring the Computer is a neat website that details the appearance of computers in movies and television.

It's well detailed, and I'm impressed at the creator's ability to identify some of the more esoteric hardware from the sometimes poor shots that are available.

From TechCrunch.

leaving out the winner

2009-05-17T23:20:00.005-05:00

Here's what the top 10 places on this chart would have looked like had they included Nintendo in their rankings.

Google clocked in at a little over $200,000 in profit per employee, but Nintendo made a staggering $1.6M per employee in the same year.

From Daring Fireball.

snapshots

2009-05-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

Thierry Legault takes some pretty incredible photographs of some difficult to capture events.

His latest shows the shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble telescope silhouetted against the sun, in a transit that lasted only 0.8 seconds.

The really neat thing about Thierry is that he uses a portable telescope and a Canon 50D digital SLR; not a mountaintop observatory and millions of dollars of imaging equipment.

brilliant

2009-05-15T09:07:00.001-05:00

This is just about the best idea I've heard of in quite a while. Eden's mom taught her - and she subsequently taught me - that undergarments are no place to skimp. I don't buy cheap shoes anymore, either. It simply isn't worth it.

My only question is why Blacksocks waited a decade before coming to the U.S. market.

steps to a better world, part II

2009-05-15T08:40:00.001-05:00

Do no harm.

I used to call this one "leave things as you found them", but have since modified it slightly to emphasize the idea that, at the very least, you should endeavor to leave things in no worse condition than you found them.

There are plenty of everyday examples, not the least of which is making some small effort to avoid darkening anyone's day by their having had the fortune of encountering you. The next step, actually trying to improve the condition of the spaces through which you move, is the logical one to take.

• standing up

2009-05-12T06:06:00.002-05:00

Sometimes the right thing to do is the hard thing to do. For a person, this can mean having to give up something that is desirable to be on the right side of your conscience. For a company, this can mean taking a stand on an issue, even when not doing so is permitted, and even protected, by the highest law of the land.

Here are two reasons I am no longer on Facebook, and why I will not return.

Facebook needs to do what is right, not hide behind what is allowed.

logic and emotion

2009-05-10T09:41:00.000-05:00

A good article on engineering and design, with Google as the example, from Lukas Mathis at ignore the code.

steps to a better world, part I

2009-05-06T19:45:00.000-05:00

Mind your business.

At least a little explanation is in order here. I don't say "mind your own business", because sometimes, minding business that is not your own is what you should be doing. The important part is that your affairs are minded - taken care of. That you should keep your nose out of others' issues is unimportant.

Take care of what's on your plate, and let the others take care of theirs.

to err

2009-05-05T05:59:00.001-05:00

Never tell anyone how to drink their liquor.

why some old habits die hard

2009-04-27T18:08:00.000-05:00

I ask myself sometimes why I continue to read slashdot, and then I come across a comment like this that explains it to me:

See, this is exactly why I adore /. Name one other popular site where you'd get ten bites on a troll that 99% of the population doesn't even understand.

Right down to the Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag? signature. 10/10 for you, sir.

And from later in the same conversation:

Monster cables, dude, Monster cables...
>Nah, I tested some ethernet cables I made with 4 pairs of wire coathangers and they performed just as well as the Monster Cable ethernet cord!
>>Bet crimping that was a bitch

I read slashdot because after all these years, it still makes me laugh.

apologists

2009-04-23T18:56:00.000-05:00

It's pretty easy to find a Windows or Mac OS "fanboy" - just post an opinion in any well-traveled discussion site on the internet espousing either, and the rallying cry will go out. There's no shortage of fans of either operating environment, and there's no shortage of wool they'll willingly pull over their own eyes in defense of their pet OS.

A more interesting metric, to me, is to consider how easy it is to find a critic of Windows or Mac OS. It would be fascinating to see actual customer satisfaction results for both operating systems, and enough where you could throw out the obvious "such and such SUCKS" crowds that will invariably gather around either bonfire.

My hunch is that it's easier to find someone who dislikes Windows than it is to find someone who dislikes Mac OS. It certainly seems to be true in my own experience, anyway.

interfaces

2009-04-22T12:40:00.002-05:00

Lukas Mathis on Oberon, a quirky operating system from years past, which evolved from Xerox PARC like our more familiar GUI-based interfaces, but took a different path:

This essentially obsoletes concepts like virtual desktops, application switchers or Exposé since you have as much space as you need on your one desktop, and since you don’t need to rearrange windows in order to get an overview of your open stuff. It’s especially cool on netbooks with tiny screens.

pretty is better

2009-04-21T08:35:00.000-05:00

A List Apart on why looks are important to interfaces. Rather the corollory to what Steve Jobs once said: "Design is how it works."