Along with the MobileMe fixes that 10.5.6 brought along with it, Apple has updated it on the server side as well. Minor changes have been brought about for the Contacts, Calendars, Gallery, iDisk as well as the login screen.

Before you get excited, there still is no “Share File” button in iDisk that we have all longed for. The feature is still has a ‘coming soon’ status on the MobileMe iDisk feature page. Oh how I long to send those huge attachments, and just imagine the look on the face of the one who finds out how awesome my way of sending email attachments is. 

Nevertheless, I’m happy that Apple is constantly working on MobileMe. The detailed support document mentions features like “adds shortcut for creating new contact”, and “Long event titles now appear properly in Month view” when it comes to the Calendars. They have also included a “Tell a friend” link for MobileMe web galleries, although we’re still lacking photo comments to make this a Flickr alternative. Check out the full document for whole list. 

Unfortunately though, I could not test any of this, as MobileMe refused to log in (for the first time in months) and repeatedly told my Safari and Firefox browsers that Internet Explorer 7 is not fully supported. The desktop features work just fine though.

[Thanks Dan for the link up!]

I personally don’t use Gmail, since I much too much prefer MobileMe on the web and on the desktop, but I’ve heard a lot about Mailplane and how it really improves the Gmail experience on the desktop. With the recent release of Mailplane 2, it was the perfect time for me to take it for a spin. 

First, let me go over some of the things you can do with Mailplane 2. 

Version 2.0 sports many 41 features, including full Gmail 2 support, new Gmail add-ons and keyboard shortcuts, better account notifications, more ways to create email attachments, plus a new OmniFocus plugin.

That said I launched Mailplane 2. Basically a browser in a box, Mailplane loads the same familiar interface using the Safari WebKit engine, but the Mailplane toolbar features all kinds of bells and whistles that makes moving around your Gmail box a whole lot easier. 

I tried composing, replying, deleting emails and I noticed that it was much quicker than clicking through the links in the Gmail interface. I really liked the address book integration, where you can select a bunch of contacts from your address book and compose an email. Keyboard shortcut support make this an almost native app. Of course, besides the obvious Gmail support, MailPlane 2 features a bunch of other features that set it apart from the browser experience.

Bunch of features

Attachments and Media. Mailplane has direct access to your iLife media library. I liked the fact that you can just drag a file into the MailPlane window and it will automatically compose a new message with that file attached. If the file is a picture, MailPlane throws up a resize option to reduce the file size. And thankfully, it zips up folders and iWork document so you don’t have any problems on the other end. 

Built in Chat. I liked the built in Chat feature, including the video chat which Gmail now supports. I would have liked the chat window to have some kind of dock notification system to tell when there are new messages. Still it is handy to have just the chat window floating around without the full Gmail baggage. 

Multiple Accounts. This is a huge feature for those using multiple accounts. You can stay logged into both accounts at any time, and then switch between them at the click of a button. I’ve seen people having to use two different browsers to stay logged into a two accounts, so this is definitely a killer feature. 

Notifications. MailPlane puts notifications all over the place (and can be turned off wherever you don’t want them). The dock badge shows the mail count and you can even see the email headers by clicking the menubar icon. I’m not a growl user, but looking at the stock screenshots that looks like a helpful feature as well.

Screenshots. This is one of those features that really shows when a dev is thinking ahead of you. Click the screenshot button, MailPlane hides, and once you are done it is automatically attached to the message. Slick!

Overall

While I obviously won’t be using MailPlane on a regular basis, owing to my MobileMe worship, but I can’t see a better way to access Gmail on your Mac. You get the full power of Gmail’s interface and powerful search features, with the speed and richness of your desktop.

If you are a Gmail user I’d highly suggest you take MailPlane on a 30 day trial, after which it is $25 for a single license.

The MailPlane 2 Giveaway!

Here we are again with another giveaway. This time round we have licenses of MailPlane for, you guessed it, lucky winners! Our thanks to Ruben Bakker, the guy behind Mailplane for this offer. How do you win? The rules are simple.

1.  A single entry per person
2. Valid email address (only to contact the winner)
3. Download the trial and let us know what you think about it in a comment.
4. (Optional) Tweet or blog about it, with the words ‘@smokingapples’ and a shorturl back to this page for another entry into the draw.
5. (Optional) The dev wants to know whether a Windows version of Mailplane is a good idea. Your thoughts?

The winners of the giveaway are Blake and Rong. Congrats! 

A lot of people complain that their Gmail box doesn’t stay in sync across their devices, and the reason behind this is that Apple Mail, unlike the iPhone, uses POP3 by default instead of IMAP. It is very easy to get fooled, as Mail automatically configures your account for you, without entering any settings other than your username and password. So how do we get it to IMAP syncing then?

First things first, enable IMAP in your Gmail preferences. To do that, open Gmail in your browser, navigate to Settings » Forwarding and POP » Enable IMAP.

Once you are done there, open Apple Mail, and get to the Preferences. In the Accounts tab, click the + button at the bottom to add a new account. 

In the following screen, add your email and password, but uncheck Automatically set up account. 

In the Incoming Mail Server screen that follows, change the Account Type to IMAP, and the incoming mail server to imap.gmail.com. Enter your full Gmail address and password. Click Next.

In the Outgoing Mail Server screen, enter smtp.gmail.com in the outgoing mail server, and enter your full email ID into the username field. 

Accept all the following screens and take your account online. Mail will then take a while to sync your emails. Now any changes your make in Mail will reflect online, on the iPhone and any other email client set up with IMAP. Once the sync is complete, go to your Preferences » Accounts and delete the POP account from there. 

Additional Tip: You will notice that IMAP with Gmail adds a bunch of folders inside a [Gmail] folder in your sidebar. Inside this folder reside your Gmail folders like Sent Mail and Labels. Here’s an easy fix to put them in their respective places in the sidebar. Select the “Sent Mail” folder inside your [Gmail] folder, and from the menubar, select MailBox » Use This Mailbox For » Sent. You can’t set sync folders for your Labels or the All Mail folder, but this should help you get things better organised.

Any more tips you can share for Gmail Mail users, do let us know.

This week, we take the ‘App Store Day’ wagon to the folks over at Readdle and explore their A.I.Disk app for the iPhone.

We here at Smoking Apples are great fans of the iPhone and 3 of us already have a MobileMe subscription. As much as we like the sync features of iDisk, it was always a problem to access your files on the move given that MobileMe lacks a mobile interface or even a dedicated app on the iPhone. Readdle’s A.I.Disk is a app available for the iPhone that allows you to connect to any WebDAV storage on the web and access those files on the movie, right from your iPhone. Yes, that includes MobileMe’s iDisk and even Box.net.

Let’s take a closer look at what the app has to offer.

A.I.Disk’s prime feature is its ability to connect to and browse through a number of WebDAV services on the web, including MobileMe, MyDisk.se and Box.net. Not only can you login to your iDisk and access your own files, you can also browse the public folders of other MobileMe users. These files are downloaded onto the app when you first access them, thus giving you access to them anytime in the future. A progress bar tells you how much of the file has been ‘received’ by your iPhone, so you might want to be careful with larger files, specially if you’re not on an unlimited connection.

You can create as many ‘Online Identities’ as you wish. Here in this screenshot, I’ve saved my personal iDisk and a friend’s Public Folder. Take note that the public folder has the blue colored icon, unlike the pink iDisk icon. Tapping on either of the two gives you access to the folders hosted on the disk. A.I.Disk has a nifty little button on the top, which is aptly titled ‘Get All’ and lets you download all of them at one go.

To open a file, simply tap on the name an it opens up right in the app. A.I.Disk supports a wide array of file formats,, including PDF, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx txt, fb2, rtf and even html. The bar at the bottom of the inbuilt viewer allows you to do the following functions:

• Bookmark
• Send the file(s) via Email to your contacts
• Scroll down multiple pages using the percentage bar
• View the file FullScreen

Apple has spoken out about the changes it has made to MobileMe since its rocky (to put it politely) launch. I don’t know why this wasn’t posted in the largely useless MobileMe News page but I can’t complain. Something tells me this bit of text was written by Steve Jobs himself. 

Apple is always working to improve MobileMe. Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or “cloud”-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it’s easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just “work better”.

The article then lists out a whole bunch of changes, including nitty-gritty details like “provides a “loading” graphic to indicate that messages are still being loaded instead of a blank page”.

A lot of attention has been given to localisation of the service. A lot of users were complaining about calendar dates being inconsistent across the service and during the last two weeks I have noticed that this problem has been solved. 

If you haven’t already, check out our article on making the best of MobileMe. And if you have any problems or queries, don’t hesitate to shout out in the comments.

MobileMe, despite all the bad press it has been subjected to since its launch, is a really great service. Three members of the Smoking Apples team have been using MobileMe and are extremely happy (for the most part) using it. Even besides the “push” email functionality, there are a lot of other features that just get swept under the rug. This little guide will help you explore MobileMe even further and put those features to good use.

Email Aliases

MobileMe allows you to create email aliases, which are virtual email IDs that don’t exist as separate email addresses by themselves. The emails that come through to an alias are delivered to your original mailbox. You can create up to five aliases at a time and then turn them off or delete them when you are done with them.

This not only allows you to have a ‘myname.junk@me.com’ email ID for Internet signups but also lets you create a serious and professional email ID in addition to your usual funky one (of course, if you happen to be anything like our Editor saab, a “funky” email address is the last thing you’d want). Aliases once turned off can never be used by anyone, including yourself. You can mark aliases with a different colour and direct messages sent addressed to it to a certain folder. Emails sent to any of your aliases will come to your one unified inbox only. You will not have to check any other mailbox to check for messages. Of course, with your desktop Mail client, you can set filters to automatically direct that email to particular folders. 

To create an alias, open http://me.com in your web browser and access the preferences from the Mail toolbar. Clicking on the Alias tab allows you to enter up to five email addresses and then choose to mark them with different colours or add a different name to each one’s “From” field.
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Apple has, in rapid succession, dropped 3 updates through the night. iTunes gets bumped to 8.0.1, the MobileMe control panel for Windows jumps to 1.2, and then there’s the AppleTV 2.2 update.

iTunes 8
As expected iTunes 8.0.1 arrives close to a month after the initial release. And it fixes a whole bunch of stuff. For one, the seed song will continue playing seamlessly on hitting the Genius button, much like it does on the iPod. Second, the issue about iTunes automatically deleting HD TV shows has been fixed. And third, the iPhone app update issues have been solved. It also fixes some voice accesibility and syncing issues with the new iPod and fixes some problems with updating Genius.

iTunes still hasn’t solved its high memory consumption issues, but I guess Moore’s law has taken care of that for now. Updated for Mac and Windows, I highly recommend it, even at it’s 52MB file size.

MobileMe
An update for the Windows control panel, MobileMe adds support for syncing more than the previous 2,000 contacts, and “prevents syncing of data between Microsoft Exchange Server and MobileMe, a configuration that is not supported.”

MobileMe 1.2 update will also allow you to manage your iDisk in the Windows control panel. The 1.6MB update requires iTunes 8.0.1 to operate.

AppleTV
Thanks to TUAW, we also know that AppleTV has been updated to 2.2! You know what this means. The AppleTV now has the Genius feature. Holding down the play/pause button during playback will bring up the Genius menu, much like the iPod Nano.

(Screenshot courtesy TUAW)

AppleTV also allows buying of HD TV shows directly from the interface. Apart from this it also brings in some security and bug fixes. The update can be downloaded from the settings menu.

Along with the 10.5.5 developer builds, Apple has posted an update to the Safari 4 Developer Preview (DP). No official release date is known for Safari 4, but Ars technica guesses that it might just be out before Snow Leopard makes its appearance. One of the important changes is that it is finally compatible with the MobileMe web interface. 

Safari 4 DP, as you might be knowing, provides a noticeable speed boost, improved web inspector, and has an almost unexpected feature of creating web applications. The new update builds upon that, as Ars Technica notes:

The new Safari apparently came with a new Developer menu , redesigned Web Inspector, and JavaScript developer tools. The Developer Preview also includes elements from the new WebKit versions, such as support for new CSS features, as well as improved support for HTML 5 in general.

Updates for Tiger, Leopard, and Windows are available at the Apple Developer Connection website, and can be downloaded by anyone with a free Apple ID. Having used Safari 4 DP personally until MobileMe was launched, I can vouch for its improved speed and stability. Of course, the ‘beta’ tag means that you should not use this in mission critical work environments. 

Safari 4 has received some much needed bug fixes, a new inspector, and is now compatible with MobileMe. Could it be that Apple will finish this one long before Snow Leopard comes prowling?

The latest in a series of blemishes on Apple’s report card are the misbehaving 3G radios on the iPhone 3G. The Internet is abuzz with speculation about whether this is a problem which can be fixed with a mere software update or one that will involve a massive recall of those 3 million+ iPhones sold till date to replace the radios in question.

I pray for Apple, because if it is the latter of the issues, it will certainly drown Apple, not only with the huge costs associated with a recall, but the shame of acknowledging a critical flaw in their flagship handheld. Of course, Apple is its usual silent self, refusing to even acknowledge the matter. However, there seems to be some hope on the horizon as The Wall Street Journal, among others, is reporting that a software fix might be in the offing.

“Apple Inc. is working on a software fix for its new iPhone 3G to remedy dropped phone calls that some users are experiencing, according to people familiar with the matter.”

One wonders when Apple’s mounting problems will finally be blown away with a “boom” from Steve Jobs. After all, all it will take to get the media’s attention away from all this mess is to introduce some sparkling new MacBooks and iPods! See? Your attention has already drifted off into thinking about that shiny new aluminum MacBook.

[Image courtesy of Jamie on deviantART.]

It looks like Apple is desperately trying to cover lost ground with regards to MobileMe. In a recent email, the MobileMe team announced that, in addition to the thirty-day extension they gave the first time, they will provide all users of MobileMe with an additional extension of sixty days. This includes all accounts which were active as on 19 August 2008, i.e. today, including those on a free trial. 

Here’s the exact text of the email: 

We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.

The MobileMe Team

This doesn’t come as a surprise, given that MobileMe is still not fixed and various issues have been cropping up all over the place even now. Steve Jobs, his highness, was clearly miffed by the shabby launch of the service and its continuing problems. Here’s hoping for an error-free, secure and push filled Christmas!