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Time travel is possible!

This morning in my inbox, I had two bounce messages--nothing unusual there, it seems to happen quite often when I try to email users of macosxhints.com (lots of people have changed their email addresses but not changed their account info, it seems).

These two messages, however, really caught my eye; here's a snippet from one of them. Note that I've modified the email address, but that's all:

Subject: DELIVERY FAILURE: 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-
'5.1.1 No such user 10si9367260nzo' (delivery attempts: 0)
From: [email protected]
Date: August 24, 2007 8:20:25 AM PDT
To: robg

The following message to <[email protected]> was undeliverable.
The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 No such user'

From: Rob Griffiths <robg>
Date: February 24, 2002 7:04:21 PM PST
To: Some User <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Mac OS X Hints Redesign
. . .

Yes, that's right: two messages I sent over five years ago finally bounced early this morning! Not knowing the first thing about how email actually routes between machines, can someone explain how this might be possible? It seems too bizarre to believe, but the messages are mine, and I did try to send them to the specified person back in 2002. Very weird! Explanations welcomed, please...



iPhone desired features poll

So if you're an iPhone user ... or an iPhone maybe going to be a user ... what features do you find lacking? This poll lists a number of possible features; it might be interesting to see what the results are if the sample size gets large enough.

Personally, iChat is the most-glaring omission on my list, with syncable notes a close second and a true third-party application API as the third (as that would solve pretty much everything else on my list :) ).

-rob.



It’s so intuitive, it’s almost like it’s not intuitive

I was reading this overview of smart phone web browsers, and came across this interesting sentence about the iPhone's Safari browser:

The iPhone browser interface is a success not because it's intuitive, but because the interface is discoverable at a level almost below conscious thought.

This didn't make much sense to me, so I looked up intuitive in the OS X dictionary, and found this definition:

using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive

So we have "...because the interface is discoverable at a level almost below conscious thought" and "...feels to be true even without conscious reasoning." Now I'm no rocket scientist, but it sure seems like intuitive is, in fact, the right word to describe the iPhone's Safari browser interface.



Ten of my favorite iPhone things

Macworld logoEver since the first time I saw (but couldn't touch) the iPhone, I've sort of become Macworld's resident iPhone curmudgeon. Long before it was ever released, I came up with a list of shortcomings. Then, at the Worldwide Developers Conference last month, I was unhappy with the announced support for third-party web pages, er, apps. And finally, once the iPhone was out and I'd had the chance to use it, I put together a list of 10 iPhone apps—real apps—that I would find most useful on my iPhone.

If you were to simply look at my body of iPhone work, you might conclude I hate the iPhone, and would rather be dropped in the midst of a swarm of Africanized honey bees than be forced to use the thing. Surprisingly, perhaps as much to me as to you, that's not the case. For all the things it's lacking, the iPhone really does get quite a few things right—and it's the things it does oh so well that keep me coming back to it, despite its shortcomings.

Read my Macworld blog entry, Ten of my favorite iPhone things, for the rest of the story...



How to upgrade the Apple TV’s hard drive

Back in March, I purchased one of the original 40GB Apple TV units, and put it to use in our living room on the big screen TV. It worked fine, but 40GB was just too confining--between music and photos, I had over 40GB of data, not even counting movies or other video stuff. As a result, if I wanted access to everything from the Apple TV, I had to make sure the Mac Pro was awake to stream more content to the Apple TV. This got old fast, so I finally forced myself to upgrade the hard drive in the Apple TV today.

Overall, the process was relatively simple. I'm going to document the steps here, just in case the article I relied upon vanishes in the future. If you're going to undertake this project yourself, you'll need the following:

  • Towel: to place the top side of the Apple TV onto after you've opened it.
  • Torx screwdrivers: sizes 8 and 10, needed to open the case and release the hard drive.
  • 2.5" ATA laptop hard drive: Make sure it's not a SATA drive; I went with this 120GB Fujitsu, though I bought mine at Fry's.
  • 2.5" external drive enclosure: I bought this unit at the local PC Club store. I wanted a FireWire case, not just USB2, as I've never been impressed with USB2 speeds on OS X. Now that I'm done with the project, the Apple TV's old 40GB drive is living in the enclosure.

The rest of the process is documented below; read on and modify at your own risk!
[continue reading…]



iPhone, therefore iTap and tap and…

Macworld logoAh, morning—time to check the overnight e-mail that came in over the iPhone. Let's get to work!

Press the iPhone's power button. Tap the screen (that's screen tap #1) and drag the unlock slider. Press the Home button to get back to the main screen from whatever app I was using last on the iPhone. Tap (#2) the Mail icon. Oops, I left the iPhone reading a message the last time I was in Mail. Tap three times (#3, #4, #5) to get back to the list of accounts.

It's on this screen where you'll notice a big change from OS X's Mail program. In OS X's Mail application, the top-level folder is the global Inbox, and then within that folder, each of your accounts is listed separately, letting you easily view all of your new e-mail at once by just selecting the top level Inbox folder. On the iPhone, however, there is no global Inbox. Instead, the main Mail screen just shows a list of your accounts. You have to open each account to see the Inbox (and Trash and any other folders associated with that account).

Read my Macworld blog entry, iPhone, therefore iTap and tap and..., for the rest of the story...



Ten future iPhone apps

Macworld logoI've lamented on the lack of third-party access to the iPhone, and now, with quite a few actual usage hours on my belt, my lament has become a plea: please, Apple, if you're not going to do some of these things yourself, let third parties provide real solutions! Exactly what am I talking about? Well, here's a list I've been building of the Top 10 Missing iPhone Apps. I think third parties could do a great job at providing some or all of these solutions. (If Apple wants to do it, that'd be great, too, but I'd really like someone to make them available, and sooner rather than later.)

So here, in increasing order of importance, are the 10 applications that I think would be a perfect fit with the iPhone and its current application suite.

Read my Macworld blog entry, Ten future iPhone apps, for the rest of the story...



An odd thing happened today…

Macworld logoAnd that odd thing is this: I'm now an iPhone owner. As of yesterday, I had no plans to be anywhere near an Apple or AT&T store today. But that all changed when Macworld asked me to stand in line, buy a phone, and then mail to the corporate office--they wanted to make sure they had several phones in hand for review next week.

iphoneI detailed my camp-out experiences in this blog entry on macworld.com, along with this afternoon update.

Shortly after that last update was published is when my day got really surprising: Macworld asked me to buy two phones, but just send one in their direction--I was to keep one and use it myself, replacing my Treo. Wow. I was quite surprised, to say the least. You see, I didn't even really want a first-generation iPhone; it's missing many things that I'm used to on the Treo. But I guess now I get to see if that's really true, and to write about just how well, or not well, the iPhone works for me. As I have time with the iPhone, my write ups--covering the good and bad of the experience--will appear on Macworld's new iPhone Central pages (and probably on macworld.com, too).

The iPhone is now activated, and it's busy synching all my content. I'll post links here to anything that winds up on Macworld, in case you're contemplating an iPhone of your own.



Apple’s disappointing iPhone message

Macworld logoOne of the biggest questions surrounding the iPhone since its January preview was whether developers outside of Apple would be able to create software that would run on the phone.

And just 18 days before the iPhone's June 29 release, Steve Jobs stood on stage at the Worldwide Developers Conference and told software makers that Apple had found an answer: a 'sweet' way to support outside iPhone development.

Unfortunately, if you're thinking that Apple really addressed third-party development in Steve Jobs's keynote, you'd be wrong. While many people—including myself—have clamored for support for widgets and applications, Monday's announcement actually did nothing at all to address either issue. Instead, it told developers that since Safari on the iPhone is a full-fledged web browser, they can use Ajax and CSS to make nice, pretty Web-based applications.

Read my Macworld blog entry, Apple's disappointing iPhone message, for the rest of the story...



Vacuous Vista versioning

Macworld logoWhile thinking about the upcoming release of 10.5, aka Leopard, I realized that Apple has yet one more advantage over Microsoft: simpler choices for the consumer who is contemplating an OS purchase. I compared Vista and OS X versions in this May Editor's Notes writeup on Macworld. As a friend noted, it's almost like Microsoft is making it hard to purchase Vista, given the differing versions one must choose between.