iTunes Store purchasing troubles and .Mac names

If you have a MobileMe account, and are using your old DotMac address as your Apple ID, you may have trouble ordering from the iTunes Store. When you attempt to confirm your purchase buy hitting the Buy button, the same page will reload with a rather cryptic error message as follows: Please enter your Apple ID and password, then click Account Info to approve your email address for use in the iTunes Store. If you cancel you will not be able to buy music until you have approved your email address. But, you'll see no place to enter your Apple ID and password. The solution is to go to the Apple Account Information page by clicking on your Apple ID in the upper right hand corner of the iTunes store. From there, click on the Edit Account Info button. On the Account Information page, you'll see your Apple ID shown as your old DotMac address. Enter your MobileMe address in the Email Address box and click Done. This is apparently what Apple means about nee...

published on Wednesday, the 24. September 2008, macosxhints

Encrypt Mail, Address Book, and iCal data

Like many of you, I keep lots of personal information on my laptop that I would like to keep private in case I lose physical control of the computer (theft, or more likely these days, sudden seizure by the government). There are a few ways to accomplish on-the-fly encryption with OS X, of course, but none of them really fit my needs. FileVault has not been known to be exceptionally reliable (although I've never tried it in Leopard) and is totally unconfigurable. Whole disk encryption is a little overkill for me, so I don't feel like eating the CPU overhead that it entails. On the other end of the spectrum, casual security like an Open Firmware / EFI password, and a strong login password are easily defeated, and only deter those with no interest in your data anyway. What I really want is a way to encrypt just a certain set of private data (like my email in Mail.app, contacts in Address Book, and calendars in iCal), with as little inconvenience as possible. The best ...

published on Monday, the 22. September 2008, macosxhints

Filemailer simplifies email file transfers

Altomac has launched Filemailer for the Mac, a utility that simplifies the task of transferring files via email. The software allows a user to quickly move data files ñ such as PDFs, images, and documents ñ without needing to open an email program and compose an email for the sole purpose of sending a file. Filemailer sends the file to the receiving party's email address. It also avoids build-up o...

published on Sunday, the 21. September 2008, macintosh-news-network

Quickly extract all email addresses from Address Book

To quickly (as compared to using nested loops in AppleScript) extract all email addresses from the Address Book, you can tap into Address Book?s SQLite database using the command line (in Terminal): sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBoo​k-v22.abcddb "select ZADDRESSNORMALIZED from ZABCDEMAILADDRESS;" If you want to alphabetize and remove duplicates: sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/AddressBoo​k-v22.abcddb "select ZADDRESSNORMALIZED from ZABCDEMAILADDRESS;" | sort | uniq Please note: This works in Leopard, and should work in Tiger too. However, the database filename looks like it could change at a...

published on Thursday, the 28. August 2008, macosxhints

Another way to set up a 'unified' iPhone email inbox

With no unified Inbox (for good or bad), people have come up with lots (and lots) of ways of combining their email accounts into one. And with MobileMe offering push, I'm guessing some people have tried this configuration: having all their emails forward to their mac/me.com address.However, then the problem is with replying ... when you do so, you'll expose your mac/me.com address. So, there's always the option of setting up extra SMTP servers (which has already been documented). But that doesn't allow you to truly reply from a different account (let's say your email address is for a business, and the name is different).At least for Google (and other IMAP accounts?), there's a way to create a "send-only" account -- which has already been documented as using the "manual" checking of that account only. But that could leave you with more emails unread than you expect (as your phone may check the non-MobileMe account).So is there a way to:Set up a Gmail a...

published on Monday, the 25. August 2008, macosxhints

iPhone 3G Connectivity Affecting 2% of Customers? Software Fix Soon?

One MacRumors reader claims to have received a response from Steve Jobs after emailing in a complaint about the current iPhone 3G connectivity issues that have been widely reported. According to the email response which is addressed f...

published on Monday, the 18. August 2008, macrumors

Use many email addresses on one iPhone email account

Using Mail on OS X, you can assign multiple sender addresses to one account. As covered in this ancient hint, this is done by just separating each address with a comma in the account's setup screen. This same trick now works with the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- before it would just use the first address in the list. So if you have, for example, a Gmail account where you forward all your other mail addresses, you can now easily send mail from all of those addresses. Of course, your SMTP server must allow sending from foreign addresses for this to work.

published on Tuesday, the 29. July 2008, macosxhints

Use MobileMe push on iPhone with alternate From address

This hint is for those who have a primary email address, say a@default.com, and would like to use this email address, but would like the 'push' aspects of their MobileMe account, say a@me.com. It would be useful to be able to send email from a MobileMe account, but have a@default.com show up by default as the From address. This hint is similar tothis previously-posted hint, in that one can set their primary email address to forward a copy to their MobileMe account. However, this previous hint does this, but only by subscribing to their MobileMe account as a standard IMAP account, which would not use push.For this hint, one also needs an additional Gmail account (which may or may not be the primary email address) -- assume this account is a@gmail.com. and one would need to subscribe to that within the iPhone as well. Under the Mai...

published on Thursday, the 24. July 2008, macosxhints

Mail Saver 3.6.2

Apple's Mail works wonderfully to send and receive messages, but using it for long-term storage of email has undesirable consequences. Mail Saver solves this problem by moving messages into the Finder for long-term storage. It does this by linking mailboxes to Finder folders. When Mail Saver saves the contents of a mailbox, it copies its messages into its linked folder, then moves the original messages to Mail's Trash. The linked folders can be located anywhere you wish, such as with a project, an account or an interest group. Mail Saver simply copies a message without doing any file conversion, thus a saved copy of a message is simply a Mail document (.emlx) file which must be opened with Mail. These saved documents may be Replied, Redirected, Forwarded, Bounced and Printed by Mail just like any other message. (But, they cannot be Junked, Deleted or Flagged). Saved messages also retain attachments, if present. Searching saved messages in Leopard is easy, simply use Spotlight. The saved copy of a message is modified so that: • The file name is the header's subject; • The modification date is the header's Date Sent; and • The comment is the header's To: address (for sent mail) or From: address (for received mail). This allows you to easily identify messages in a List View Finder window. Mail Saver always saves the oldest messages first, so that the Finder shows the most recent messages at the top. Mail Saver uses Apple's Mail as its interface and its action is determined by the mailbox selected in Mail's frontmost Viewer. Here is a brief summary of Mail Saver's features: Linked User Mailboxes — Route messages manually or automatically, using Mail's Rules, to User mailboxes, each linked to a folder. Mail Saver moves the contents of a linked mailbox into its linked folder. The originals are not immediately erased, but are moved into the Trash mailbox. Unread messages are labeled gray and the linked folder is opened showing messages ready to read. Mail Saver Table of Contents — Gives you instant access to Mail Saver, Help, Mail-Safe, (Spot-Mail) and to your linked folders via a menu in the Dock or Script Menu. Save Selected Messages — Selected messages in the Inbox and Sent mailboxes can be saved to any location. The original message is not moved to the Trash mailbox, so you can save multiple copies to multiple locations. Mail-Safe — Creates an archive of every message sent or received by Mail. The Trash mailbox is linked to a 'Mail-Safe' folder of your choice where outdated messages are saved into year-numbered folders containing month-numbered folders containing day-numbered folders. The originals of these messages are erased from Mail. If you have a requirement to maintain an archive of your e-mail, Mail-Safe may meet your needs. Spot-Mail — (Tiger only) Spot-Mail uses Spotlight to search the content of .emlx files in the frontmost folder. (In Tiger, Spotlight cannot search these files directly.)

published on Wednesday, the 16. July 2008, scriptbuilders

Use MobileMe push email with any email address

You can set up MobileMe to use any email address as a 'push' email on the iPhone. The first thing you need to do is set your non-MobileMe (.Mac) email address for auto-forward to your MobileMe (.Mac) account. When you create the email account, make sure you set it up as Other (not as a .Mac or MobileMe account.) Then select IMAP as the type of account. Enter the name and auto-forwarded email address. (This is the email address that will show as the "From" email, even though you're using your MobileMe account.) For your mail server settings, use your MobileMe settings: Incoming settings: Host Name: mail.mac.com User Name: MobileMe user name Password: MobileMe password Outgoing Settings: Host Name: smtp.mac.com User Name: MobileMe user name Password: MobileMe password Advanced: Use SSL - On Authentication - Password Server Port - 587...

published on Thursday, the 10. July 2008, macosxhints