Google's Select All Conversations

In my ongoing adventures to move all my mail to Gmail there have been a few snags. One of them is the fact that Gmail only sucks down POP mail, which one of my many numerous email hosts does not support. The other problem has been one of management.

Gmail is becoming the de facto mail sorter for many folks. It has superior spam filtering, virtually unlimited — or at least more than you'll probably ever need — capacity, it can be searched using Google's legendary algorithms, and it can get mail from from any email account that supports POP, which most do. Aggregating your mail through Gmail has the additional advantage of keeping all your mail online and centrally located, so it can be read from any computer with a browser and an internet connection, and it's always in sync.

I've also come to prefer the Gmail approach to mail management. This basically boils down to one idea: tags instead of filters. So, in Gmail, instead of filing your mail in folders, you use what Google calls "labels," which are just tags, which are in fact text descriptors used to describe an email. The nice thing about labels is that an email can belong to more than one label at a time, giving you all kinds of sorting and viewing options. Good luck trying to do that with folders.

My approach to local mail management of late has been to keep all my mail in my Inbox — or once it's old enough, in an Archive box — and then to sort that mail into various views using Mail.app's Smart Folders. This is basically what Google recommends doing over the folder approach: Don't file, just search. This approach, however, no longer scales well on the Desktop, primarily because my computer is much slower than Google's server at this point, but also because Spotlight's algorithms are not quite as good as Google's.

Aside from the POP limitation, the only thing keeping me from moving entirely to Gmail was the plain fact that there was no way for me to Archive my 2000+ email conversations (which is what Google calls threads) in one fell swoop. So my Inbox sat there, completely full of mail. Unread messages might remain unread long enough that new read mail would pile up and bump them off the main screen and into obscurity. The only solution I could find to this was to go through what would have been hundreds of screens full of emails, hit "Select All" and then "Archive," and then to Archive everything as it came in ever after. Clearly what was needed — and this is true in a lot of online editors, including Wordpress' — was a "Select All" button that allowed you to select every message in the Inbox.

Recently, that option finally appeared. To see it, hit "Select All" in the Inbox view. After doing so, a subtle line of text will appear just below the selection bar:

Hit that and you suddenly, magically, amazingly have access to all your Gmail. Now you can archive it, label it, mark it with a tee — whatever you want. Finally I can keep my Inbox uncluttered. To see the Archived stuff, I just hit "All Mail" and there it is.

With this I think I may be moving entirely to Gmail at long last.

The Case of the Changing Case

Try copying two items whose names match in every way except case from a local drive to another local drive in the Mac OS X Finder and you'll see something like this:

This makes plenty of sense. The Finder (actually, the filesystem on which the Finder resides, in this case HFS+) is not case-sensitive by default, so it sees the file "intro.mpg" as being identical to "Intro.mpg" and therefore simply alerts the user of the presence of a like-named file and asks him how to proceed.

But the other day I got the strangest alert I've seen in a while when trying to copy a file named "Intro.mpg" from my networked home account to a local folder with a file called "intro.mpg":

Seems that, all of a sudden, we have some case issues. Now why would that be?

It appears that if the originating file comes from my network home, and if that network home lives on an NFS mount, and if the filesystem that hosts that network home is case-sensitive — all of which in this case is true — the Finder kinda freaks out. Or at least alerts the user in a very strange way. I mean, what's with that wording? I don't think I've ever read a more convoluted sentence in my life. And the options spelled out in that sentence — "skip" or "continue" — are not reflected in the language used by the buttons — "Stop" or "Skip." Tsk, tsk! And "some of these items?" Dude, it was only one item. I swear.

Actually, this last one I think I understand: Though I was only copying one Finder item, as users of non-HFS filesystems might be aware, copying between HFS and non-HFS filesystems will cause the creation of dot-underscore files, which are there to preserve HFS-specific data about the file in question. These files automatically get created and follow the file around invisibly, transparently to the user. I believe the Finder was taking these additional files into consideration in the alert. This may or may not be true. I can really only guess. But that's my hunch.

Nevertheless, this alert is abominable, if somewhat amusing. Apple still has some work to do when it comes to the wording in their alerts.

And they clearly have some work to do when it comes to dealing with conflicts on non-HFS volumes as well.

UPDATE: I've changed this post slightly for clarity.

Taking My Own Medicine

I've long extolled the virtues of network-based home accounts, at least in some situations. And, of course, I've written copiously on how to implement such a thing in a lab setting. What I've never really done in any meaningful way, or for any length of time, is to use network home accounts myself. Until now. There are certainly situations in which local home accounts are preferable. Generally speaking, they tend to be the way to go if you can swing it. They're usually a bit more responsive, and of course they don't rely on a functioning network, proper network settings, authentication servers and home account servers to work. They are the de facto, the default, and they're what most people are used to. And if your users ever only use their one computer, local home accounts are likely to be all you'll ever need.

But in environments that involve numerous shared (network) resources, or in which people are moving from computer to computer on a regular basis and need some semblance of consistency among machines, a centrally-located, accessible-from-everywhere home account can be a real blessing. In order to sell this system at my new job (on the Mac side — Linux was already using network homes), I needed to prove its reliability, so I threw myself on the grenade, as it were: I started using a networked home account. And you know what? I really like it.

There are, as alluded, certain inconveniences with such a scheme. For one, login tends to be a bit slower as the system needs additional time to locate and coordinate with the necessary network resources. Also, there is no Trash folder for a network home, and deleting files is immediate on a Mac when done over the network. So every time I try to throw something away I get this alert:

And the file is deleted for good. This is probably the worst part of the networked home. No Trash. But the advantages are so great that I plan to stick with my networked home, despite the minor annoyances.

At some point not too long ago I decided that the reliability test had been a success, and that I could finally revert back to my local home account. So I synced everything back to the local drive, and changed my home account location on the server (I use server-based authentication either way), and logged in. I worked locally for a while, and then I needed to do something on a Linux machine. I logged into that machine — which uses networked home accounts — and got my old, outdated, network home. And that's when I realized: you can't have it both ways. You either need to go local-only, in which case you need to really only use one machine, or you need to go networked. Otherwise your data's all out of sync. And that's way worse than any network dependencies or minor performance hits. So I immediately switched back to my networked home. And I plan to stay there.

And speaking of having it both ways, I suppose it is possible. At my old job I had a local account on my office computer and a networked account everywhere else. This was okay, but created all sorts of problems — particularly permissions problems — any time I wanted to share data with, uh, myself. Long story short, it was a real pain in the ass. Doable, but kinda sucky. Avoid if possible.

I have to say, since committing to my network home account, I've been pretty darned happy with it. Most times I'm completely unaware that I'm even on the network. And it's great to have the same environment across every machine in the lab. It's also great to finally be able to say definitively that this approach is not only valid, but actually pretty great in instances in which it's appropriate.

Go me!

Final Cut Studio Release Notes

Apple just released an update to the Pro Apps suite of applications. TUAW erroneously mentions that, "No specific details were provided about what the update improved..." but, in fact, full release notes for the past four Pro Apps updates are available by clicking the "Release Notes" link in Software Update. Which will take you to this page:http://www.apple.com/support/releasenotes/en/Final_Cut_Studio_2.0_rn/

TUAW's mistake is understandable; Apple often fails to detail updates to their software. But not in this case. And I, for one, am glad for the change. Not sure how long this page has been around. But here's hoping they keep this sort of thing up.

(I won't hold my breath.)

Too Many Computers

That title's not meant as a complaint. It's just that I've noticed that over the years I've tended to use fewer and fewer system add-ons and customizations than I once did. And I realize that it's because I use so many different computers. There used to be a time when I would customize the hell out of my Mac. After installing all my apps I'd get to setting up my user account, tricking out all my apps so that they behaved just like I liked, and installing and configuring any number of productivity utilities to make my life easier. It took forever, and it was a huge pain, but once it was done I could navigate my computer quickly and effortlessly.

Those days are pretty much over at this point. I no longer do much to change the default configuration of my home account in any meaningful way. I barely customize the Dock. I may change the Desktop background. On my primary computers I can't live without a pasteboard history, so on those machines I'll install the excellent(!) PTHPasteboard. And there are certain Terminal settings I really enjoy. But that's about it. I don't even install my beloved Butler anymore.

There are certain things that have contributed to this. For one, Leopard's Spotlight is a great application launcher, largely mitigating the need for Butler. (Yes, there are other things that Butler does that I miss, but I can live without most of them — but application launching is a deal-breaker.) Spaces helps a lot with window management, so I don't need the sort of hot corner stuff I used to do. And the newer Mac keyboards have iTunes control built in.

But the main reason for this change (or lack thereof) is the plain fact that I'm simply touching too many computers in the course of the day to ever really consistently customize them. And if it's not consistent, it's not going to be very efficient, because every time you go to a different computer your system breaks. I was getting to the point where I'd go to one of the many computers I have to access on a regular basis — a staff member's machine, or some workstation somewhere — and I'd start frantically hitting the keys for some custom key-command I'd set at home, getting frustrated when nothing happened. At some point I realized that this inconsistency was actually hurting my productivity. So I made the conscious decision to learn a new way.

Over the past year or so I've gotten used to working with the system in as out-of-the-box a configuration as possible. Which ain't half bad, I have to say. Apple has really done a fine job of making the initial user experience good for both new and experienced users alike. It's quite remarkable. And I love not having to set much up beyond installing my apps. It's akin to how I felt when I gave up my car to move to Manhattan. You think you'll miss it, but you end up realizing what a burden it actually was. It's kind of great to have everything I need on any newly installed Mac. And now that I don't rely on that other stuff, I don't miss it at all.

I know as "power users" we like to add to and configure our machines out the wazoo, and I've certainly been no exception. But as a SysAdmin, I have to say, the less of this I do, the better my user experience has been. Surprising, yes. But totally true.