Sparrow: A simplified Mac email app. It looks cool, but IMAP support is still lacking.

Sparrow - Mac Email App

Today I gave Sparrow a try. It’s a simplified Mac email app that recently gained support for imap email accounts. Prior to version 1.1 it was strictly for use with Google’s gmail (which I don’t use).

I was curious about the idea of using a much more streamlined email client. Currently I use Apple’s Mail, and although I have no real complaints about Mail, I’m always looking for ways to simplify my day. I wasn’t sure if I would like Sparrow, but that’s the beauty of imap – if I decided I didn’t like it, I could seamlessly go back to Mail without worrying about losing anything or having to migrate from one app to another since all the mail lives on the server and syncs to any app I use.

Unfortunately, Sparrow’s imap implementation has one big problem that made going back and forth a little more painful than it should be. When I set up my email address in Sparrow it didn’t recognize my existing imap folders for Sent, Drafts, Junk, and Trash, so it proceeded to create it’s own versions of these folders. That kind of sucked, but the real oversight from the developers of Sparrow is not building in any way to manually map it’s folders to your existing folders. The result is I now have two sets of folders – one being used by Sparrow, and the other being used by Apple Mail. Both sets actually show up in both apps, so messages aren’t getting lost, but it adds a layer of complexity that doesn’t need to exist.

Supposedly the next version of Sparrow will add the ability to map existing folders, but in my opinion the imap support should have never gone live without this basic functionality. I won’t be trying it again until they fix this.

Although my testing was cut short due to Sparrow’s lack of proper imap support, there was one (negative) thing that jumped out at me right away. If you select a message and hit the delete key, the message isn’t moved into the trash, it’s moved to a folder called, archive. Presumably this behavior is due Sparrow’s roots as a gmail-only app, because gmail archives deleted messages, but I found this behavior just plain wrong.

To me, an Archive is a safe place you use to store items you’re no longer actively accessing, but you need to keep for possible future use. The Trash on the other hand is a place you put things that you no longer want to keep. By these definitions, it makes absolutely no sense to hit the delete key to move items to a “safe place”. As the name implies – delete means throw away. I can’t think of any other software where hitting the delete key actually saves something instead of deleting it. To make things worse, Sparrow also has an Archive button – clicking it also moves items into the archive folder, so essentially archiving and deleting do the same thing. If you truly want to delete something you have to hit Command-Delete. I find this behavior very confusing and I hope they correct this soon.

My last gripe is actually directed at the developers themselves. They kind of make it a little difficult to have conversations with them as they’ve somewhat closed themselves off. Their blog is powered by Tumblr, so that means no comments. Their suppor site is hard to find, as they don’t even provide a link to it on the Sparrow site. I personally find this annoying.

Wunderlist Task Manager: A Compelling Alternative to ‘Things’

In terms of task management, I’ve been a very happy user of, Things, on both the Mac and my iPhone since the software first came out. I haven’t had any plans to switch apps, but today I noticed a todo app called, Wunderlist, that Apple is featuring as this week’s, iPhone app of the week. I decided to take a look, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed.

Like Things, Wunderlist is available for both the Mac and the iPhone, but, unlike Things, it’s also available for Windows. Wunderlist isn’t nearly as full-featured as Things, and it is missing some high-priority features, like scheduled and recurring tasks. But, Wunderlist does have a few key advantages over Things:

  • Wunderlist is free on all 3 platforms. (Things costs $49.95 for the Mac, and $9.95 for the iPhone)
  • Over-the-air syncing of tasks between Macs, PCs, and iPhones via their free cloud-sync service. (Things can sync between a Mac and an iPhone if they’re on the same local Wifi network – they’ve promised cloud-sync, but haven’t delivered yet)
  • Wunderlist can share tasks with other Wunderlist users – over-the-air. (Things can’t do this at all)

I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to ditch Things, but over-the-air syncing is a huge deal for me. It’s been my only real complaint about Things – and it pains me every time I have to remember to launch the app on both my Mac and iPhone while I’m on my local network so they’ll sync up.

Whether you’ve already picked a task-management solution or not, Wunderlist is definately worth a look – especially if you’re on multiple platforms.

On a side-note to this, I do feel a little bad for Cultured Code (the maker of Things). Contrary to the popular belief, I personally do NOT think all software should be cheap (or free). Those guys have put a lot of effort into their apps, and they deserve to make a living as developers. It always irks me a little when someone comes out with a free app that is solid competition to a well established paid app. However, the flip-side of this is I personally think $49.95 is too much for the Mac version of Things. I think $24.95 would be a little more reasonable.

Links: Wunderlist | Things | YouTube

Schedule Your Time Machine Backups with TimeMachineEditor

Schedule Time Machine with TimeMachineEditor

One of the most useful pieces of Mac software I’ve ever come across is, TimeMachineEditor. As the name implies, it allows you to edit the interval in which your Time Machine backups occur. It’s free, and it’s super easy to use!

Time Machine works very well for automatically backing up your Mac, but if you’re backing up to a network drive, like a Time Capsule, your Mac and your network can suffer some performance hits while the backup is in progress.

Time Machine runs every hour, and Apple didn’t include a way to edit that interval. I deal with a lot of big files that change often, so the result is Time Machine was constantly running, and I was really feeling that performance drop. With TimeMachineEditor I’m able to change that schedule so Time Machine only runs twice per day… once while I’m at lunch and once in the evening. It’s actually extremely flexible, as it will allow you to define anything from a new repeating interval, to scheduled hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly times.

If you use Time Machine to backup your Mac, I highly recommend using TimeMachineEditor.

My Favorite Safari 5 Extensions

One of the best features to come with Safari 5 is the addition of Extensions. If you’re unfamiliar with Safari Extensions, they basically add functionality – either to Safari itself, or to specific websites.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite extensions:

  • Lucidica: Restyles and simplifies Google Reader.
  • Pure Reader: Similar to Lucidica, but it gives Reader more of a desktop-app feel.
  • Flickr Original: Right-click on Flickr thumbnails to download the original file.
  • Pure Flickr: Removes clutter from Flickr.com
  • YouTube5: Replaces YouTube’s Flash player with an HTML5 player
  • YouTube Video Downloader: Adds a button to download YouTube videos.
  • TinEye: Right-click on any image to search for that image using TinEye.
  • SaveTabs: Saves all open tabs in the current browser window and allows you to reopen them later.
  • Mail Open Tabs: Creates a new email message containing the addresses of all open tabs.
  • ExifExt: Right-click on any image to view it’s EXIF information.
  • BetterSource: Styles, color-codes, and numbers HTML source code.
  • Facebook Neue: Cleans up Facebook (removes ads, etc…)

There’s a wide variety of Safari Extensions out there. Two good resources for finding them are Apple’s Extensions Gallery, and a Tumblr blog aptly named, Safari Extensions.

If you know of any other resources, or extensions that you find useful, leave a link in the comments.

Is After Effects Gobbling Up Your Hard Drive?

Adobe After Effects CS3 Cache - Cache.MACC

I recently discovered that After Effects (CS3) wasn’t deleting it’s Media Cache files when I quit the application. The folder had swelled to 6.19 GB.

I’m not sure if this is a bug in CS3, or if all versions of AE suffered from this problem. But, if you’re an After Effects user you may want to make sure you haven’t (unnecessarily) lost some drive space. On a Mac, the folder is located at ~/Library/Caches/Adobe/After Effects CS3/Media Cache Files. You can either manually toss the content of the folder, or you can open AE on go to the Memory & Cache preferences and click, Clean Database & Cache.

BumpTop 1.0 – 3D Desktop

I first heard about the BumpTop prototype back in 2006. It looks like they’ve refined it quite a bit since then… to the point where they’ve released it as an actual product. There’s a (limited) free version, and a Pro version that runs $29. Unfortunately, there’s no Mac version at the moment, but there is a little checkbox to let the developers know you want one, on the Downloads page.

MacHeist 3: Up to $975 in Mac software for just $39

MacHeist 3

The MacHeist people have outdone themselves this year. They’re offering up to $975.70 in Mac software, for only $39. There’s some pretty nice titles in this years bundle.

If you’re unfamiliar with MacHeist, the short story is they bundle a bunch of Mac software together, sell it for significantly reduced pricing, and give 25% to charity. The more copies that sell, the more software is added to the bundle. It just gets better and better. Everyone who buys the bundle gets all the software, even if the title wasn’t included at the time you bought in.

Most people probably don’t care about the entire bundle, but the cost is so low that you’re generally getting the 1 or 2 apps that you do want for a very good price.

As of today there’s only 11 days left to participate, so head on over to MacHeist.com and grab your copy before it’s too late.

‘Loop’ hits the iPhone app store

Loop iPhone Application

A good friend of mine recently decided he wanted to try his hand at making some iPhone applications. Being new to the platform, he decided to get his feet wet with something small. His first app is called, Loop, and it was just released into the iPhone App Store.

Loop is basically inspired by the old spirograph sets. With just a few parameters, you can draw infinite variations of spirals, and then save them to your camera roll.

Although I wasn’t involved in the making of the actual app, this was kind of my first involvement in an iPhone app too. I made the application icon.

Truthfully, Loop isn’t going to change your world or anything, but it is a fun little time waster, and you can make some cool images to use as iPhone wallpapers, etc.. Grab your copy of loop through the link, below.

Loop (launches iTunes)

Apple Releases Safari 4 Beta

Safari 4 Beta

Today Apple released a public beta of Safari 4. It has some impressive new features, but what really caught my eye was the new Cover Flow view for browser history. Currently I use SafariStand to get this feature under Safari 3, and I’ve come to rely on it heavily. I’m extremely glad to see it’s going to be built right in to Safari 4.

Safari 4 Beta is available for both Mac and PC. As with all software, you should understand what the word, “Beta” means if you plan on installing it.

UPDATE: After seeing this post over at Daring Fireball, I thought it worth mentioning that you’ll want to be especially cautious upgrading to Safari 4 Beta if you use any Input Managers, such as the excellent 1Password. It’s important to remember that these things are unsupported hacks, and it’s entirely possible for new versions of Safari to break these “plugins”. Don’t upgrade yet if there’s any third party add-ons that you absolutely rely on.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to this post at The Graphic Mac, I’ve learned that Safari 4 now stores bookmarks in a .plist file, rather than a standard HTML file, like previous versions of Safari. Unfortunately, this probably means that most bookmark syncing utilities will probably be broken as well.

UPDATE #3 (2/25/2009): Just 1 day after Apple released Safari 4 Beta, Agile Web Solutions has updated 1Password to be compatible (and include several other bug fixes). Awesome!