Multiple identities in Apple Mail 5

2011/12/19 — laurent

This is a “reminder post” to remind myself how to do that in the future, see links at the bottom for sources.

If you have email address aliases you might want to configure them in Apple Mail so you can also use the aliases to send emails. There are two ways of doing so.

Simple and easy but incomplete solution

It’s not intuitive since it’s not explained in Mail interface, but you can simply do that by writting several email addresses in the “Email Address” field of your account information. You just need to separate them with comma:

Then when you write an email, you can select your new identity:

A bit more complicated but complete solution

But as you can see in the previous method, what you entered in “Full Name” field is used for all identities and the purpose of having several identities may be to have also different full names.

In the folder ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData, there is a file named Accounts.plist. Close Mail, open the file (with Xcode for instance) and in the element MailAccounts/Item X (replace X with the number corresponding to the email account you want to add an alias to) add “EmailAliases” array with dictionaries containing your new aliases :

Now when you write an email, the name you put is used:

Sources

  • http://simon.heimlicher.com/hints/macosx/multiple_identities_mail
  • http://blog.charismaticdog.com/2008/12/10/super-handy-solution-to-mailapp-conundrum
  • http://jonathan.tron.name/2006/11/05/multiple-identities-in-one-account-with-apple-mail-app
  • http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/use_multiple_email_aliases_in_apple_mail.html
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Magic Mouse

2010/03/08 — laurent

My current mouse was not good at scrolling, so I decided to buy Apple’s Magic Mouse. Yes, my “old” mouse is still working, so I should not have bought a new one (but in fact I’m still using it).

As usual with Apple, it’s a nice piece of hardware and as usual with Apple, it’s sucking in some ways.

It’s a beautiful mouse, with its complete surface being tactile. I bought it because my previous mice was not scrolling correctly. Does the magic mouse does the job correctly? Yes. Scrolling is very nice. And with the momentum option activated it’s even better.

Some people are complaining because the edges are a bit too sharp, in fact I didn’t noticed it before reading it, but yes, a bit smoother would be better.

Some other people are complaining that the cursor’s movements on the screen are not fluid. I had the same problem from time to time and the simple solution was to have the mouse closer to my laptop, I reduced the distance from 1 meter to 50 cm. Yes it’s lame, it’s bluetooth, I experienced the same problem with an other bluetooth mouse. And bluetooth is also slow, it introduce a latency in cursor’s movements that you can feel when switching from a wired mouse to a bluetooth one, but it’s small enough to go unnoticed after few minutes.

An other thing is that you can’t do the nice gestures you can do on the trackpad. You can download MagicPrefs which enables lot’s of gestures, but in fact I found it quite awkward and difficult to do most of the gestures on the mouse.

Forget about gaming. Of course this mouse is not designed for hardcore gamers, even for gamers at all. The simple fact is you can’t do left and right click at the same time (you were thinking about jumping and firing at the same time in QUAKE LIVE? So that’s why I’m still using my old mouse when I want to play).

But to me, the major problem is that the mouse is way too slow. And it looks like a lot of people think the same.

Event when putting the track speed to the maximum, the magic mouse is still a bit too slow. Interestingly, when removing the drivers, the mouse is way much faster but no more scrolling or gestures… which was the point of buying this mouse. MagicPrefs allows you to increase the speed a bit, looks like MouseZoom do the same as well. But I don’t really like the idea to have to install an extra software to increase the speed. I should be able to set it directly somewhere. Some people are giving some commands like this one:

write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling -float 5.0

It seems that it’s the value written in the system when changing the track speed. In the System Preferences the max value seems to be “3”. So with this command you can set it to a higher value. But each time you have to log out and log in!

If you have to do it only once, it may do the trick. But here I come to an other problem. Let’s imagine I want to play on some games requiring a “classical” mouse, I need to change the tracking speed to a lower value for the “gaming” mouse and when I’m not playing anymore, change back the value… with the command line, and logging out, then logging in…

I already talked about it, but why operating systems are designed for only one mouse and one keyboard?

Have a look at this (from Mac OS X System Preferences):

What do you notice? We can configure several displays, but only one keyboard, one mouse and one trackpad… One mouse and one trackpad? Those are two point and click devices, aren’t they? So in a way we can have two different pointing devices with different settings, so why limiting this difference by “kind” (mouse/trackpad) and not by plugged devices?

Only few people are using more than one of these devices? OK maybe, and most people are also using only one display… and most people I know using a laptop as their main computer plug an external keyboard, so they have the laptop keyboard (and trackpad) and the external keyboard (and mouse) and usually laptop keyboards and standalone keyboards are different and may require different configurations. And of course the case when pair programming.

Mice and keyboards are not dead yet (they are not going to be wiped-out by touchscreens and virtual keyboards before long (in the end they may, but not before at least a decade or two)). So please, you people writing operating systems, would you be nice enough to handle that problem?

Conclusion

After few days using the Magic Mouse, I can say that I found it being a nice device in general, a very good mouse for common usages, not suitable at all for games and way too slow (a fix for that should be trivial to release).

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Restoring your system from a Linux based remote Time Machine backup

2009/07/13 — laurent

In a previous post I explained that I configured my Debian GNU/Linux server to act as a Time Machine server.

The purpose of Time Machine is to backup your Mac and to allow you to retrieve some files you deleted or to restore your system. Last week my MacBook’s hard drive suddenly died without a warning. Since I was moving in my new apartment, the last backup was few days before, but at least I had a quite recent backup.

The question was: does Time Machine will allow me to restore my backup as expected?

I bought a new hard drive, plugged it, boot on Mac OS X install DVD, selected Utilities/Restore system from backup… then nothing. No backup listed and the “Connect to remote disk” is grayed/disabled :-( .

I was a bit disappointed. I launched the terminal and tried to manually mount the remote backup but I failed. This was the good solution, I just didn’t know the right command to mount a remote apple volume. After googling a bit (thanks to my iPhone) I found the right instructions:

  • Create a directory where to mount the remote backup
# mkdir /Volumes/backup
  • Mount remote volume
# mount_afp afp://login:password@hostname/volumename /Volumes/backup

Then relaunch the “Restore from backup” utility, the remote volume was now listed. Just had to select and start waiting (restoring the system may be quite long).

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Using a Linux server for your Mac

2009/03/01 — laurent
Time Machine Server

One great feature introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is Time Machine.

Time Machine is a backup/restore system. As a lot of backup systems it creates an incremental backup. You can create your backup to an attached hard drive, a Time Capsule or an Xserve.

If, like me, you would like to backup your Mac on a Linux server, there is a solution. It’s not perfect yet, but so far (I’m using it for a week now) it’s working quite well.

I followed the instruction written on how to create a Time Machine Server on Debian (it’s in french), which is mostly a translation of this article on how to create a Time Machine Server on Ubuntu (in english).

It’s quite easy, you just have to follow instructions. Some tips:

  • On my Debian installation there’s a problem with cracklib2-dev package, I just had to install libcrack2-dev instead.
  • Don’t copy/paste the XML file from the tutorial’s french version (the blog’s style sheet messed up the quotes).
  • If you have to manually create a sparse bundle disk image, it seems that the size is the size of your “virtual” backup drive. For instance, I have 300 GB available on my server, I selected 200 GB as image size, so Time Machine should not use all the space available on my server but restrict itself to 200 GB (I hope so, it’s not clear as Time Machine is still telling me that my hard drive is about 1.3 TB with 300 GB available, but the sparse bundle disk image is telling me that there is 200 GB with 100 GB available (I already have 100 GB of backup)).
  • On Debian, doing an update will erase your home made netatalk package. In order to prevent that you can use the following command (see Preventing Debian package upgrades):
# echo "netatalk hold" | dpkg --set-selections

I said it was not perfect because from time to time Time Machine failed while backuping, so I have to launch a new backup (ok, it’s just 2 clicks). The other problem is that my home folder is encrypted with FileVault. In that case Time Machine does not backup my home folder when I’m connected. When I logoff, FileVault do some stuff then my home folder is backuped. But now with a remote backup, the backup part is not done anymore. I have to connect with an other account and launch a backup.

iTunes Server

Like a lot of Mac users, I’m using iTunes to listen to my music. The overall software is quite good but there are several things that are just wrong. By default iTunes is only able to read mp3 and Apple‘s own audio codecs. I convert all my CDs to FLAC because it’s a lossless and open source codec.

The other problem I have is that my MacBook has a small hard drive so I can’t keep all my music on it (especially if encoded in FLAC).

The solution is to use Firefly and have it sharing my music on my local network. The music is decoded by Firefly then sent over the network, so iTunes doesn’t have to know how to decode the original file.

Installing Firefly on Debian is quite easy:

$ sudo apt-get install mt-daapd

Then edit /etc/mt-daapd.conf in order to configure it a bit. There is also a web interface to configure Firefly, connect on your server on port 3689 with your web browser (the main thing you have to set is the directory where your music is).

Now open iTunes, you should see a Firefly share in the left panel:

Some drawbacks with this method. On iTunes you only see remote playlists, so some functionalities are not working anymore (changing songs metadata, genius, sound check, creating your own local playlist from the remote one, copying a song to your iPod/iPhone (retrieving a song in local)).

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TomTom

2008/12/29 — laurent

I bought a TomTom XL 30-series as a Christmas gift for one of my relatives.

TomTom XL specifications

  • GPS receiver, navigation (no kidding ;-) )
  • TMC (traffic information)
  • MapShare
  • Speed cameras alerts
  • TeleAtlas European maps
  • 4.3 inches screen, which is 10.9 cm (why are we using a non-standard unit system for screen sizes?)
  • Battery life: 3 hours
  • Update maps with TomTom HOME (computer software, TomTom XL can connect to it with an USB cable)
  • Documentation in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (an other version of TomTom XL is sold in UK)

SatNav

As everybody knows, this is the main feature of TomTom. Last time I used TomTom was at least 4 years ago and with this recent product I’m surprised to see that the user interface is still the same.

Even if it’s not useful when you are driving, there are several little things that could be done to polish the UI a bit.

TomTom HOME

In the documentation (yes, sometimes I read it (well, only one or two pages)) it’s written to connect TomTom to the computer and follow the instructions. Of course this works only on Windows computers with autorun activated.

The nice feature is that you see TomTom like an USB key (called “NO NAME”, they should change that), and TomTom HOME installation software is in it (no need of a CD (well, it’s what I thought first)).

The content of the “USB key” is a bit messy, but you there are installation softwares right at the root. There is InstallTomTomHOME.exe for Windows, TomTom HOME Install.app for Mac OS X and… nothing for Linux, of course.

Let’s be clear about some things. TomTom devices run Linux as their operating system, so there are Linux aware engineers at TomTom. TomTom HOME 2 mostly uses XULRunner (like Firefox, Thunderbird…) and Java which are already crossplatforms (including Linux). So, having TomTom HOME running on Linux does not seem to be a hard task.

Anyway, let’s try the Mac OS X version.

TomTom HOME installation

The installation software ask you to download the software from the internet or to install it from a CD or DVD. This is the first thing you see when launching the installation software. Let’s download it.

TomTom HOME is downloaded then installed and launched. TomTom XL is regnized as a TomTom GO. The installed version is 1.5. So a few seconds after it asks to install the new version.

Let’s upgrade to TomTom HOME 2.2 as written. I click on it, it opens a small window, which is obviously TomTom’s website, click on TomTom HOME, and download TomTom HOME 2.5 (!) for Mac OS X. Of course I got a error message.

Let’s close TomTom HOME, open Safari and goes to TomTom HOME website by myself. 42.4 MB to download. Standard installation process. Launched it, it works.

During the installation process, a word popped to my mind several times, this word is “morons”. Lot’s of stupid things that can make the task difficult for a standard computer user.

  • First, the CD/DVD or download question. The software should be included in the TomTom device, so no CD/DVD (in fact they are not provided) or internet connection needed. If the software is not up to date, it will check that itself like lots of softwares do nowadays.
  • The installation software installs TomTom HOME 1.5! TomTom 1.5 supports devices that are not supported in TomTom 2.x, but only a few. The last version (at build time) should be embedded in the device, except for not supported ones (which should have TomTom HOME 1.5).

  • The installation software download TomTom HOME 1.5 in the user’s home directory, install it but forgot to delete the temporary file.
  • TomTom HOME 1.5 is crappy in many ways. First it asks silly questions like this one:

If you are not fluent in English (well I’m not and in France it’s mandatory that computer softwares are translated to French) you may think: why asking me if I live in USA or Canada, I’m in Europe, and how can I answer this question with “Yes” or “No” (OK, maybe all users are not that dumb ;-) ).

Then the upgrade does not work.

So why giving to much difficulties to the users when TomTom HOME 2.5 seems to work way much better (with a standard installation process)?

TomTom XL has 2 GB of memory, 500 MB available. TomTom HOME 1 is about 15 MB, TomTom HOME 2 about 42 MB. So there is enough place to put version 1 and 2 of Windows and Mac OS X versions in the device.

Quick look at the software

When you launch it, TomTom HOME 2.5 first try to find updates for your device, if any it will ask you if you want to update your device.

The interface use the same kind of user interface as the device. I understand the idea, but I’m not sure interacting with a touch device and a computer should be done the same way, but here there are no difficult tasks, so it does not hurt. The main drawback of this choice is that you get an application that have a different behavior than the other applications on your computer.

The software is easy to use, some tasks requires to create an account on TomTom website.

Backuping the device is incredibly slow.

Each time I launch TomTom HOME there are stuff to update. Why not doing all of them at once?

Well, in fact, after using it a bit, it seems that the update process is a bit buggy (or at least not crystal clear).

Linux

So, how to have it working on Linux?

I don’t know :-( . Here are some hints on how to achieve it:

  • Some versions of TomTom HOME 1 works with Wine.
  • Install a virtual machine (xen, VirtualBox…) and install Windows on it.
  • Send emails to TomTom to ask them to provide a Linux version.

I sent an email to TomTom’s support, their answer was: “We don’t get any information about future Linux compatibility before the information is officially released on TomTom’s website.”.

Sorry to not being helpful here. I’m stuck too.

Anything good?

I can’t say that I’m amazed by the quality of TomTom’s products (XL, HOME). The hardware looks great, robust, not the software. TomTom HOME is quite crappy (even version 2.5), the embedded navigation software is quite OK, does not have a very sexy UI, but at least it seems to work correctly enough.

On the plus side, TomTom respect Open Source and Free Software licenses. You can find sources of the free softwares they use on there web site with the patches they made to them.

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Reboot Mac OS X when Windows is crashed

2008/10/27 — laurent

What’s cool with a Mac, besides having a beautiful and powerful computer, is that you can run Windows on it (well, I haven’t used Windows for a while, so to me it’s not a very cool feature).

This is nice for people switching from Windows to Mac OS X, they are still able to run Windows when they need to.

But nasty things may occur. For example Windows crashing before it has completely booted, or you haven’t validated your Windows license. So, your shiny Mac is booting windows, crashing, booting windows, crashing over and over again.

In opposition to Linux, Mac OS X does not ask you which operating system you want to start on at boot time. When you are on Mac OS X or on Windows, there is a menu to reboot on the other operating system.

In the case you can’t reach the menu, there is an other solution than formatting the hard drive and re-installing the system.

The solution is to keep the following keys pressed when the Mac is booting: command+alt+r+p.

This command tells the computer to start on the first partition, the one holding Mac OS X.

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