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Apple Mail in Lion: Include related messages in Conversations

The Mail program in Lion (Mac OS X v. 10.7) has a handy new “Conversation” view which shows messages in one long view, with extraneous quotations stripped out. The resulting appearance is a lot like a web-based forum.

By default, Mail only shows messages that are in the currently selected mailbox. (For example, your Inbox or Sent box, etc.) Luckily this can be changed:

Go to the Mail menu
Click on Preferences…
Click on Viewing
Under the View conversations header, check the box labeled Include related conversations

Now all messages will be included even if they are in a different mailbox, similar to Gmail or Sparrow

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20
Oct 10

On the convergence of iOS and Mac OS X

With Lion and iLife ’11 it appears that there are two mobile interfaces (iPod/iPhone vs. iPad) and two desktop interfaces (full screen vs. windowed.) But the iPad UI and the full-screen mode for Mac OS X apps appear virtually the same. Why keep them separate? In the longrun, they won’t be. Instead of two systems with two UI modes each, there will be one system with three UI modes.

As mobile hardware gets more and more powerful, “universal” apps will run on iPhone, iPod, iPad, or Mac. On the iPhone and iPod an app may run with a very minimal full-screen interface. On the iPad, the interface will be bigger and more capable, but still only available in full-screen mode. But on a full-fledged computer, you will have a choice of running that app in a full-screen iPad-like mode or windowed mode.

Once it becomes the norm for apps to offer these different interfaces, we’ll see the lines between mobile and desktop blur even further. If you have a full set of applications and OS that adapts to anything from a 3.5″ iPhone screen up to a 27″ iMac screen, the only real difference between mobile and desktop will be the size of the screen, and whether a keyboard and mouse are attached.

iPhone 4, 3GS tip: Tap-to-focus also sets exposure

Tap-to-focus is a handy feature on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. But did you know that exposure may also be affected by where you touch the image?

Wherever you tap the on-screen preview (before taking a shot), your iPhone will assume that that is your subject. It will adjust exposure to make sure that the subject is not too bright or dark. It may not be noticeable in most cases but if you have an especially light or dark subject the effect can be dramatic.

In the first photo I tapped on the camera, which made the image very bright. This result might be helpful if you are actually trying to show some small detail on the camera, but it made the photo too bright for my taste.

In the second photo, I tapped on the tabletop near the camera. The focus remains about the same, but my iPhone adjusted the exposure to make sure the table top is not blown out. In doing so it made the overall photo darker. The subject may be a bit on the dark side, but it looks a lot more natural this way.

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19
Apr 10

Instant Messaging on iPad

IM on the iPad is in a rather sorry state right now. Ironically the free AIM client, which I normally avoid like the plague, is the most usable option for me.

Current Options

AIM works reliably and is free, but it only connects to AIM and Facebook chat. It occasionally jumps to a past point in the conversation and has to be manually scrolled to the end. This is annoying but forgivable.

IM+ is not free, but it supports multiple IM services (AIM, MSN, Jabber, etc.) However, it occasionally forgets it’s already logged in and warns about multiple sing-ins. Again, annoying but forgivable. The real problem I have is that it doesn’t seem to be usable at all with a keyboard attached. It seems that the message entry field is directly connected to the on-screen keyboard, so when the keyboard his hidden you don’t have a field to type in. And apparently when the device is sitting in my iPad keyboard dock, the on-screen keyboard is not only hidden, but can’t even be activated! The button to restore the keyboard does nothing at all. Hopefully this quirk will be fixed in an upcoming update.

Future Options

Beejive is hopefully coming soon. This is my favorite IM client on iPhone and iPod touch. It has been dead reliable and is very polished. But so far it has not been enhanced to take advantage of the iPad’s larger display.

iChat is probably coming as an avenue for video chat, but it won’t appear until iPhone OS 4.0 hits the virtual shelves.

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16
Apr 10

iPad keyboard dock

My iPad keyboard dock arrived today. As expected it’s almost identical to the standard Apple keyboard. It’s great so far!

The “f” function keys have been replaced by a set of shortcuts for common iPad functions. From left to right:
• Shows home screen (exits current application)
• Search (exits current application)
• Brightness down
• Brightness up
• Photos slideshow
• Show/hide on-screen keyboard
• (blank)
• Previous track
• Play/pause
• Next track
• Mute
• Decrease volume
• Increase volume
• Lock/unlock screen

The “fn” key has been removed, and the control key is wide again like a traditional keyboard.

David's tech blogTech tips focusing on Mac OS X and iOS