Make the most of mail

Web apps such as Firefox and Safari seem to have inspired people to both create and use a wide range of plug ins that are designed to customise the users experience to help specific browsing styles, but maybe because it's such a workaday program most people seem to use Apple Mail as it comes, straight out of the box. While basic mail (and particularly Leopard Mail (mail3) makes a pretty good job of your e-mail there are a few ways to make the mail experience more useful. So here are a few additions to mail that you might find useful.

First off, Letterbox. This plug in changes the standard mail view to three side by side columns ratehr than stacking the preview window under the mail list window. On wide screen monitors (and Mac Book Pros) this makes much better use of your screen real estate and can save lots of time, particularly when scanning long lists of mail.




Growlmail is part of the hugely useful Growl suit of plug ins and add ons that allow a range of notifications of events happening on and to your Mac. Growl mail will notify you via a pop up window of new incoming mail, and give you a heads up on who it's from.

Similarly, MailAppertiser is another flexible mail notification plug in. A dark smoked effect pop up window displays new incoming maeesages plus their content for a specified amount of time allowing you to decide wether to ignore or deal with any new messages. Mail Appetiser is available for both Tiger and Leopard mail.

With many more plug ins available to fulfill specific tasks, it should be worthwhile investigating how you could improve your mail experience.

10 hidden gems

OK so you;re getting the basics but you can always learn a wee bity more. Here (quickly) are ten handy hints that you might not know you can do with OSX Leopard (or other versions of OS X)

1) Time Machine. It works great on files but did you know you can use it from inside apps such as iPhoto. If you've deleted a needed photo it's no problem. You can entrer the time machine interface while running iPhoto, navigate back to the missing image and restore it right back into your library.

2) Application switcher. I love it but almost no one I speak to seems to even know it exists. To switch betwen running apps simply hold the command (or apple) key and hit tab to cycle through each app via a big icon bar in the middle of the screen. Holding the shift key reverses the direction of travel through the apps.

3) Spotlight as an application launcher. Thanks to the speed boost in spotlight under Leopard you can now youe it as a great application launcher without cursing the speed. Click on the spotlight icon. Type the first few letters of teh application you want to launch (three or four letters usually does it) and hit return. Bingo open application.

4) Create quick and easy movies in Photobooth. Need to send a video message to a friend. Open Photobooth, select the video button and away you go. Short videos that you can send via e-mail or share on the web are just a single click away.

5) Summarize text. One of the little used system wide services in each applications pull down menu. Select a large body of text in any application or on th einternet and select summarize. OS X will present you with a short summary of the contents of the text.

6) Screen zoom. Eyes getting tired. Need to see what that tiny dot in the corner is. Just hold the control key down and move your mouse up ( or use 2 finger scrolling up on newer Mac portables) and teh screen wil magically zoom in. Reverse process to zoom out.

7) Quick clean up. Need to close everything in a hurry. Don'rt waste time clicking on the red close button on every window. Just click on one button while holding the option key and all open windows will instantly close.

8) Colour code your window backgrounds. Sounds odd but it can help differentiate project windows. Open a window and select icon view. Then select view options and select colour (or even picture) from the buttons at the bottom of the menu

Enjoy!

Intel iMac hard drive or superdrive replacement

Firstly... my apologies for not posting any pictures with this, but I didn't have my camera or phone with me when I did this and I'm not doing it again just to get some pictures. So bear with me and I'll try to paint as accurate a picture with mere words.

A customer recently sent in their Intel iMac 17in, having inserted a floppy promotional DVD into the superdrive and well and truly gumming up the works. We tried all the usual eject tricks but the disc was just too flexible to actually come out. The only option looked like opening the case up. I bought a new superdrive as a precaution and searched the net for a guide. The fact that only one site offered up a step by step was my first clue that this was not going to be a 5 minute job. Luckily the site I found has some great images of the task in hand but dealt with the hard drive not the superdrive.

Pictures of the process can be found here. Many thanks to John Wood for the images.

Despite the numerous sites proclaiming this as an Apple main dealer job. I decided to go ahead. In the end it wasn't actually that hard. Harder than working on a Mac Mini certainly but only marginally worse that a G4 lampstand iMac. You will need a set of good Torx spanners for this that go down to T2 size. You will also need a tube of rubber cement and some masking tape (more on this later).

1. Lay the iMac screen down on a soft clear surface. Undo the row of four torx screws along the base and the two torx screws that hold the memory cover in place.

2. Turn the Mac over so the screen faces upwards and push the memory levers inwards so that the outer case can be lifted over them.

3. The case lifts upwards and away from you. It is held in place along the top by two metal clips, top left and right. You will need to disengage these by pressing on them to release, while at the same time lifting the case up and way from you. The case contains the isight camera, which remains connected to the motherboard so lift the case carefully and place it upside down in front of the main body of the iMac.

4. Now peel the black plastic cover along the bottom of the Mac away from the base of the case. Also carefully peel the black tape along the sides of the screen that holds the screen in place.

5. The screen itself is held in place by four torx screws in the four corners that are accessed via indents in the side of the screen. A magnetised driver is a big help here as the screws are well recessed.

6. Once the screws are out the screen is easily levered up. Again, this remains connected to the motherboard, so lift out carefully. The screen is glued to some perforated metal strip along the top edge, which will need to be carefully prized off. The best place to rest the screen is by propping it up against the iMacs stand.

7. The insides of the iMac are now revealed, and quite frankly it's a bit of a mess. Anyone familiar with the packaging of the G5 tower and the Mini will be very disappointed. The insides look thrown together with little of no thought. The hard drive is in the centre and for those looking to replace this you should now continue to follow the instructions of John Wood's page. I was looking to replace the Superdrive, which should be obvious on the right hand side of the case.The drive is housed in a black plastic sled.

8. Remover the temperature sensor fixed to the top of the drive using a flat screwdriver or similar to gently prize it off. Next remove the small torx screw that holds the bar retaining the data cable from the drive to the motherboard and gently disconnect the cable from the motherboard.

9. The drive sled is held in place by two sturdy plastic levers. Pressing these inwards allows the drive sled to be pulled (carefully upwards and away from the motherboard.

10. The actual drive is secured to the sled by four torx screws. Undo these and keep them safe. Two T2 screws hold the data cable in place on the back of the drive. Remove these and disconnect the cable.

To refit

11. Connect the cable to the new drive and replace the retainer bar.

12. Clip the drive back in place. The two retaining lugs will click into place.

13. Reattach the temperature sensor and the data cable to the motherboard and reattach the data cable retaining bar.

14. Place the screen carefully back in place. It is quite fiddly to stop the black plastic from being pushed underneath the screen so I taped in back with a few bits of masking tape. Once the screen is in place reinsert the four retaining screws.

15. Press the black plastic back into place as best as possible and refit the outer case from the top first, locating the two metal clips in place.

16. Do up the screws along the bottom and replace the memory cover.

And that's it. You should be good to go. Whilst not specifically easy, by taking your time and being organised this job really is not that hard.

Mind you roll on the day that all these components are designed to slide in and out modularly, like the MacBook hard drive.

I would also add that Apple DO consider this to be a dealer service item and attempting any of this will void any warranty or Applecare that your machine has. So if you are prepared to do this, it's on your won head.