1FPS|by David Chartier

Apple has a new support document that further details the new Address-Book-to-Gmail sync feature that debuted in 10.5.3. Here are a few choice talking points:

• The feature now appears in iTunes 7.7 in addition to Address Book’s pref pane
• Apple explains: “Google uses email addresses as the unique identifier for each Gmail contact. If some of your contacts have the same email address, they may not all sync.”
• Also: “Anyone you have corresponded with in your Gmail account will be included in this sync by default.” Google, stop this behavior, or at least give us the option to shut it off.

My favorite bullet point is towards the bottom: “If you are syncing your computer with MobileMe, remember that these contacts may sync to MobileMe as well.” Note that Apple says these contacts “may” sync to MobileMe, instead of “definitely will, because MobileMe is a far more reliable replacement for .Mac.”

Once you go Mac - Blog Maverick

Mark Cuban—billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks—switched to a MacBook Pro a few months back and sounds pretty satisfied. His only two complaints a lack of Outlook for the Mac and the right click issue, though plenty of commenters have already educated him on the facts and solutions surrounding those two.

Strangely, one of his major issues—besides a rocky Vista upgrade—is Office 2007, which, from impressions around the web, otherwise sounded like one of the more positive experiences Microsoft has to offer these days.

Either way, it’s interesting to hear impressions and nuances of a switch like this from a billionaire, especially since he seems so passionate about it. Usually guys like that who only run Office and Firefox say things like “meh, the Mac’s prettier, and Jobs doesn’t suck at giving a keynote.” At least he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about and has discovered some of the finer details of switching that you don’t get from the TV ads.

[tags]switch, Mac[/tags]

In my quest to spice up advertising around here without pummeling you with AdSense, I’ve joined a new affiliate program and placed an ad for Apple’s .Mac service in the sidebar. While I have agreed plenty of times on TUAW and elsewhere that .Mac has needed some help in one department or another, the simple fact is that there still isn’t anything nearly as awesome on the market. This week’s massive storage and feature upgrade only reinforces my opinion that it’s a fantastic service, so I’m happy to feature it as an affiliate link here on 1FPS in the hopes of paying some bills.

Feel free to check out .Mac via the link in my sidebar and make me a few bucks, and be assured that I will never feature ads for services or product that I haven’t personally used.

Thanks for reading 1FPS.

In iChat, replying to my friend Chris while joking about how bad CS3 screwed up his Leopard testing workstation: “man it’s Adobe software - I’m surprised it didn’t spit out Leopard’s balls from your optical drive”

For the last 24 hours or so I’ve been receiving this error message both over Wi-Fi and EDGE when trying to send messages to verified email addresses through both my .Mac and Gmail accounts. The error message states specifically that the particular address I’m sending to was “rejected by the server,” even though I’ve been emailing people at those addresses for months or even years (in fact, in one case, I was emailing something to myself, and my own address is being rejected by the server). To my knowledge I haven’t changed a thing in any of my accounts and I haven’t dropped my iPhone.

Halp?

Update: The problem has since mysteriously fixed itself. The two drafts that were still backed up have sent themselves, and I was just able to send out a brand new message as well. Still no clue what the problem was though.

Daniel Jalkut - Free Idea: Cooperative Advertising

Enough preface, here’s the idea: a network of Mac-businesses trading a tiny patch of our web page in exchange for the cooperative advertising of our colleagues.

Love the idea. He’s using The Deck as inspiration, and it sounds great. This is one of the things I love so much about the Mac OS X community, as well as the developer community:

It’s often pointed out that the Mac developer community is just that, a community. We take it for granted, but it seems unusual that a large collection of people should be so simultaneously devoted both to money-making and to helping each other out. Frankly, it’s one of the things that prevents development on the Mac from becoming a grind: the fact that even your biggest competitor will probably sit down with you for a friendly chat. Heck, they’ll probably even buy your lunch!

As a community, we share lots of things ranging from advice, to icon designers, to source code. But we don’t share advertising. Why is that?

If this gets off the ground, it will also be interesting to see who’s using whose products.

Update: For the record, I have since stopped using my Gmail account as a primary and switched back to .Mac e-mail. Apple has solved my major complaints and then some, and I am more than happy with the service these days.

Apple’s .Mac service has been taking an increasing amount of flak over the last couple of years, and it’s becoming harder and harder for me to keep singing its praises. I’m still a somewhat happy member, primarily because of its application syncing and webDAV-trumping iDisk, but this morning I finally decided to say goodbye to my .Mac email address. For all of the flashy new stuff in .Mac’s revamped webmail, it’s still god-awful at handling some of the basic necessities (i.e. - spam filtering), and I finally did the deed this morning. I enabled the auto-reply message, instructing those who email me to catch me at Gmail. I also very well might turn off .Mac forwarding to Gmail since too many spam messages are making it through .Mac’s spam filters, which somehow causes Gmail to let them slip through as well.

Sorry .Mac email; you’re one of the few examples where Apple scores big in the form department, but sadly falls flat in function.

Hilarious quote from Alex Lindsay, video guru and host of This Week in Media, when discussing Justin Long’s somewhat put-offish Mac character from Apple’s Get a Mac commercials:

They were great ads, some of the best Apple’s ever done, but they need to move on… And it was hilarious when the rumor went around that [Justin Long] might be leaving, it made you really think: ‘Wow, he really is snarky…’ but as a Mac user, you don’t notice it, because you’re snarky.

As a passionate and at least somewhat educated Mac user, I’ll be the first to admit to that occasionally being true. About the ads though: while some of them were truly pretty funny, I still question Apple’s choice of bringing that ‘higher-than-thou’ snarky attitude into their marketing. Berating friends and family (or your customers) for the downfalls in their choice of computing is one thing (and of course, there are plenty out there for whom it isn’t a choice for one reason or another), but I think genuinely educating and painting your products in a 100% pure and positive light is a better thing.

[tags]Mac, humor, marketing, This Week in Media[/tags]

Windows development chief, Jim Allchin:
‘I would buy a Mac if I didn’t work for Microsoft’

What, Microsoft doesn’t cover the purchase of a Mac or two as a company perk? For shame! How are their employees supposed to get anything done during the day, let alone at home?