Can you spot the differences?

Do you spot the differences between the 2 boxes below?

If you don't, you're not the only one. My three and a half year old son saw the box on the left (these Trader Joe's Crushers are a staple in his diet) and said "It has 2 holes". My wife and I looked at him and didn't quite understand what he was talking about. He was clearly talking about the box, so I grabbed the old box and low and behold, the old box (on the right above) has one connected hole to display the product. The new box (the one on the left has 2 holes). While there are other differences that you can now see by looking at them side by side, I never would have paid attention to something like that.

The mind of our son amazes me; he notices so many things that I ignore or simply neglect.

Another run in with Mail.app

It seems that I rarely encounter issues with Mail hanging while talking to Gmail. Maybe I'm lucky, but it seems that my sister has more problems with the combination than anyone else I know. Today she called me almost panicked as her husband's machine wasn't getting mail. Turns out there were a number of issues contributing to the problem. The solution was relatively simple once I figured out the issue.

The problems:

• Too many messages in All Mail. There were over 37000 messages in the All Mail folder on Gmail, so when he selected All Mail, Mail happily started retrieving all 37000 messages (several gigabytes). This never finished.
• Closing the computer kept restarting the process.
• Corrupted IMAP cache directory.

The solution:

After a bit of searching I came across a reference to the .OfflineCache folder. This is a hidden folder in ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-nameofaccount/. You have to use Terminal to access it. Removing this folder (when Mail is not running) will cause Mail to start recaching the IMAP mail. This would unstick Mail, but the problem would come back once the All Mail was hit.

I remembered that Gmail labs added some advanced IMAP options. I turned on Advanced IMAP options in Gmail labs. This brings up a few very important options.

Once that option is turned on (and saved), Forwarding and POP/IMAP has an extra option.

If you set the limit, Mail will at most show 1000 messages. This significantly reduces the number of messages that come down. Deleting the cache folder, setting this option, and then restarting Mail (and waiting a few minutes), cleaned up everything. However, there was one more option that I missed that would reduce that 1000 down to none (viewing All Mail in Mail is kind of a waste). Click on Labels and you can turn off the Labels that are shown in IMAP. Basically turn all of them off.

Presto! Problem solved.

What constitutes an expert?

For years, I've always wondered where news programs find their "experts" on various topics. Some of the things that these so called experts say sound like common sense to me. What makes these people experts? Dictionary.com defines expert as:

a person who has special skill or knowledge in someparticular field; specialist; authority: a language expert.

The key word, I guess, is "special". Who defines special?

I've been to a number of conferences where people get on stage and talk about topics, usually technical topics and I've considered these people to be "experts" in their fields. However, I've come to realize that being on stage doesn't make someone an expert. As part of my ongoing technical training, I've been watching all the videos from last year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). One of the sessions had a presenter whose name I've heard for years and considered him more knowledgable than me. However, after listening to the session and reviewing the code from the session, I no longer take for granted that the people presenting are "experts". (I disagree with a number of things said in the session and thought that the code could have been written better.)

Am I an expert? I don't consider myself an expert (if I did, I think my head would swell!), but I've been writing handheld software for the last 15 years, so I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in terms of code. Maybe I'm more confident now than when I started or maybe I no longer take things for face value.

Should I switch?

Now that the iPhone is coming to Verizon, I will have to make a decision about sticking with AT&T or moving to Verizon. As I still have an existing plan with Sprint that my wife uses, I don't have to make this decision until this summer (the ETF on my Sprint lines will be a total of $100 which I'll gladly pay to combine my lines once again). In June, like many others, I'll be 1 year into my 2 year AT&T contract putting the ETF at something over $250 which is a bit steep, but I have to consider will I get better service? There is a lot of speculation that lots of people will jump to Verizon and there are others that say that there won't be a mass exodus. At this point, I have no idea what all the unhappy AT&T customers will do.

There are a number of pros to sticking with AT&T. First off, I won't have to pay an ETF to leave. Second, while being able to do voice and data at the same time isn't something I do all that often, having that ability is nice. This is something that Verizon can't  do and with the mobile hotspot feature available on the Verizon iPhone, one has to question its utility if you lose data connectivity when talking on a phone (I find that if I'm in a hotel or at an airport, I use my MiFi and am talking on the phone at the same time, something that the hotspot feature won't be useful). Third, the speculation is that an iPhone 5 will come out this summer. I don't think that this phone will immediately be available on Verizon which has seemed to always plague CDMA carriers for as long as I can remember (it took forever to get Bluetooth on a CDMA phone). If I stick with AT&T and an iPhone comes out, I can just renew my contract, pay for the new phone and go on my merry way. If I went with Verizon then who knows when I'd get the next iPhone.

The cons of AT&T? Well, so far, I've only had two experiences where the iPhone failed me. The first happened to be the first day I got the iPhone where I couldn't get data coverage in the San Diego airport. The second was when I was in San Francisco; I was unable to get data there as well. Many people that fault the iPhone are in the most populous large cities, New York and San Francisco. Others have pointed out that the big problem is the time it takes to get cell sites live in these cities; we're talking years, so AT&T is finally getting new sites up that they planned back when the iPhone started getting popular. The assumption is that Verizon has seen this and been planning their network. Other than those 2 times, I've been relatively pleased with AT&T. Coverage is fine everywhere I go and is a bit superior to the coverage I had on Sprint.

Why would I goto Verizon? Cost would be one factor, but the plans are quite comparable between AT&T and Verizon. However, at this time Verizon hasn't announced if they'll keep the unlimited smartphone plan for the iPhone; I have the 2 GB plan on AT&T. I use maybe a few hundred MB of data a month, so the cap isn't an issue. Better coverage? In 7 months, I've had basically 1 day of problems. Is that reason enough to jump ship? I don't think so.

Now that I've written this article and laid out my points, I've convinced myself to sit tight and do nothing. I'll revisit this in the summer when I have to switch my wife, but unless something major happens, I'm going to move my wife's line to AT&T.