Apple's Mail app is Teh Suck

Just some quick thoughts of things I'd like for Apple's Mail.app to handle that it doesn't and probably never will. Considering that I got an iPad and had expected to use it as a great email device this list is particularly personal to me as Mail on the iPad is more ineptly equipped than Mail on Snow Leopard.

IMNSHO Mail on the iPad and OS X should have:

• Support for Multiple Identities
• This is a no brainer. Every other mail application has had support for this feature since somewhere around 1997. Having multiple "From" addresses is not the same as multiple identities. The Latter includes changes to "Name", "From", "Signature", PGP-Key
• There are multiple use cases for this
• When I brought this up to the reps at the Apple Store their solutions were just ridiculous:
• Create multiple 'sender accounts' that remain 'off line' 
• Use MobileMe (don't know how that one was supposed to help)
• Do things a different way 
• Use GMail or Thunderbird 
• PGP/GPG Support
• C'mon PGP's been around since I was in high school (and I'm in my 30s).
• Ability to display Full-Headers
• It's useful.
• ServerSide Filter Support
• Sieve plugins are available for most other Email Applications
• Associating a default email address with a particular mail folder

I'm thinking of implementing the above in an app myself but with Apple's fickle approval process I'm reluctant to put in the time and effort only to be rejected for vague reasons.

Until I figure something else out, it's just mutt+msmtp, which I love by the way.

The most significant issue with Google dropping Microsoft

Admittedly, I've not been following the fall out over Google ditching Microsoft with much interest so it's a certainty that I've missed much commentary on the topic. That said: I'm surprised that in the main stream coverage that I have seen, there was no mention of what I believe to be the most important consequence of Big Search's decision.

Some contend that MS Windows is no less secure than any other operating system. While I do not agree with this sentiment, I understand the rationale that with popularity and wide adoption any system can become a more attractive target than others in the same space. As such MS Windows with it's domination of the corporate and home desktop market offers a potentially worthy return on investment for an attacker looking for system to compromise. By this reasoning, Google being a very large enterprise has just painted a huge target on the back of Linux and Mac OS X (users) by making it public knowledge that they will offer only those two options, for desktop computing, to employees. Now attackers know that they have at least one very large and attractive target with millions (yes millions) of computing devices running one of two (not too dissimilar) operating systems that would otherwise not be worth investing the time in compromising.


Just a thought

Blog migration (yes again)

I just recently migrated to blogging solution number 5. Well 5 in the last 2 years. I won't count the time on Zope/Plone (which I really liked). I loath MySQL and PHP so I was never find of running Word Press on my network. Having moved to a hosted solution I can now remove the MySQL instances from my network and uninstall all things PHP.... well most things PHP.

I'm actually working on a blog solution of my own in Python that I hope to have ready by year's end.

Oh well. For now this is the new home of Not A Discussion. Let's see how long this lasts.