But then she hands me her new iPod touch…with her Yahoo mail account working just fine. It must get the mail somehow. And it’s highly unlikely Apple wrote some sort of custom HTTP-Mail transport just for them.

You can have IMAP access to your Yahoo Mail account. For free. Here’s how.

Cutting to the chase

IMAP server: apple.imap.mail.yahoo.com (username = Yahoo ID)
SMTP server: apple.smtp.mail.yahoo.com (username = yahooid@yahoo.com)
SSL enabled. Authentication = password.

Step-by-step guide to configuring Mac OS X Mail for Yahoo

1. Go to Mail > Preferences…
2. Click Accounts (toolbar)
3. Click + (lower left)
4. You’ll see the first pane of the wizard. Enter your email address and password. Then click Continue.
   
5. Mail recognizes this as a Yahoo account. But you’re not a paying Yahoo Mail Plus customer, and don’t have access to the POP server. Don’t worry. That’s okay. Click Continue anyway.
   
6. On the next screen, select IMAP from the popup and enter apple.imap.mail.yahoo.com as the server name.
   

   Note: most of the instructions on the internet tell you to enter imap.apple.mail.yahoo.com. While this also works, you’ll get an SSL error:
   

   since Yahoo’s wildcard certificate is for *.imap.mail.yahoo.com. If you do this, you have to click Show Certificate, check the “Always trust…” checkbox, click connect and enter your Mac OS username and password.

   Why bother?

7. Next, enter apple.smtp.mail.yahoo.com as your SMTP server. Enter your username (full yahoo email address) and password and click Continue:
   
8. The good news: Mail has recognized this as not just an IMAP account, but a Yahoo IMAP account.
   

   The bad news: it thinks it’s a POP account, and has set the port to 995.
   

   Change the port to 993.

9. Finally, we need to set up the Junk mail folder. Click the Mailbox Behaviors tab. Besides Junk, check “Store Junk messages on the server.”

   Then, close the preferences window. When prompted, click Save.

10. Now, put your feet up. Depending on the amount of email you have, it could take an hour or more to download it all. Yeah, you whose friends email them photos instead of posting them to Flickr. That’s right. You.

    Once that’s done, you need to identify four mailboxes as special: Draft(s), Trash, Sent and Bulk Mail (Junk).

    Select the Draft folder. Then select Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For > Drafts:
    

    Select the Trash folder. Then select Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For > Trash:

    

    Repeat for Sent and Bulk Mail.

We kept seeing this error:

iChat can’t log in to talk.google.com because your login ID or password is incorrect.

And this XMPP error was logged to Console:

iChatAgent[33567] [Warning] JConnection: Error: Error Domain=XMPPErrorDomain Code=10 “The operation couldn’t be completed. (XMPPErrorDomain error 10.)”

When we tried the same username and password on gmail.com in Safari, it worked. It also worked logging in to Google Talk using Adium.

So what’s going on? Well, my Google Account is paulschreiber@gmail.com. Most people know Google also accepts emails sent to paul.schreiber@gmail.com. What I didn’t know is that you can also use paul.schreiber as a username. Most of the time.

Let me explain with a chart:

The problem was the dot. Once we removed it, we could log in successfully.

I assume the same thing happens if your actual username has a dot and you remove it.

Filed with Apple as Radar 8978731.

Many of these strike me as unnecessary. But they’re also poorly written. Background processes like this shouldn’t crash. And they’re really shouldn’t crash writing log files.

Here’s the first of two crashes in six hours:

Process: CS5ServiceManager [9272]
Path: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CS5ServiceManager/CS5ServiceManager.app/Contents/MacOS/CS5ServiceManager
Identifier: com.adobe.csi.CS5ServiceManager
Version: ??? (5.0.1.137)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: ??? [1]

Date/Time: 2011-02-01 20:19:32.291 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.6 (10J567)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 5

...snip...

Thread 5 Crashed:
0 ??? 0000000000 0 + 0
1 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x9783fd7a d_name + 164
2 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x9783f3f4 d_type + 657
3 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x97843189 d_demangle + 747
4 ...adobe.csi.CS5ServiceManager 0x00021094 vcfoundation::impl::UTF8Builder::Append(vcfoundation::data::IVCString*, vcfoundation::util::VCRange) + 174
5 ...adobe.csi.CS5ServiceManager 0x00014d92 vcfoundation::util::BackTrace::Describe(vcfoundation::data::IVCStringAppender&) + 34
6 ...adobe.csi.CS5ServiceManager 0x00021e09 vcfoundation::data::IVCStringAppender::AppendFormat(char const*, char*) + 143
7 ...adobe.csi.CS5ServiceManager 0x00021e5e vcfoundation::data::IVCStringAppender::AppendFormat(char const*, ...) + 34
8 ...adobe.csi.CS5ServiceManager 0x00014c90 vcfoundation::util::StdStreamLog::Log(vcfoundation::util::IVCLog::Level, char const*, char*) + 452
9 libSystem.B.dylib 0x937d4be8 free + 244


Examining the crashed thread, we can make a few observations:

• Adobe seems to have invented their own string-handling library
• Appending strings can cause a crash
• Adobe is using C++
• This crash happening logging
• This crash happening … writing a crash report?

The only way I’ve crashed a log call is with a format string error. And format string problems? They’re often security holes. Can anyone tell if this might be exploitable?

And did they really invent their own crash reporter? And is that what’s crashing?

Dear Adobe: the wheel is already round. If you’re going to litter my computer with crap, it better be rock solid.

This means you have a bad USB drive and need to replace it.

This is the dialog of four lies:
Lie #1: A file is missing.
Lie #2. The file is missing from the Application Support folder.
Lie #3: The file is necessary to run Photoshop.
Lie #4: You need to re-install Photoshop to file the problem.

The problem is that /Library/ScriptingAdditions/Adobe Unit Types.osax isn’t loading. It’s possible the file is actually missing, but it’s more likely that you’ve upgraded to Snow Leopard.

Snow Leopard requires 64-bit versions of every plug-in, including OSAXes. The version of Adobe Unit Types that shipped with CS3 and CS4 is 32-bit.

To fix this, download the 64-bit version of Adobe Unit Types, drag it to your ScriptingAdditions folder and launch Photoshop. Problem solved.

via Garr

There’s no more “Apple ignited the personal computer revolution,” which had been there since at least 1998.

Here’s the new boilerplate, which first appeared on June 28, 2010 in iPhone 4 Sales Top 1.7 Million:

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

And the old text, from June 22, 2010: Apple Sells Three Million iPads in 80 Days:

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

And back on March 5 — pre-iPad — it looked like this:

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

This probably says more about Apple than most people are willing to give it credit for.

Apple’s online store has refurbished Macs for sale. These are often a very good deal — today’s selections range from 13-26% off the original prices.

Refurbished Macs carry the same full one-year warranty as new ones and are eligible for the free printer rebate and AppleCare. (Aside: if you don’t need the support, your credit card’s extended warranty protection many be enough.)

But if you look right now, there’s only one refurbished MacBook:

No, Apple hasn’t sold every refurbished MacBook they own. They’re only sold out for today.

If you check back at 1 AM PDT (4 AM EDT), you’ll see a much larger selection. (Didn’t see much? Try again the next day.)

This means by the time the west coast wakes up, the east coast early birds have snapped up the best deals. Suggestion: stay up late.