iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Apple’s implementation of MS Exchange 2007 clients in their current Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is far superior to Microsoft’s own attempt in the form of MS Entourage 2008. If you are an MicroSoft Exchange user and you’ve been considering upgrading to Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard I encourage you to upgrade if the Apple interface and integration of these tools out-weigh the limitations outlined below.

Apple explains MS Exchange support on their web site. What follows is my experience.

I’ve installed OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on my work Mac Pro for a week now. It was the first victim as it has the ability to hold multiple drives, so I installed OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on a new RAID 0 array and left OS X 10.5 Leopard on the original drive — which only received Leopard six months ago. I’m writing this post as one my first tasks on my Snow Leopard-afied MacBook.

Exchange support is found in the Snow Leopard versions of:

• Apple Mail (Mail.app)
• iCal
• Address Book

When you create an MS Exchange account in one of these applications it will offer to create an account in the other applications.

Here’s a look at each application with an eye to helping pre-Snow Leopard Entourage users gain insight into if they want to make the jump or not.

Mail.app

Mail’s got the same great features, like sql-lite based search, that kept me from being able to switch to anything else for so long (until Thunderbird got the same quality of search…. but not Exchange.)

Exchange accounts are added via the same “Preferences” > “Accounts” and the + method that was previously associated with IMAP and (shudder…) POP accounts.
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After having gone through countless sticky “felt feet” for the chairs in our kitchen I’ve finally found a suitable replacement.

Over a month ago I installed Hickory Hardware’s casters. The ones I went with screwed into the bottom of the chair legs, the idea was that the screw would keep the sliders in place.

Immediately the chairs slide better than they ever had before, but the reason I wrote-up the blog posting is to record that after a month the screws have yet to turn to the dark side and scratch our tiles.

In summary, I’d highly recommend Madico Super Slidex sliding casters for almost any surface — check back in a year to see if I’ve put them on our chairs that live on wood surfaces.

I’m a big fan of TextExpander. I’ve been using it since before it was purchased by Smile on My Mac Software and was called Textpander.

The basic concept is that you can type short key-commands on your Apple, like “ddate” which is automatically replaced with something like Friday; August 28, 2009. In that case saving 18 key-strokes and some thinking, but in other cases it can save thousands of words if you work with a lot boilerplate or things like code samples – another snippet I user a lot is my “hhtml” key-command that inserts a basic HTML web page, including a comment with the date. I also have a “llorem” key-command that gives be a bunch of lorem ipsum paragraphs.

It’s a great way to save time with boilerplate, pre-fill things, or even allow it to auto correct thoes typos that you make all teh time.

I know in my job I get the same question from different people very often and TextExapnder allows me to both offer myself as a contact for questions that range from the obvious to the very complex, but not be worn out by a monotony of remedial questions. TextExapander lets me respond quickly and move on to the real puzzles that I enjoy answering.

I resisted paying for the (previously about ten dollars more, now) $14.98 copy of TextExpander. What convinced me was the ability to subscribe to groups of snippets. I subscribe to Smile on My Mac’s typos group and I’ve also created my own group I maintain here. This keeps my Apple computers in sync, and recently, my iPhone!
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One of my friends is involved in LyricFind.com and he alerted me to the new iPhone App for legally looking-up song lyrics in Canada. It’s serves me well and I recommend it to anyone with an iPhone/iPod touch….. but I apparently don’t have to – it’s in the top ten free iPhone/iPod Apps in Canada!

LyricFind Lite iPhone App

LyricFind.com

What an amazing movie. If you read the reviews and thought that the movie wasn’t for you then don’t go, but if you loved the cartoon or think giant robots battling in downtown LA are cool then go see this movie (maybe twice). Shia LaBeouf is hilarious as Sam Witwicky. The new transformers arrival story written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and with input by Michael Bay and Stephen Spielberg, and Michael Bay got a 90% CGI-laced summer block buster to theatres for $150 million. Apparently there’s more movies to come and I’m excited to see those (I might even see this one again!).
Interesting Links:

• Offcial movie site
• Jalopnik.com’s huge gallery of images
• Did Michael Bay Recycle Pearl Harbor Footage into Transformers?