How to Make Invisible Mail Messages Reappear

I'm just getting over a harddrive death. I had to send my harddrive to get scanned and just got back the files back yesterday. I ran into a strange problem.

Apple Mail was telling me that there were a number of unread messages in any number of folders. However, when I went to open these folders, no messages were showing up.

I had no idea what was going on so I hit Google. This led me to a bunch of posts discussing disappearing Mail messages. However, nothing in any of those posts worked for me.

I took out all the contents of ~/Library/Mail/ and put them in another folder. Then I opened up Mail, followed the instructions in the pop-up window, which repopulated ~/Library/Mail/. Then I again took out all of the contents of ~/Library/Mail/ and put them aside in a new folder. I then brought back all the original files and put them back into ~/Library/Mail/. I then reopened Mail (actually with the intent of taking screenshots of my problem to post online) and everything was working.

The only thing about this is is that this was not the first time I did that, and it didn't get fixed the other times. I can't figure out what I did differently so I can't explain why this worked now but not before.

Joy to the World

Today I got my Mac back. Although I'm not fully settled in yet (the data's coming shortly on a hard disk), I'm happily no longer sitting in front of a freaking Windows computer. Sigh.

Writely: Free Internet-Based Word Processor

When reading a Washington Post article entitled Microsoft is losing some of its elbow room, which discusses some of the challenges that Microsoft is up against, I came across this little bit of info tucked away in the middle of the article:

Upstartle LLC offers an online program for creating, writing and sharing documents. Whereas the Microsoft Office suite that includes such tools costs more than $140, Upstartle's Writely.com service is free, with add-on features to be made available for a subscription fee later.

This certainly piqued my curiosity. How cool would it be to have a free web-based word processor? All my docs are saved right up there, accessible anywhere, totally platform-independent. And it's - hello?! - free!

So I went ahead and gave Writely a whirl. It's quite a promising start. It's simple and straightforward. And it does what it says it does well.

However, the big drawback is its limited functionality. Sure, it lets you type, do basic formatting, add tables, etc., but there's no way to do some of the more advanced things available in Word and other word processors, such as add footnotes, do outline numbering, and make table of contents or table of authorities, all of which would be key to me moving my legal writing activities over to this.

The second problem I see with this is the ominous "with add-on features to be made available for a subscription fee later". Does that mean I'm going to have to pay some kind of subscription to get the same stuff I get in Word? While pricing would be an important issue in determining whether I use it or not, any cost at all would make me a good deal less likely to use this service since I'm already giving up full functionality while in internetless places like the cabin of an airplane.

So what does this call for? Google. Google needs to come in and buy Writely, improve it and most importantly keep it free. This would fit well into Google's pattern of letting users create or collect content while generating revenues through ads on those pages (à la Gmail) or by simply adding the content to Google's massive database (and thereby making Google's search more effective) and trying to get users to use AdSense (à la Blogger). The synergy between Writely and Google seem obvious to me. Let's hope Google will jump on this.

Oh, and can we hurry up and get Safari support already! Switching to a compatible browser is such a pain.

Genius Bar Can't Help Me

So earlier this week I returned to the Genius Bar in SoHo. They had unfortunately been unsuccessful in resurrecting my dead hard drive.

Once again, the Genius Bar is chaos. They're overwhelmed with people. Every third person in lines asks, "Aren't there walk-ins?" to be told, "Yes, but you still have to sign up and the next space is at 4:30" (this was around noon).

I walk to the front of the loooong line and ask, "I'm just here to pick up a computer. Should I wait in this line?" The guy told me to get out my ID. So apparently I don't have to wait in the line.

Even if not in the line, it was wait that I did. The guy I talked to went and looked around for the computer. Turns out it was downstairs. Getting it from downstairs took like 30 minutes. This guy clearly spent more time talking to other people about going downstairs and getting the computer than it would have taken for him to just run downstairs himself and get it. I had to ask him, "Any word on my laptop?" He discovered that they had forgotten about me, as had he apparently, despite the fact that I was sitting at the bar right in front of him. To be fair, it was hectic, but all I was there to do was pick up a damn computer!

After a while, I noticed a computer sitting on the ledge behind the Genius Bar that looks like mine. I asked him, "Could that be mine?" wanted to get it and get out of there. He wanders off to talk with someone and tells me someone will be with me in a minute. It sounded like that wasn't mine, but it was. It sat there for like 20 minutes before anyone got to me. Then another 10 minutes or so filling out paperwork, and finally I was out of there. Something more than an hour in total just to pick up a stupid computer.

So I stand by my earlier conclusion about the Genius Bar. Knowledgeable people, poor organization.

After that it was off to another Apple-authorized repair place. At that place, they could take care of the back-up (not covered by AppleCare) and everything else. So right now my laptop is with them.

It's been over two months since my computer broke. I'm a law student and as a law student I need to use this crappy exam software which is only on Windows - ExamSoft. So, during my 1L year, when faced with renting a computer for six exam periods or buying one, it was only a bit more to buy one and that's what I did. So I've been using that computer for the past two months. Besides the inconvenience of not having any of my data, it's reminded me why I use a Mac.

So I'm praying my computer gets back to me soon. It's tough without your Mac.

My First Genius Bar Experience

Being that I can figure out most stuff all on my own, I've never needed to make a trip to a genius bar. However, the hard drive problems I've been having have been well beyond my means.

You might have noticed that the posts on this blog have been a little sparse over the past two months. Well, that's thanks to the dead hard drive on my PowerBook. Back in September, my hard drive was making funny noises. Instead of listening to these warning bells and shipping it off to be fixed, I delayed. This was disastrous. In the beginning of October, things got worse and worse, so I tried to make a back-up. However, I was getting all sorts of permissions errors and what not. I couldn't get the data off.

So I turned to my friend Juan, a programmer with a lot more computer know-how than I've got. He was able to get a lot of the data off by writing a perl script and accessing the PowerBook as a target drive from his G5. He managed to get much of the stuff off the computer, although it's unclear whether that was all of it or not. However, one of the things I was most interested in were pictures of Felicia over the past year, which were only partially backed-up. Those he was unable to confirm that he got all and he knew for sure that he missed a bunch of them, perhaps as much as 40%. The hard drive was getting harder and harder to work with, so we decided to call his efforts and see if I'd need to call in the pros.

I had called Apple Support and they told me that if I took my computer into an Apple Store, assuming the necessary drive was in stock they would be able to replace my hard drive and give the damaged one right back to me for me to get the data off of it.

So I go to the Apple Store in Soho. The page from the reservation said I should go and wait for my name to be called. I asked the people where I was suppose to go to wait for my name to be called at the genius bar. They said upstairs and on the left. So I went up. And waited. And waited. It turns out that you had to check in. Nice that anyone told me that. That was the first mark against Apple in my genius bar experience.

Eventually I get my certified genius. He starts fiddling with the computer but ultimately comes to the conclusion that nothing's gonna happen. I tell him AppleCare said I could get a new hard drive and take my old one to get the data off of it. He says that they don't do that. His manager agrees. Something about losing money... although I don't see how that pans out when you're dealing with a crapped out hard drive like mine with the only thing on there of any value being my data, which is only of any value to me. Apple needs to get its story straight. That was the second mark against Apple in my genius bar experience.

However, beyond that, things went very well. The geniuses are very helpful and hook you up with whatever resources - even outside of the Apple empire - to get what you need to get done. The ultimate resolution was that they would try to get the data off of my computer, something that would cost about $50. (Data back-up is not covered under AppleCare.) They also pointed me to another Apple-certified repair shop that could both repair the computer and do that hard-core data recovery that might be necessary if the genius bar troops couldn't pull it off. So they're in the process of fixing it now, and once done they're going to tell me the results, whether recovery is not at all, partial or complete. Then I can either opt to take it to the other place (which is cheaper than most data-recovery places) or I can just let Apple do it's business.

So ultimately I came away pleased, despite the typical corporate bureaucratic confusion between the genius bar and Apple Care and the disorganization of the genius bar sign-in process. The core reasons for going there - to get my computer fixed - were met and the genius bar people met my expectations for knowledge. Overall, I'll jot this down as a mark for Apple.