Gmail and iOS: When I say DELETE I mean DELETE

I thought I had this figured out long ago. When I deleted an email from my iPhone, it would be deleted from my "Exchange" (ActiveSync) GMail account.

I was wrong. It works that way for my corporate ActiveSync account but not for Gmail. The iPhone button said "DELETE" but the messages were being sent to "All Mail". My "All Mail" archive was infested with spam.

I thought this was a matter of some fiddling with Gmail or iOS Settings. That's wrong too. At this time if you use ActiveSync (Exchange Server) to sync Gmail with your iOS Mail.app delete on the iPhone will always Archive in Gmail - regardless of what the Mail.app UI indicates.

This doesn't seem to be documented. There's (misleading and confusing) documentation on iOS IMAP behavior, but I couldn't find anything official. There is, however, a long old thread in Google's forums about this, degenerating at times as to whether this is a bug and, if so, whose bug it is. (IMHO - Google's bug.)

The only fix is to stop using ActiveSync for email and return to Apple's default IMAP based Gmail account setup. In that mode there's an iOS settings control to change Gmail Archive behavior. That works.

I suspect I solved this back when I used Apple's preferred iOS Gmail/IMAP setup, and didn't catch the recurrence when I switched to using Google's preferred Gmail/ActiveSync setup.

Fixing Lion's "application downloaded from the internet" bug

OS X warns users the first time we open a newly downloaded application.  The message is "xxx is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?"

It's a helpful warning. Problem is, for some apps I installed into Lion, it shows every time I open the app. Annoying.

I suspect the bug is that I installed them from my Admin account, but am using them from my non-admin everyday account. A permissions bug in other words. OS X usually has these, no reason for Lion to be different.

The fix for me has been to copy the app to my desktop. Then delete it from the Applications folder. Then drag it back to the desktop. This changed the permissions to read/write for me and ended the warnings. I then tested from my admin account and didn't get warnings there.

Not a bad workaround until Apple fixes this annoying bug.

Update: Thinking about this more, I bet the bug hits if you install from Admin, but never open the app from Admin. Next time I do this I'll switch to my Admin account and open it there.

Banks that support Direct Connect (OFX) with iBank

IGG, the makers of iBank for Mac, list banks that support "DirectConnect" (OFX transactions without website login). This is the kind of information I want when evaluating a bank. (Any bank that supports DirectConnect with (ugh) Quicken should also work with iBank.)

The list is dated 2008, but i'm told it's regularly updated. I hope that's true and that they market this more prominently.

Lego Universe for Mac

I'm trying to install Lego Universe on the Mac. It's a software monstrosity. I'm guessing a botched port of a windows app done by a low bid offshore team.

Lego is becoming a four letter word.

Update: It didn't work. I suspect it can't run on a non-admin account. During early installation the data input fields were partly scrambled and inaccessible. I deleted it and cast a spell upon Lego. The locusts are coming guys.

Services manager for OS X

MacOSX : Services Manager: Apple's top secret utility for managing OS X services.

More from OS X Hints: Better management of OS X Services - Mac OS X Hints

Toodledo: How you can give me the search I need with your current architecture

I've been a Toodledo web app customer for years. I use their web task management service with Appigo's ToDo.app.

It's an old relationship born of historic necessity. Toodledo and Todo don't approach tasks and projects the same way, there's the usual awkwardness of dueling data structures. These days most people would want to use Toodledo's cloud service with Toodledo's iPhone app or Appigo's Todo.app with their Todo online.

I've lived with the two for a while though. I appreciate Appigo's elegant iOS client, and it rarely fails me. That reliability means a lot. I know what works with Toodledo and what doesn't; I only use what works. On the other hand, I admire Toodledo's wide range of task integration and data liberation policies, especially the ability to mail myself a task. That's huge.

On the other hand, I need Todo's full text search. I've been pestering Toodledo to provide full text search of my tasks for (literally) years. They won't do it. So I have full text search of tasks on my iPhone but not on the web. On the web I can only search within a field (default is the task title).

Frustrating. I'm ready to leave both of them for something better. Still, I'll make one last try to persuade Toodledo that they can give me 80% of what I want without abandoning their current infrastructure.

Toodledo, here's the search I want built using your save search function, where "term" is the string I want to search on.

See, it's not so hard. You can do this with your current infrastructure by

1. Let me save this search with a name.

2. Let me make the named search my default search.

3. Provide a checkbox that means "search all fields with this string". Check it and gray out two of the fields leaving me one to type in (there are more elegant UIs obviously, this one has the fewest changes).

Thanks for considering this!

Update: Even simpler. Just let us save this as the standard search.

Update 9/12/11: This time Toodledo had a different response to my inquiry: "This is on our to-do list, but it is our policy to not comment on our roadmap or delivery dates for future feature improvements or bug fixes.". Joy!

iPhone calendar bug: list view one day off

Odd bug! My iPhone's calendar list view was one day off. The day view was fine.

Fix was to turn off google calendar sync to remove those calendars. Then turn it back on.

New one!