Dreaming Of Beetles

A couple posts wrapped into one:

Gmail IMAP Slow on Mail.app
With over 110,000 messages in my gmail account, Mail.app started choking bad. The problem got out of hand two days ago so I did something about it. This isn’t for the weak of heart. First quit Mail.app, then fire up terminal:

# cd ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-xxx@xxx.com@imap.gmail.com/\[Gmail\]/
# rm -rf All\ Mail.imapmbox
# ln -s /dev/null All\ Mail.imapmbox
# rm ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index

DO NOT DO THIS WITH A POP ACCOUNT. Also, I advise you to back up these directories rather than deleting them, but I like to throw caution to the wind. Fire up Mail.app and it will reindex you mailboxes and you’re off the races. The dreaded “All Mail” directory will still be in your list of mailboxes, but don’t worry, you’ve neutered it.

Update: Check out this excellent article about achieving Mail.app nirvana.

Chromium Builds For OS X
I’ve been providing builds of Chromium for OS X on my downloads page for a while. Recently, Google has opened up their BuildBot Snapshots to the public. At first I was a tad skeptical of this as I was a BuildBot Waterfall freak, waiting for the perfect level of green before grabbing a revision to build. I’ve been watching the Snapshots and can say with a bit of confidence now that they are legit builds and are only pushed if the OS X code base has been touched (If I’m wrong on this, please correct me). With that said, I’m no longer going to provide custom builds of Chromium.

Apple’s m-Commerce Strategy
A very interesting app hit the app store this morning (or last night) that made me scratch my head a bit. It’s the Burger King Now app that allows you to pre-pay for purchases. Pre-Pay? That made me think of TechCrunch’s m-Commerce article on Jack Dorsey’s new stealth startup code-named Squirrel. And there is this quote:

Squirrel is both a physical device add-on to the iPhone as well as an iPhone app. Ingeniously, the device derives enough power from the physical swiping of the credit card to then read the card, so it requires no external power from the iPhone or anywhere else. The physical device apparently looks something like an acorn, thus the code name Squirrel.

Swiping Cards? WTF? iPhone OS 3 will enable in-app payments that connects directly to your iTunes account and your credit card. Why is a physical device needed? Well the answer to that is to bypass the 30% Apple tax.

Apple could potentially enter this space, but would probably raise some flags at the DOJ. I think Jack is on the right track here and the potential of such a business boggles the mind.

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