As a OS X user, I have many Apple provided apps that are well designed, easy to use and just plain work.  Mail.app is one such app, save for one huge oversight (in my opinion) … the Mail To Do that is automatically generated on IMAP accounts.  I have tried the handful of supposed solutions, but none have work, and that is a real shame.  Mail.app is super fast, and has a GUI than essentially has no equal.

Nonetheless, I was forced to find an alternative solution.  I turned to Mozilla’s offering, Thunderbird, after having been please so long with Firefox.  However, I was less than thrilled with Thurderbird 2.  Because I don’t plan on talking about Thunderbird 2, I’ll just say that it left me wanting.  And that’s when I found out about Thunderbird 3.

I’ve been using Thunderbird 3 from the earl alpha builds until today (as beta 4 pre, or a nightly beta 3).  Essentially, it’s nearing the end of it’s beta phase, and in perhaps a few short months, it will be ready for public consumption.  Compared to TB (Thunderbird) 2, it feels like a complete redo, and it may very well be.  While it still is not a beautiful to look at as Mail.app, it is certainly within the realm of a good looking app.  But more than that, it just works.  There are points that I wish would be better, namely the way accounts are managed.  But overlooking that, Thunderbird 3 is simply amazing.  I recently discovered that it integrates within Spotlight on OS X, and something Mail.app has had that I did not realize TB 3 has, global searching of messages.  This alone may seem like it should be automatic, but currently it’s an option you have to enable, but once everything is indexed, finding emails across all account is stupid easy.

I recently was an attendee at OSCON and was lucky enough to meet David Ascher, CEO of Mozilla Messaging.  From David’s presentation, I learned quite a bit about TB 3, especially how things on screen are rendered.  To my surprise, I learned it was essentially HTML and a bunch of javascript.  It actually has an internal copy of jQuery, which makes javascript development easy, yet powerful.  I was so impressed by all of this, I have decided to start developing / bug fixing TB 3.  I look forward to helping make TB 3 a better product, so that perhaps others will find it as useful as I have.

Sure, there is a small part of me that hopes Apple gets it right with Mail.app in OS X 10.6, but even if they do, I very likely will stick with Thunderbird … if only due to the simple fact that is is a powerful, easy to use mail client (and is available on Windows too!) that does what it’s supposed to.

As pretty much all of you know, Apple again released a new iPhone for the third summer in a row. The iPhone 3GS, while seemingly feature packed, did not seem terribly worth it considering it was going to cost me $200. I already had an iPhone 3G … did I really need a 3GS?  Obviously if I was coming from an original iPhone, this would be a null issue, as the 3GS is simply far (far) better than the original.

With this is mind, I quickly decided that going from 3G to 3GS was simply not worth the money. The iPhone did pretty much all I needed it to do, and anything the 3GS did that the 3G didn’t do, I just didn’t care really. Compass? Who cares. Faster? Probably barely noticeable.

Enter gazelle.com.  Not only did they say they’ll buy my iPhone 3G from me, but they’ll give me more than a new 3GS would cost me (excluding taxes, etc).  But, could they be trusted?  It didn’t take long to find out that they had been well mentioned on such sites as Wired.com, and NYTimes.com … I was sold.  I hoped on over to their site, answer a few questions, and within a few days I had a box to mail them back my 3G for some cash.  How easier could that be?  Back to gazelle.com in a bit.

With my 3G essentially sold, I wasted no time in acquiring a 3GS … and oh boy, was I completely wrong about it being marginally better than the 3G.  First off, it has twice the RAM as the 3G.  That alone makes a huge difference.  On top of that, the CPU is (essentially) 1.5x as fast as the 3G … but it’s not just raw CPU speed, but an updated processor with additional efficiencies that come along with newer processors.  No longer did I need a screen protector, which I only used to reduce finger prints.  The oleophobic (read oil fearing) glass resists finger prints so much, a screen protector just isn’t needed.  As before, the screen is high quality glass, and is scratch resistant on its own.  In addition, the compass actually adds value by being able to determine which direction you’re facing.  On top of all of that, the camera almost alone makes it worth it.  Not only is it now 3MP (up from 2MP), there is now a video recording feature.  With video editing, and ability to upload directly to YouTube via wife or 3G, it’s no wonder that there has been a huge jump in mobile videos being submitted to YouTube.  All around, if you get the full subsidy from AT&T (I know, another 2 year contract, but I happen to like AT&T’s service for the most part) and you can get a good enough deal via gazelle.com (or eBay, etc), I fully support any decision to upgrade to the 3GS.  You will not be disappointed whatsoever.

And how did selling my iPhone 3G to gazelle.com turn out?  Well, as of this writing, I have a check coming my way for > $200, which essentially means I paid nothing to upgrade to the new iPhone 3GS.  You certainly can’t beat that!