Apple’s lone outstretched hand to the social web, the MobileMe News “blog” is back with another helpful hint for users, this time about using iPhone 3.0 to search older email on the server:
select your Inbox or another folder from your MobileMe Mail account and access the search field by scrolling to the top of the message list. (Tap the status bar at the top to quickly reveal the search field.) Type what you want to search for and tap To, From, or Subject, or All to search all three. You’ll see the messages that match the search on your device, and you can then tap “Continue Search on Server” to see the remaining messages that are stored in the MobileMe cloud.
I’ve used this to find old order info, network machine names, and scads of other stuff buried in server-side email. Since it doesn’t (yet?) search the body of the email, it’s not as useful as Gmail’s WebApp, for example, but it’s lightyears ahead of where it was under 2.2.1.
The previous attempt to make an end run around the iPhone’s lack of cut/copy and paste involved shared code called OpenClip and relied on a loophole Apple closed in iPhone OS 2.1
This latest tilt at the text editing windmill targets only 2 apps instead:
Pastebud—as the service is called—works using two bookmarks in Safari. One prepares and loads the page you are viewing, ready to select text at the touch of a finger. From there, you can copy any text you want and create a new mail message with that text in it. In addition to that, you will be able to copy and paste in the text field of a different web page.
Check out the full story and video over at Gizmodo. And then let us know if you think this is enough — for now — to satisfy your cut/copy and paste cravings?
Reader Karl writes in to let us know his twelve year old son discovered a glitch in SMS security:
Being security conscious he turned on the passcode lock and disabled SMS Preview. [...] If a message is received during the passcode entry or while the screen is locked, a generic message of “New Text Message” appears, to prevent viewing of messages without unlocking the phone. [...] If however the phone is placed in emergency call mode, any incoming SMS messages are previewed instead of presented as the generic messages.
Next comes two issues concerning the implementation choices Apple made in the iPhone Mobile Mail client. According to Ars Technica, as disclosed by Aviv Raff, the first involves the way Mail truncates URLs for display on the iPhone. If a malicious URL is properly crafted by an attacker, the truncation can cause a fake URL to be non-obvious to the users, and thus more likely to result in phishing.
The second results from the lack of an option to display images in the full HTML Mobile Mail client. Since images are automatically displayed, spammers can gain confirmation that the email account that received it is active and ripe for spam attack.
As always, malicious attacks evolve and propagate at an alarming rate, and while we hope Apple fixes these immediately if not sooner, the onus is ultimately and always on we end users to pay attention and do everything we can to avoid them.
As opposed to “push” style ActiveSynch, MobileMe, or Yahoo! iPhone mail, traditional POP or IMAP accounts, like Gmail or ISP mail, needs to “fetch”, or check the server on a certain schedule to see if there are new messages.
Reader Mike wrote in pointing us to a thread on the Apple Discussion Forums about “fetch” email being broken with iPhone 2.1. I only fetch mail from Gmail, and Gmail IMAP is a strange and buggy implementation which gives me considerable problems beyond the iPhone, so I can’t say whether anything is really broken or not in 2.1.
Reader Steffen, however, after thinking the problem could just be undocumented IMAP IDLE behavior, decided to run some tests:
Finally, I had some time to look into this thorougly. I dumped IP traffic all night to see what iPhone does. My iPhone is set to retrieve data every hour. Here’s when the iPhone actually connected to my IMAP server:
Looks like everything but an hour to me… Oh yeah, forgot to mention… I’ve turned off everything except for GSM radio do be sure to get all traffic. The last three connections occurred when I started to play around with the iPhone this morning. So, the effect that lead me to the assumption of IMAP-IDLE on the iPhone seems to be something else. It appears that the iPhone will contact IMAP more often while using it and somehow random while idling… So, no IMAP at this time, but maybe interesting as well…
Definitely interesting! Thanks Steffen!
Any other readers out there got “fetch” problems? Wacky behavior? Please let us know!
Engadget honcho Ryan Block got his techie mitts on a pre-release version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, and here are the highlights (and lowlights!):
Exchange over Wi-Fi is not instantaneous (!). No contact search he could find. New button in Calendar don’t do nothing for him yet. App Store error’s out. Cisco branded VPN screen. Parental controls are good-to-go. Wi-Fi order can be specified in prefs. Calc has new widescreen scientific mode and icon. And his favorite new feature — Multi-Select in Mail!
Head on over for a full rundown and gallery o’ pics!
In addition to these new iPhone network and security features, the beta iPhone 2.0 software provides several new Mail features such as the ability to view PowerPoint attachments, in addition to Word and Excel, as well as the ability to mass delete and move email messages.
But what about the other built-in apps like Calendar and Contacts?
Our own eagle-eyed Chad Garrett has already spotted a mysterious new icon on Calendar, and predicted we may indeed see Task integration (GTD’ers, put it on your to do’s!).
Now BlargKABOOM (via TUAW) has hauled out the iMicroscope and discovered yet another tantalizing new icon, this time in Contacts:
It is a little spotlight icon right above the A on the alphabet.
Does this mean we may just be getting search as well? If so, how will it be implemented, and will it be limited to contacts or (dare we hope?) system wide, SDK-level CoreSearch?
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, YouTube, the Weather, Stock and other widgets, and MobileSafari Touch have all had search for a while now. C’mon Apple, share the love!
Google has been enabling IMAP access for everyone that has been using GMail. IMAP, like POP, is a method of downloading mail from a mail service. POP works really well if you just use one computer, but it’s a nightmare if you use more than one. And you know, the iPhone is a lot like a computer, enough that using POP on it has kind of been a nightmare in terms of checking my work email. The option for IMAP hasn’t showed up on my account yet, but it’s showed up for Dieter, and he has a good account of how it works up at WMExperts. If you prefer, there’s also an official Google video available at YouTube, catered specifically for iPhone users. If you want article help on how to install everything on your desktop email, GMail has posted a help file on their site.
And now, that video for any iPhone users out there:
