Okay. That may be a little harsh … but you would think after paying for a system upgrade, that was supposed to be rewritten from the ground up … a major bug like the IMAP/PHP bug would have been fixed. I know this problem is still effecting people. They are still logging complaints at Apple’s Discussion Groups. I was hoping … but no go!

I always use to think that the squeaky wheel always got the proverbial grease. In most case this may be true. With Apple … not so much.

Apple just released Mac OS X 10.5.7 update. Being a consultant I always have to do updates on the day they arrive. I do this to try to see what my clients might have to deal with if they choose to do it on their own. Though most of my clients will wait for me to “feel the pain” so they don’t have to.

This update, I did feel the pain! Since I bought my new MacBook Pro, I have been doing updates via Software Update. This time around I chose to download the Combo Updater & give it a whirl. Once downloaded I opened the image and started the process. When the 729 MB update was finished, I restarted the computer. Or at least tried to.

In my previous post “A process to a kill” I outlined an issue with Apple’s Mail.app creating too many IMPA processes on the web hosting server it was connecting to. Read the previous post for the details. With the help of a senior tech at blueHOST.com I have found a temporary fix, until Apple addresses the issue.
For those with access to the cPanel for their hosting account, you will need to create a Cron Job. At blueHOST.com I have access to this feature. Using the blueHOST GUI interface for the UNIX crontab program, I created a cron job via the cPanel to run every two minutes (because I have so many users running mail at the same time.) And the command is “killall imap” (without the quotes). This will do as advertised, kill all imap processes, old and new, every two minutes. You can set the amount of minutes to anything you want.

Since one of the more recent updates, (I wish I could pinpoint the exact one) when starting up Mail.app multiple processes are opened on my web hosting company’s (blueHOST.com) server. Most times between 8-10. The big problem is they won’t die until either I close Mail.app or kill the process manually via my cPanel’s process manager. As a single user in a one man company, this doesn’t really effect me. In an office of 3 or more people this is a BIG issue. Especially if their website or blog is hosted by the same company, on the same server.

I discovered this issue while working on a clients website. Each time I tried to connect to their blog I’d get a server side page that said, to many processes try again later. Or something to that effect. I called blueHOST.com but got a 1st level tech who had to put me on hold, ask someone questions then come back with not many answers. To be fair to blueHOST this was an exception to always stellar tech support.

Startly Technologies has released an update to its venerable macro utility QuicKeys X. With this upgrade comes new features and OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility. It’s a free update for QuicKeys X 3.x users.

As you may or may not know, Apple has a new cat waiting to pounce on us all. Leopard (a.k.a. Mac OS X 10.5) arrives at your local Apple store on Friday October 26th at 6:00 PM. Apple stores will be open until Midnight that night.

This new cat will be sporting some new spots …. over 300 of them. These new feature will cost you $129.00 US. Or if you bought a new Mac on or After October 1, 2007 you can get a free upgrade disk for $9.95. The cost of shipping.

System requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 are:
Intel Mac, Power PC G5 or a Power PC G4 with an 867MHz processor or higher, 512MB RAM and a DVD drive for installation.