It seems I’ve helped dozens of clients trying to set up IMAP mail on their iPhone. So I’ve finally decided to document this in a “How To” post. For those of you who’s ISPs do not support IMAP mail, at some point in the future I may do the same thing for POP setup. For those ready to tackle this … read on.

There are some quirks involved with setting up IMAP mail on the iPhone. Especially for those ISPs or mail providers who don’t support SSL (secure sockets layer). The default for iPhone is to create any account with SSL on. Some of the biggest confusion for first time users is how long it takes SSL to be negotiated the first time the IMAP account is set up, especially if your are doing it over Edge or 3G and not a Wi-Fi connection. But even with Wi-Fi the wait can seem like an eternity! And all the confusing error dialogs that are popped up for you to act upon. Hopefully I’ve documented all those situations.

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.

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.

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since I got this thing. I can’t believe I tried to start writing this on my iPhone. I first tried to write it in Safari. That didn’t work too well. For some reason Safari wasn’t auto-suggesting anything in WordPress edit/post mode. Hmmm. Then I figured … okay I’ll try in iPhone mail and post via mail. That didn’t work too well either. No keyboard action in the horizontal mode. Even in the verticle mode I had ‘issues.’ Though that was more my shortcomings than iPhone’s. I’m still not to accomplished on the iPhone keyboard … yet. Unlike JoeyGadget A.K.A. Joe Hutsko, who wrote his most recently published feature article for MSNBC, about iPhone, on his iPhone. The first draft at least. I say kudos to that man and his presti-digital dexterity! You go Joe! I feel humbled and shamed. Oh well this too shall pass. Practice. Practice. Practice. But if someone was paying me to write an article … I’d hunker down too, and become accomplished in the presti-digital arts.