10.5: Avoid Mail’s ‘no sound for new messages’ bug: “Apple Mail.app does not play the new mail alert sound in a consistent manner, and this bug has been there since the first release of 10.5. This occurs when Mail.app uses IMAP’s IDLE command to discover a new message — if that’s the case, then the new mail alert is not played. The alert is only played when Mail.app uses the periodic polling to discover a new message.

Therefore, the solution is to turn off the IDLE command, and make the polling interval shorter. In Mail, open Preferences and go to Accounts » Advanced in all your mail accounts and turn off the Use IDLE command feature. Next, go to the General section of Preferences, and set Check for New Mail to Every minute — you can set a longer interval if you want, so long as you don’t set it to Manual.

Now your mail alerts should play for every incoming message, but you will see your…

(Via MacOSXHints.com.)

1Password Free from the Mac Giving Tree, Normally $40 [Deals]: “

On Monday we told you about the Mac Giving Tree, a software giveaway of great Mac shareware. At the time the folks at MacHeist kept a few of the downloads undisclosed until Christmas, and now they’re here. One’s a game (whatevs), one’s a compact RSS reader, and, more importantly, the third is the excellent password manager and form filler, 1Password. This app will normally set you back $40, so if you think you might have use for it, grab the download now. If you’ve got more than one Mac, check out how to sync passwords between computers using 1Password and Dropbox.

(Via Lifehacker.)

TimeMachineScheduler – set the backup interval of Time Machine: “TimeMachineScheduler
set the backup interval of Time Machine from 1 to 12 hours”

In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Apple has introduced Time Machine, a very convenient way to make backups. Unfortunately the backup interval is preset constantly to one hour. Apple uses an launchd daemon to control the timing, but changing the interval value in the launchd.plist file has no effect.
TimeMachineScheduler disables the automatic backup function of Time Machine and installs its own launchd daemon. As the daemon is located in the main library, the administrator password is required for all (writing) operations. Except disabling Time Machine no further system files and preferences will be touched by TimeMachineScheduler.

(Via TimeMachineScheduler.)

Eternal Storms Software – HierarchicalDock: “Leopard took it away, HierarchicalDock brings it back. With unique features even Apple wouldn’t think of implementing.”

(Via eternalstorms.)

Bring Back Those Polaroid-ish Photos With Poladroid [Mac] | MakeUseOf.com:

“I’ve recently started to take photography a little more seriously, like my colleague Jason. I bought a low-end dSLR and started snapping away, hoping to learn from my mistakes, develop my own techniques and individual angles. Only a few days ago, I was watching a BBC documentary “The Genius of Photography” and was introduced to the birth of this contraversial art-form. Then I got to wondering, how did people experiment with photography 50 years ago? Could they afford to take repeated photographs of the same settings?”

(Via poladroid.)

Stainless for OS X Leopard:

“First, a disclaimer: At this point, Stainless is really just a technology demo and is likely to stay that way (though we might add some novel ideas we have for bookmark and history management).

So, why did we create yet-another-WebKit-browser? Because building a multi-process browser for OS X was a cool way to leverage the multi-processing technology we developed for one of our products, Hypercube.

Judging from Chromium’s OS X Detailed Status page, the Mac version of Chrome will use a WebCore-rendered bitmap to pass between the browser and rendering processes. The strategy we use in Hypercube (and now Stainless) is far less ambitious, but a whole lot easier to do and, thus, available today for your downloading pleasure (for Leopard only, sorry).”

(Via stainlessapp.)

Mac Giving Tree Hands Out Premium Mac Software for Free [Deals]: “

Semi-controversial Mac software bundle site MacHeist has gone the free route this holiday season, offering up to six different shareware Mac apps for the price of a free registration with MacHeist through the Mac Giving Tree. As soon as you sign up you can download iTunes remote Synergy and video game Enigmo 2, while you’ve got to wait until Christmas day to open two others. Yet two other free but undisclosed options are unwrappable if you refer a friend. In the past we’ve suggested free alternatives to MacHeist bundles, but since this one’s free to begin with that’s not really necessary.

(Via Lifehacker.)

The Vista follies: Windows’ tortured 2008 | InfoWorld | Analysis |: “The successor to XP crashed and burned. But as Windows 7 nears, Microsoft has made Vista less bad”

(Via infoworld.)

BBC iPlayer Now Available for Mac: “BBC announced that a version of the iPlayer that works on the Mac and Linux computers is now available.

The iPlayer is the BBC’s online media player that lets viewers stream programmes for up to seven days after broadcast or download…”

(Via MacRumors.)

Apple Acknowledges 10.5.6 ‘Configuring Installation’ Issue: “Apple released a technote detailing an issue that some users have run into while installing the latest Mac OS X Software Update.

When attempting to update software using Software Update in Mac OS X 10.5, the update process may stop r…”

(Via MacRumors.)

Microsoft Offers Seadragon App for iPhone: “
This weekend, Microsoft entered the iPhone market with their first application called Seadragon Mobile [App Store]. The free application is a product of Microsoft Live Labs and offers iPhone users the ability to view ultra-high resolution …”

(Via MacRumors.)

Apple Revives Animated Holiday ‘Get a Mac’ Ads: “Apple has posted two new ‘Get a Mac’ commercials to their ad page. The holiday-themed ads utilize a style introduced in 2007 in which Justin Long and John Hodgman provide voices for animated versions of their ‘Mac’ and ‘PC’ characters.

…”

(Via MacRumors.)

Schiller to Demo Snow Leopard at Macworld?: “The Guardian claims that Apple and its partners have been privately dropping hints to developers that Mac OS X Snow Leopard will ship earlier than expected and suggests that Phil Schiller will show it off at Macworld.

The article also …”

(Via MacRumors.)

First look: Songbird: “iTunes is a powerful media player, but it does exactly what Apple allows it to do. For a more extensible media player, take a look at Songbird.

(Via MacCentral.)

Apple prepping 3D operating system? : A patent has been leaked, which may well reveal the secrets behind Apple’s next operating system.

Dubbed a ‘multidimensional application environment’, the patent, uncovered by Mac Rumours, essentially shows a 3D desktop unlike anything that has been seen on a computer before.

(Via techradar .)