Entourage Must Die

Okay, let’s be honest. I’m a Mac guy. I love Apple products, Apple software, and the Apple way of life. I make no excuses about that. That said, we’ve just go to deal with the gigantic pile of suck named Entourage.

If you don’t know, Entourage is essentially the Mac version of Microsoft Outlook. It comes with the Mac version of Office, along with Word and Excel. For some reason, Microsoft chose not to simply port Outlook over to OS X, much like they’ve done with the other Office programs. Instead, they started over and did their best to totally deconstruct a wonderful PC program, Outlook, and turn it into a useless, buggy, unreliable monstrosity named Entourage. What garbage.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been stuck on Entourage at work because our Exchange server won’t sync my calendar with any other Mac program. That also means I’ve been depending on Entourage for my email. There’s the problem.

Without going into the laundry list of problems, let me just focus on the main one: Entourage doesn’t want me to send some messages. At least once a week, as I’m typing an email, the entire message window closes. Poof. It just disappears. The message doesn’t get sent, it isn’t saved as a draft, it isn’t moved anywhere; it’s just gone. Forever.

What’s worse, it always, ALWAYS happens when I’m in the middle of a long, important, sensitive, and carefully crafted message, often addressed to my boss or other leaders of my company. When it happened yesterday, I threw in the towel. Entourage must die.

I’m locked into it for my calendar, but I have email options. I tried both Apple Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird throughout the day and decided on Mail. It’s nice and clean, super fast, and simple. By simple, I don’t mean weak; I just mean that it does one thing, and it apparently does it very well. I like that in an app. Entourage, on the other hand, chose to go the other direction. It does a thousand different things, and does them all poorly.

Apple Mail is not without its problems. There are some extremely elementary things that it should do, but doesn’t.  For example, the preview pane is at the bottom, with no option to move it to the side. Really? I’m sorry, is it 1996? Am I using this program on a 15″ CRT monitor? No. I’m using it on a dual monitor setup based on a 20″ widescreen iMac. I’ve got enough screen real estate. Let me put the preview pane on the right side like every other modern email program, won’t you? At least I solved this one with a third-party add-on, WideMail. This awesome plugin also allowed me to set my inbox message list exactly like I had it on Entourage (which I liked). See the side-by-side below.

Apple Mail vs. Entourage Message List

Also annoying is the way it handles image and PDF attachments. Attachment isn’t even the right word, since you can’t really “attach” image files. Instead, Mail inserts the images inline in the message body, regardless of size, orientation, or anything else. Worse, it does the same thing with PDF documents. I’m sorry, I’m not a four-year-old-girl trying to figure out how to email a picture to my grandmommy. I’m a professional who has to email image files and PDF docs to other professionals, and sometimes to automated systems that don’t recognize embedded PDFs. Epic fail. Again, fixed with a third-party application.

And last, the most annoying of all is the one that, I must admit, is most characteristic of Apple. If you’re using the preview pane, there is no way under the sun to prevent Mail from marking a message as “read” if you’ve clicked on it. How ridiculous. Even I have to admit that choosing to not do the simplest thing, despite the fact that every other email program on earth does it, is a total Apple move. This one is killing me. Even if I sneak a peek at a message in the preview pane, I still like to keep messages marked as unread in the message list if I want to come back to them later. Having them all appear as read is a joke.

So, there’s my email rant of the year. Entourage stinks, Thunderbird failed out of the gate, and Apple Mail is workable, but comes up short on the most basic things. I hate to admit it, but finding a quality email client is the one part of the Apple lifestyle that I find hard to defend to the naysayers. It just makes me glad I use Gmail for my personal stuff.

UDPATE: There’s a possible fix for this random deleting behavior. Check the comments for this post.

Favorite Search Term of the Week

Occasionally I like to peel back the curtain and show you all my favorite search term that someone used to find my site for the week. Today, I present the unabashed honesty of a fellow geek who knows how to use Google to find what he wants.

For the record, my geeky friend, I love my AppleTV, but if I were starting from scratch with a wide-open budget, I’d make a media center out of a Mac Mini.

Could This “Internet” Really Deliver the News?

This is fabulous. It’s a local San Francisco news story about how this newfangled “internet system of computers” might one day deliver the daily news. Could such a thing ever really be feasible?

Best part: it took two hours to deliver the text edition of the paper by phone modem at an hourly data rate of five bucks per hour. I’m not too sure this “internet” has much of a future. “Imagine if you will” indeed.

Abby Laughing on Video!

Abby’s been laughing off and on for a couple of days, but today’s the first day I’ve been able to capture it on video! I can’t believe how much she’s changing and growing every day!

Update: I added this video to our online gallery for those proud grandfolks, aunts, and uncles that want to download it.

Apple’s Response to New Microsoft Ads

I’ve made a little fun of Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ad spots over the past couple of months. Granted, they’re the best commercials that Microsoft has done, but some of them are just silly. I guess the worst is the one with the “professional video editor” who wants to do her pro video work on Windows. Really? Even the Microsoft ads themselves are edited on a Mac with Final Cut. (That’s true. Check it out.)

This weekend, I saw Apple’s response to the Microsoft ads, and I thought it was great. I’m kind of diggin’ the back and forth public ribbing between these two companies lately.

New Pictures!

Grandma and Grandpa just posted a lot of new pics of Abby in the “Proud Grandparents” photo gallery. Be sure to check out the five videos they added to that photo album, too!

Click the bouncy girl below to hit the galleries.

Gimme a Zune!

Taking a break from the hillarious “Laptop Hunters” line of commercial spots, Microsoft has decided to throw a little love to the Zune. What’s that you say? Oh no, I can see why you would think that. But the Zune actually is still on the market. Seriously.

Here we have Wes, a “Certified Financial Planner” (and former Donald Trump “The Apprentice” cast-off),  to explain the cost benefits of an iPod vs. a Zune. Apparently “a lot” is more expensive than “a little.” Sure, the Zune subscription model is a fabulous deal, and even we Apple fanboys wish iTunes would do a subscription service, but I can’t really imagine many people throwing out their iPods just yet.

And is it just me, or does anything else think it’s weird that Microsoft keeps featuring great-looking product shots of Apple hardware in all their commercials? Think about it. They don’t show one product shot of their own Zune player. Not even one to balance the lovely iPod they put on screen. Genius.

Rockin’ Mother’s Day

Abby got too excited celebrating Mother’s Day with mommy, grandma, and grandpa. She’s currently passed out in my lap, arms flopped to the sides. I love this.

First IT Professional EVER

This should be a special joy for those of you who have had to service someone else’s computer, either professionally or for family. Enjoy!

What’s up with the silent treatment?

Hey guys, I know posts have been few and far between on thegeekydad of late. Here’s the skinny. I’m really busy. I’m having to go into serious time-management and personal-priority mode right now, and I’m afraid posts to this blog aren’t as high up on the list as playing with my daughter!

Also, I’m using the scraps of free time I do have to put together another blog with a daily podcast for people going through P90X. Since that one will be locked to a daily release schedule for blog posts and audio podcasts, I’ve got to get at least 30 of each ready before I launch it. I don’t want to start it, but then get behind and mess up the “daily” aspect of it. So, I’m currently half-way through scripting the first 30 segments of that.

Not to fear, this too shall pass. I’ll continue to post cute and exciting things about Abigail, who is now 11 weeks old, if you can believe it. I may just have to skip the geeky things for a few weeks. Bear with me!