<p>I like to simplify when it comes to everything. If I can do something with less, I will.</p>
<p>With Mac OS X 10.8 (aka Mountain Lion), Apple has put more effort into being your one-stop shop for various needs. With it, I was looking to simplify my Mail, Chat, and Reading List solutions.</p>
<p><strong>Mail<img align=”left” alt=”” height=”100″ hspace=”5″ src=”http://www.residence-panorama.net/images/email.png” vspace=”5″ width=”100″/></strong><br/>
What I used to use: Gmail was always open for personal communication and Mail was always open for work communication.<br/>
What I tried: Adding my Gmail account to the Mail app.<br/>
What I’m now using: Gmail for personal communication and Mail for work communication.<br/>
Why: The Mail app did a horrendous job working with Gmail. The problem was that it tried to load all 60k messages in my “Inbox.” If you’re a Gmail user, you know one does not tend to empty their inbox. Instead, things just fall off the front page and are archived forever. Mail didn’t want to handle that load because it treated it as a load. I likely could have told it to only load x number of messages, but it was still incredibly slow to open mail and work with it (I told it to delete a handful of items that were never actually deleted from Gmail).</p>
<p style=”margin-left: 40px; “>                 FAIL.</p>
<p><strong><img align=”left” alt=”” height=”100″ hspace=”5″ src=”http://arifilho.com/images/info.png” vspace=”5″ width=”100″/>Chat</strong><br/>
What I used to use: Gmail was already always open for personal communication so I always had Gtalk activated and serving me both my Gtalk and AIM chats.<br/>
What I tried: Messages.<br/>
What I’m now using: Gmail with Gtalk and AIM integration.<br/>
Why: Messages was a pretty bad application. Clunky, obtrusive, and didn’t provide a clean way to contact folks via other methods when you already were chatting with them (was iMessaging, but wanted to go back to Gtalk).</p>
<p style=”margin-left: 40px; “>                  FAIL.</p>
<p><strong>Reading List<br/>
</strong>What I used to use: Pocket (aka Read It Later). You might recall <a href=”http://www.iammike.org/index.php?subaction=showfull&amp;id=1333983160&amp;archive=&amp;start_from=&amp;ucat=2&amp;”>my comparo a few months back</a>.<br/>
What I tried: Nothing, actually.<br/>
What I’m now using: Pocket, duh.<br/>
Why: Until iOS 6, the Mac/iOS built-in Reading List lacks offline reading (for the iOS version). That’s my primary use of a reading list. I have bookmarks for online reading, but I digress. Until iOS 6 is released (Fall), I cannot make this switch.</p>
<p>KINDA FAIL.</p>
<p>Come on, Apple. Can you go ahead and update the iMac (to <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)”>Ivy Bridge</a>) as well? Trying to simplify my hardware too. Unlike with your software offerings, please don’t fail me on this.</p>