This is a nerd post. Anyone who doesn't care about nerdy items should skip this entry.

For months, I've been plagued by issues with my Apple Mail program and my iPhone Mail not getting along. It seemed line every time my iPhone mail program made an update, I'd have to quite my Mail program on my Mac to get it to see all the changes. Then there would be periods where my Apple Mail would just not recognize any new mail, and otherwise just act stupid.

Observing the behavior, I finally came to the conclusion that the imapd I was using on my server wasn't dealing with the multiple connections well. The imapd I was running was the UW imapd. I've felt it was outdated for a while, but hadn't found a good replacement.

I became aware of Dovecot which is another imapd alternative which seemed to have a lot of flexibility, and was apparently reasonably well regarded. Compiling it was easy, but I've been procrastinating the configuration since, well, reading the manual takes time.

I finally got things turned on yesterday and I have to say, I wish I had invested the time a few months ago. My Apple Mail no longer does strange things, imap IDLE now works properly, and it also fixed mail reading on my Nokia E51 as well (which was always hanging reading mail from my server before).

Two thumbs up here. Writing this entry in my blog with the hopes that maybe someone else will come across it and be helped out.

Tags: Technology