Besides security fixes, there are some new features in the latest MacOSX update. Among them is the possibility to synchronise the Address Book with you Gmail account.
Apple sems to adopt some of Microsoft‘s lock-in strategies. Hence, this only works of you have an iPod or an iPhone. That is the theory. In fact, all you need to make it work is to let Mac think you have such a device. The Lifehacker blog shows you how to create a fake entry. In short, open a terminal window on the Mac and enter this command:
defaults write com.apple.iPod Devices -dict-add red-herring '{ "Family ID" = 10001; }'
From then on, the Preferences in Address Book will allow you to connect to your Gmail account and merge address books.
I did and came up with mixed feelings over this feature. I have a Gmail account which I use primarily as a backup and emergency e-mail address in case my laptop would fail. On my e-mail server, I have procmail rules which auto-forward messages to my Gmail account. Gmail has the bad habit to add to your Gmail address book about any e-mail address that ever appeared in your inbox, apparently. So, I ended up with lots of duplicates and expired addresses. I went from a Mac address book with approximately 700 entries to a whopping 4000 … Cleaning up the mess would be a daunting task. So, be sure to take a backup of your address book before you start a synchronization.
Alas, this update does not fix Spotlight’s inability to index Thunderbird e-mail messages on Leopard, as it did with Tiger.
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