Google updated its Hangouts plug-in. Netflix wanted me to install a new version of Silverlight. But no matter how many times I installed those plug-ins, the installations didn’t seem to take: Google Hangouts insisted I needed to download and install its update; Netflix continued to tell me I wasn’t running the latest version of Silverlight.

Huh?

Each issue was seriously annoying: My inability to run Google Hangouts meant I couldn’t connect to weekly Macworld meetings. And my inability to stream Netflix on my Mac made it very difficult to watch Beverly Hills Cop. Okay, maybe the Hangouts issue was worse, but either way—why couldn’t my Mac handle updating browser plug-ins?

I tried what I considered the obvious solutions first. Since I was testing via Safari, I switched to Chrome, and then Firefox. The problem persisted. I uninstalled the plug-ins involved, and then reinstalled them: No dice. I restarted my Mac and my browsers many, many times. I uttered incantations not fit for print in a family publication like Macworld. Nothing worked.

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Reader Claire Milton can’t be faulted for lack of effort in regard to a stubborn email message. She writes:

I use Microsoft Outlook 2011 and I have a message in my Inbox that I can’t delete. I’ve tried the Delete command and moving it to a new mailbox but it won’t budge. What should I do?

I’ve had similarly intractable messages and, like you, I’ve found no solution within Outlook. However, after turning to the web I found a solution from one talkingmoose on GitHub that did the trick. It involves AppleScript, but it’s easily done.

Copy this script:

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As we’ve traveled along OS X’s byways and thoroughfares, we’ve encountered a couple of ways to communicate—via email and through text with Apple’s Messages application. In this lesson we’ll explore a third method: FaceTime, Apple’s video chat technology.

Described by some as “Jetsonian” and “the future come to life,” FaceTime allows you to place and receive free video calls. It’s a feature bundled with Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, and it’s found on iOS devices that include a front-facing camera. (On an iPhone it’s implemented within the Phone app.) To use FaceTime with your Mac, your computer must be connected to a camera. It can be a built-in FaceTime camera (formerly known as an iSight camera), as found on Apple’s laptops and iMacs, or you can use a Mac connected to a compatible USB or FireWire camera.

Configuring FaceTime

If you’ve configured your Mac with an Apple ID (as you should have by now), you’ll find that you’re ready to receive FaceTime calls. Just launch the application, and the FaceTime window appears. On the left side of the window, you’ll see the image that your Mac’s camera captured. On the window’s right side are the addresses associated with your Apple ID, as well as an empty password field. Enter a password and click Sign In. When you’ve done this successfully, people who know your address will be able to call you over FaceTime.

If you haven’t configured your Mac with an Apple ID, you can enter it in the user name field, enter your password, and click Sign In. And if you don’t have an Apple ID, you can get one by clicking the Create New Account button.

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Last week we wandered about Mountain Lion’s Messages application to get a feel for the territory. In today’s lesson we’ll dig into some of Messages’ less obvious features, including screen sharing, initiating remote slideshows and presentations, and viewing past chats.

Messages and screen sharing

When exploring the Mac’s sharing features I explained how to share the screen of another Mac on your local network. Through Messages it’s possible to do the same thing, but over the Internet.

To do this, each participant must use an AIM, Bonjour, Google Talk, or Jabber account. Screen sharing isn’t available through the iMessage protocol (meaning two iCloud accounts) or Yahoo.

To share someone’s screen, select their name in your buddy list and from the Buddies menu choose Ask to Share PersonX’s Screen (where PersonX is the person you want to interact with). That person will receive an invitation via an alert sound and a dialog box. For them to allow their screen to be shared, they simply click the dialog box. They can also elect to send you a text reply. For example, if they are in the middle of something, they can  just click the Text Reply button and type I can’t right this second. Try again in 5 minutes.

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Reader Cathron Brewton, like many of us, would like to organize her old email in an efficient way. She writes:

I have many folders in Mail that I would like to move out of that application but keep for future reference. I’d like to keep them similarly organized to the way they currently are within Mail. Could you describe an efficient process for moving a hierarchy of folders (e.g. from a recently completed project) to Documents or Dropbox or Evernote or some other repository? Examples would be a home remodeling job involving multiple contractors and suppliers or a wedding with multiple vendors.

This can be done quite easily. Create a mailbox (choosing to save it to your Mac rather than iCloud) for each project and drag the appropriate messages to each one—so, your remodeling messages to a New Kitchen folder and wedding-related missives to the Here’s Your Dowry folder. Create a master folder for these folders, call it something like Archived Export, and place the project folders into it.

Select the master folder and choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox. In the sheet that appears choose a destination for the archive that will be created and be sure to enable the Export All Subdirectories option. Click Choose to export your folders. Because you chose to export all subfolders, two items will be saved—one bearing the name of the original folder followed by .mbox (so, in our example, Archived Export.mbox) and a folder, that’s also named after the master folder (Archived Export). Inside this folder you’ll find mbox files for each folder that’s within the master folder—New Kitchen and Here’s Your Dowry, in our case. You can then save that master folder wherever you like.

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As of the Mountain Lion version, Apple’s Mail is better than ever at helping you manage your email. And Google’s Web-based Gmail is also pretty good—but how do you combine the two in just the right way so as to get the best of both?

The answer is simple—follow my guide below, wherein I describe my favorite way to balance a few features and compromises to make Mail and OS X work best with the Gmail Way.

Step 1: Enable IMAP

The first step to getting OS X’s Mail to work well with Gmail is to enable IMAP access. This will not only let Mail check your Gmail messages, but also keep everything in sync between your devices and the Web.

Log in to Gmail in a desktop Web browser, and click the gear icon on the right of the page, just below your Google Account avatar. In the menu that appears, choose Settings. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. About halfway down the page in the IMAP Access section, select Enable IMAP. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

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Technology is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows for wonderful means of communication—free voice and video calls, no-cost text messaging, and the ability to share your life with thousands of strangers you can call friends. On the other—like in the real world plagued by department store flyers jammed into mailboxes, robocalls, and acolytes moving from door to door to spread The Word—it provides a means for others to junk up your inbox with unwanted missives. In this lesson we’ll look at Mail’s junk mail protections, as well as at other ways you can keep from being overwhelmed with Internet offal.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam …

You’ve likely heard the term spam used to refer to junk email. This is a reference to a sketch from the BBC’s Monty Python’s Flying Circus where the word spam is chanted over and over. It was specifically applied to unwanted communications thanks to miscreants of the era who filed posts on electronic bulletin boards that repeated the word often enough to scroll other users’ messages off the screen.

Today we use the term generically. While most often invoked to describe unsolicited (and unwanted) email, it’s not unusual to hear it applied to likewise junky text and voice messages, Internet forum and message-thread advertising, and Twitter messages containing links to unscrupulous websites. Because some people are confused by the term, companies such as Apple and Microsoft refer to it instead as junk mail.

About Mail’s Junk Mail feature

When taking you on a tour of Mail’s interface I mentioned the toolbar’s Mark As Junk Mail button (Command-Shift-J). This button hints that you can take action against the spam messages you receive. But that action goes beyond simply selecting a message and spanking it with a junk button. When marking a message as spam, you’re teaching Mail what is and isn’t a viable message.

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Though specialists have devised myriad systems that purport to achieve Inbox Zero, I’m not that ambitious. I just want a system that keeps the number of unread messages in my inbox as small as possible, doesn’t treat my inbox as a to-do list, and doesn’t require me to spend hours sorting and archiving my mail.

In addition, a workable system has to be easy to implement: The more complex it becomes, the less likely I am to use it after the first month. It has to be easy to maintain, too: I have enough friction in my workflow without dealing with an email system that requires effort above and beyond standard email practices. And it needs to work across multiple clients: I typically see my messages on my iPad, my iPhone, my Macbook Air, and my Mac Pro—and I frequently access my email through Google Mail’s Web interface, Mail.app, and other third-party applications. I need all of these programs and apps to sync, and whatever system I use must keep things manageable no matter where or how I’m checking my mail.

Over the years, I’ve tried numerous systems. Early on, I tried to build a hierarchy of folders that would afford me quick access to email messages relevant to a topic and would keep my inbox empty by consistently filing messages based on their relationship to a project or on their required action. Unfortunately, that tedious approach failed two of my goals: Coming up with the right organizational structure too much time; and filing each incoming message was too laborious.

Later, I tried tagging messages, but that operation ran afoul of my third goal: No true tagging system works on every platform. Both Tags and the Mail plugin MailTags use OpenMeta tags, which works well across my Macs. But those tagging systems don’t work on the iPhone or in GMail. GMail’s labels function similarly, but fail in applications like Mail.

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Back in Mac 101’s long-ago days when we were first getting our feet wet with the Finder, I introduced you to smart searching—the process of creating a series of conditions that would display matching files in a list. For instance, you might set up a list of JPEG image files that were over a megabyte in size. As I explained at the time, the idea of stringing together conditions to filter the information you see is a concept that runs throughout Mountain Lion.

One area where this concept is apparent is in Mail’s rules. But rather than using such conditions to deal with files already on your Mac, more often than not, you employ rules to sort your email as it’s delivered to your Mac. Just as an example, let’s apply this idea to the real-life paper mail that we still receive from time to time.

When you open your physical mailbox at home, you find all your mail bunched together—catalogs, magazines, letters from your Auntie Di, bills, advertisements, and Netflix envelopes. Now imagine, instead, opening that mailbox and finding your most important mail (say, envelopes stuffed with money) right up front, personal correspondence that you care about in a little bin to the right side, your Netflix envelope in yet another bin to the left, magazines sitting in their own container near the back of the box, and any junk mail reduced to a bare few ashes. Far more convenient, yes?

Without giving your postal carrier a very generous holiday tip, that kind of thing just isn’t going to happen. But you can accomplish the equivalent in Mail.

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Last week we began our exploration of Apple’s Mail application. Having read through that lesson, you’re familiar with the makeup of the Mail window. This week we’ll turn from geography to communication—creating, sending, and retrieving email. Taking it from the top ...

The New Message window

Click the toolbar’s New Message button, or press Command-N, and the New Message window appears. It has its own toolbar that contains, by default, the following buttons: Send Message, Attach Document, Show Format Bar, Show/Hide Photo Browser, and Show/Hide Stationery Pane. Like Mail’s toolbar, this one is also customizable. Just Control-click (right-click) the toolbar, choose Customize Toolbar, and from the sheet that appears drag the tools you want to the toolbar. From this moment forward, those buttons will appear in every New Message window (or at least until you hold down the Command key and drag them out). We’ll explore these buttons further later in the lesson.

Below the toolbar are the To, Cc, and Subject fields. They shake out this way.

The To field: This is where you enter the email addresses of those you wish to send the message to. You can do this in a couple of ways. The first is to simply click in the field and type the address—buppo@example.com, for instance. To enter multiple email addresses in this manual way, place a comma after each recipient (except the last one, of course).

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A reader who doesn’t wish to provide his name (for reasons that soon will become apparent) has a problem with office etiquette. He writes:

My company has a few different divisions and each division has its own group email list that includes everyone within that division. There’s also a company-wide address. The problem is that every so often we hire a new person or the company softball teams wins a game and these group addresses are used to send out strings of “Welcome” or “Woo-hoo!!!” messages and the endless replies from these things bombard my inbox. I find this really distracting. Any way to stop it?

I’m big on education as a means for short-circuiting problems like these. If you can find a way to politely inform the company’s employees that their email client has both Reply and Reply All buttons and (explain the difference between them and how annoying this kind of public backslapping can be), I’d consider that a good first step.

However, this may just be an example of the company’s cultural divide. Some groups are big on praise and public high-fives. For them these messages are motivational and show a plucky team spirit. Let on that you find these things a waste of time and you may be looked on as someone whose heart isn’t really invested in the company. And that may show up on your next employee evaluation if your boss or boss’ boss is one of these unrepentant Reply All-ers. In such cases I’m more inclined to post anonymous “For The Love O’ Pete, Learn To Use Reply All Correctly!” notes in the staff kitchens and restrooms.

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Reader Dave Eng can’t seem to broadcast his mug over the Internet. He writes:

Every so often I use Skype for multi-participant video conferences and when I do, I use my FireWire DV camcorder rather than my Mac’s built-in camera. I launched Skype the other day and it immediately crashed when I switched on my camera. I restarted my Mac, reinstalled Skype, but the same thing happened every time. What’s going on?

The current version of Skype (at least as I write this) has a bug that causes it to explode (okay, without the fire, smoke, and noise) when you connect a FireWire camcorder to your Mac and switch it on. The folks at Skype are aware of the issue but the most recent updates haven’t fixed the problem.

In the meantime, Oldapps.com has the most recent version that is compatible—Skype 6.0.0.2946. Just toss out your current copy of Skype, install this one, and Skype should behave itself. (And no, you won’t lose any of your settings or contacts by installing the earlier version.)

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There are many ways to communicate with others using the tools Apple provides—text, voice and video chats, and posts to social networking sites. But the one most frequently used by many of us is email. You create an account, compose a message, slap on an attachment if you like, add a recipient and subject heading, and send.

Some time ago, I showed you how to set up email accounts on your Mac through Mountain Lion’s Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference. With this lesson we begin exploring the application you’ll use to create, send, and receive email messages—Apple’s Mail.

By default the Mail window is a fairly straightforward affair. Along the top you see the toolbar as well as a Search field. Just below the toolbar are heading for mailboxes you’ll routinely access. If you click the Show button in this area, a Mailboxes pane appears. Below this area is a list of messages contained within the selected mailbox. And to the right is the message area, which takes up the bulk of the window. Let’s take a look at the anatomy of the Mail window.

The toolbar

Like toolbars found in Finder windows, you can edit this to include just those items you like. By default, however, you’ll spy these tools:

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Reader Matthew Rotter asks a common question about Apple’s Mail. He writes:

Can you send email to multiple email addresses listed under a single contact’s name?

Pardon me if I assume that what you really mean is whether it’s possible to easily add to an email messages multiple address from a single contact. And the answer is, not really. Regardless of the solution you settle on, it requires a bit of futzing. Now, let’s go over those solutions.

The first is that for those contacts for whom you routinely use multiple email addresses, create a new contact card for that individual and in the first email address field, enter multiple addresses separated by commas—joeblow@example.com, joeblow1@example.com, joeblow2@example.com, for instance. Add this contact to a message’s To field and the message will be sent to all three addresses. (You’re welcome to edit an existing contacting rather than creating a new one if you like.)

Next, you can create separate contacts for each address—Joe at Home, Joe at Work, and Joe at Play, for example—and add those contacts to a group called All Joe All The Time. Send a message to that group and Joe will get it wherever he may be.

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One of the best benefits of using iCloud is Safari syncing because it syncs all of your Safari bookmarks across all your Mac and iOS devices. As if that wasn’t enough, if you’re running Mountain Lion and iOS 6, each synced device can view and open Safari tabs from any other device.

For me, the only downside of this feature is that it doesn’t always work. I’ve especially had problems getting my MacBook Pro (13-inch Retina display) to sync with changes I make on my Mac Pro. I am not alone. If you search Apple Support Communities, you find at least a half-dozen threads describing the same general issue.

If this happens to you, my first recommendation is to quit and relaunch Safari. If that has no effect, log into your iCloud account (at www.icloud.com) from Safari. Doing so may jog iCloud into taking the appropriate syncing action. If there is still no success, restart your Mac.

Assuming you’ve tried and failed with those routine fixes, here’s a remedy that’s pretty much guaranteed to work:

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Reader Susan Malloy has lost some important email and can’t seem to retrieve it. She writes:

I use Microsoft Outlook 2011 as my email client. I was recently searching for an invoice emailed to me so that I could add it to an expense report. I know Outlook once had it but when I search within Outlook the message doesn't appear. Oddly enough, when I perform a Finder search, the message is there. Yet I can’t open it. What can I do?

First, take a deep breath. (And, if you swing that way, a stiff drink, as this one’s a brain buster.) Here’s what happened:

It’s very likely that between the time you received that message and later searched for it, something happened to Outlook’s database—you saw a message that the database was corrupted and needed to be rebuilt. (An issue I encounter on a nearly weekly basis.) You dutifully rebuilt the database. During that time, thinking that you had a copy in Outlook, using your iPhone or other iOS device you deleted the message from your IMAP account so that it was impossible to re-download it.

Because of that rebuild, the current version of the Outlook database doesn’t believe the message exists. However, the previous version of the database is aware of the message and has actually stored it. That’s why it appears when you search for it using the Finder.

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With the news that some Apple, Facebook, and Twitter employees’ Macs were hacked, and Apple and Oracle’s subsequent software patches, it’s time to revisit the question of whether Java can be used securely.

After the Flashback malware attack that occurred in the summer of 2012, I discussed the risks and offered some advice about the safest way to use Java. But due to changes in the way Java works on Macs and the recent rise in Java-based security threats, I'm altering my advice: You should do everything you can to remove Java from your Mac or, if that isn’t possible, to isolate it to the fullest extent possible.

I don’t make this recommendation lightly. Removing Java will be problematic for some people, especially those who use Macs at work; and isolating it isn’t simple. But I can’t overstate the risk: Nearly all recent Mac malware attacks rely on exploiting Java or Flash in your Web browser. (I also have some advice on isolating Flash.) If you plan to keep Java, make sure that you update it as soon as possible.

Why I now recommend removing Java

Java is more than a browser plugin. It's a complete application runtime environment. That means that Java applications are designed to run inside a Java Virtual Machine installed on your Mac. Theoretically, a developer can write a Java program to run inside the virtual machine, and it will run without modification on any platform—Mac, Windows, Linux, or whatever is running a valid JVM. (Practically speaking, getting something to work across platforms is rarely easy.) The JVM handles memory management and anything else that the application needs, and runs it inside a sandbox that isolates the Java application from your operating system.

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The Macworld Video finally returns to its weekly schedule! We kick off the video’s rebirth with a short lesson on how to share Keynote presentations over a Messages chat. With a copy of Keynote and Keynote presentation in hand, you’ll be sharing in no time.

Transcript

In this video I’m going to show you how to offer a presentation to a remote user using the Messages application. This is something you’ll find helpful for online meetings or instruction. For this to work you’ll need a copy of Apple’s Keynote application as well as a Keynote presentation. Also, be sure that each participant is using the same service—each one of you is using iCloud or each one is using AIM. You can’t share files and presentations if one of you is using an iCloud account and the other is using AIM.

I’ll begin by launching Messages and selecting a buddy in my Buddy List with whom I wish to share my presentation.

Then, from the Buddies menu I choose Invite to Video Chat. An invitation will be sent to my buddy, which he or she has to accept in order for this thing to go forward. Once the invitation has been accepted we can move on.

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Reader Mike Sadowski finds something amiss in Safari and Mail’s relationship. He writes

In Safari 5 I was able to view a web page and, with a keyboard shortcut, insert a web link to that page in a new Mail message. Mail now places the link below my default signature. In previous versions of OSX, I distinctly remember the link being placed at the top line or the second line of the new email. For the life of me I can’t find a setting to change this. Is there a way?

There is. But before I reveal that answer, allow me to fill in some blanks for readers hearing about this feature for the first time.

In Safari 5, you could visit a web page, choose File > Mail Link to this Page (Shift-Command-I), and your default email client would pop open, create a new message, and place the link in that message.

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At one time, a typical Mac user would no more have connected a couple of computers to the Internet via a local network than they would have extracted their own kidney. If you just mentioned the word networking (outside the context of calling former business associates to seek a better job), those around you shook with fear.

Blessedly, those days are almost entirely over. Now, just about anyone can configure and join a network. Let’s see how it’s done.

A little background

I’m going to assume that you already have some variety of Internet service—along with a broadband modem (the box that brings broadband Internet service into your home or office) that includes or is connected to a router (a device that distributes network addresses to computers and mobile devices connected to it). When you signed up for that service, either someone installed it for you or you were sent the gear you needed and you followed the instructions necessary to connect to the Internet.

In most cases, the modem/router relationship works this way: Your Internet service provider assigns something called an IP address to your Internet account. This address is selected from a range of addresses that the ISP owns, and it can change depending on the kind of account you’ve signed up for. (If you have a static account, you’ll always have the same IP address; if you have a dynamic account—which is most common—your IP address can change.) This IP address is your main thoroughfare to the Internet.

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Recently, I tried something that had always worked before. This time, it didn’t.

Using Safari, I clicked a link to a PDF file. After the PDF opened in a browser window, I selected the Save As… command from Safari’s File menu. So far, so good. Next, I double-clicked the saved file sitting on my Mac’s desktop. Normally, this opens the file in Preview. This time, however, I was greeted with the following error:

A similar message appeared if I tried to open the file in Adobe Reader, rather than in Preview. I next tried saving the file from Firefox instead of Safari. It made no difference.

Returning to Safari, I selected the Print command. From the Print dialog, I selected to save the file as a PDF. This too failed to save a viable copy.

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If you get a lot of email, you know how hard it can be to spot messages from friends and family, or from your most important contacts. The recently introduced VIPs feature, added to Mail 6 in OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6, can alert you when you get emails from your most important friends and colleagues, whether you’re using your computer, iOS device, or even iCloud mail on the Web. Here's how to use it.

Set up VIPs

The VIPs feature works on Macs running Mountain Lion, on iOS devices running iOS 6, and on iCloud on the Web. You can have up to 100 people listed as VIPs.

As long as you’re signed into your iCloud account, your VIPs will propagate across your devices, even to iCloud email on the Web. In addition, if your VIP has a card in Contacts and has more than one email address, the VIP status will be applied to all their addresses. However, there is no way to create or remove VIPs from within Contacts, either on OS X or on iOS.

Adding VIPs on your computer When you get an email from someone in Mail, open the message and hover your cursor over his or her address; a star will appear. Click this star, and the contact will be added to your VIPs list. You can also hover over an email address, click the down-pointing arrow that displays, and choose Add to VIPs.

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It happens to me a lot. It happened just a couple weeks ago when Dad bought a new iMac. And it happened just a couple days ago when Uncle Mort found that Firefox was bizarrely loading with a bunch of extra tabs that he didn’t want and couldn’t get rid of. And it happened when my sister-in-law Sam wanted to get access to music she’d purchased with an older Mac.

My friends and family turn to me for tech support, and I’m happy enough to offer it. But I can’t always provide that help in person. I often need to do it remotely, since not everyone who seeks my Mac guidance lives near me.

Here’s how I do it.

Calm, cool, and collect information

When my father first needed help with his new iMac, he tried to FaceTime me. I was on a conference call for work at the time, so I ignored the FaceTime request, along with the subsequent calls to my home and cell phone. But I knew he was trying to reach me.

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If you use Google’s services for email, calendars, and contacts, you're probably aware that there are several different ways to access your data. You can use your favorite browser to access the Web interface. If you prefer dedicated Mac or iOS client app, you can use any that work with the industry-standard IMAP or POP protocols to access email, with CalDAV to access calendars, or with CardDAV to access contacts. On iOS devices, you've also had the option of using Google Sync—Google’s implementation of the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol—for all those kinds of data.

Even though Google supports such open standards such as IMAP, CalDAV, and CardDAV for its mail, calendaring, and contacts services, you might have opted to use Exchange ActiveSync instead for two main reasons. First, it offered one-step setup: You enter your credentials once, and your email, calendars, and contacts were all set up at once, with no further fuss. Second, Exchange ActiveSync offered push delivery of email; if you're using IMAP to access Gmail on an iOS device, you've had to settle for fetching email either manually or on a schedule (every 15 minutes, say).

However, Google recently announced that—as part of its “winter cleaning”—it will be discontinuing Google Sync for consumers effective January 30, 2013. So what might the loss of Google Sync mean to you? Google offers a helpful FAQ on the subject, but I’ll run down the highlights.

First the good news: Most iOS users won’t even notice the disappearance of Google Sync. For one thing, all email, calendar, and contact data will remain intact after January 30, and you’ll still be able to use email, calendars, and contacts via the Web interface as you always have.

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Mountain Lion’s new Mail VIP feature is among my favorite improvements of the update; it gives me just the right amount of control over notifications and filtering to make sure I see what I need to and don’t get overwhelmed by an email deluge. But shortly after upgrading I noticed a peculiarity: Sometimes, Mountain Lion would pop up two notifications for the same message—the first segueing directly into a second.

I realize that these contacts are Very Important—after all, that’s the way I marked them. But I couldn’t help but think that one notification of their email would still be plenty, no matter their importance.

I let it go for a while, hoping it would work itself out, but after several months my patience wore thin. After doing some research, I discovered that Mail and Mountain Lion aren’t the only culprits here, though they have their parts to play.

The account giving me trouble belongs to Gmail and is set up via IMAP (one of the two major mail protocols, and these days the more common one). Gmail offers the ability to synchronize your labels to folders on your local client via IMAP. This means that the same message can end up being delivered to multiple folders; to Mountain Lion and Mail, it’s as if you’ve received multiple copies of the same message, hence the multiple notification triggers.

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How often do you use your Web browser? If the answer is constantly, then a few choice tips could save you loads of time and trouble. Here are some for Apple’s Safari 6.

1. Cut through your bookmarks clutter

Overwhelmed by bookmarks? The first step is to organize them into folders (Bookmarks > Add Bookmark Folder). The next step is to organize the bookmarks within the folders. It's not hard if you use the Finder to alphabetize them.

Go to your bookmarks window (Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks or Command-Option-B), and drag a folder from the Bookmarks sidebar to the Desktop. This action copies the folder to the Desktop, and the contents automatically sort by name.

You can’t drag a folder directly into the Safari sidebar; so, instead, drop your sorted folder into the list area of the Bookmarks window, and then drag it from there to the sidebar. Unlike in the Finder, folders with the same name can exist in the same location in Safari, which means now you’ll have two. After you place the organized folder, delete the original.

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When you set up the Messages app in iOS or OS X, you must supply it with an active Apple ID. But a single Apple ID can be associated with multiple phone numbers and email addresses, and the iMessage system enables you to send and receive messages to and from any email address or iPhone number that’s associated with that ID.

That can have a lot of repercussions whether you’re setting up the Messages app in iOS (on an iPhone or other device) or in Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. For example, on an iPhone, you could opt to receive only those iMessages that are directed at its phone number. At the same time, you could configure the Messages app on a Mac to receive iMessages at that same phone number as well as at a dozen different email addresses.

Account settings

Starting with iOS 6 and OS X 10.8.2, when you are logged in with an Apple ID and you open the settings for Messages, you’ll see a list of every email address associated with that Apple ID. If you have an iPhone or iPhones, their phone numbers can be used with any other copy of Messages logged into the same Apple ID as well—that’s how you can get iMessages sent to your phone number on your Mac.

To set up all of these options in iOS, you tap Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. On an iPhone, the phone number will be checked and grayed-out, and cannot be de-selected; you can only disable iMessage on the device. On all other devices, you see a list of phone numbers and email addresses that you’ve verified with your Apple ID. You can tap to toggle their use as destinations on that device, or tap the blue detail arrow to remove the address altogether; you can delete it from your Apple ID account, too, after you confirm that you want to do so. You add additional emails by tapping Add Another Email, then following a link embedded in an email message that will be sent to your Apple ID’s main address. This leads you the Apple ID site, where you confirm the address.

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Reader Chris Connors is not entirely happy with interactions between the Calendar and Mail applications. He writes:

I’m running Mountain Lion on my MacBook Air but I’m using an email client other than Mail. The problem I’m having is that every time I receive an event invitation via the Calendar application, Mail launches. Is there some way I can prevent this?

Although one might be tempted to simply trash Mail, try and do so and you’ll find that the OS prevents it. Like many of the applications bundled with Mountain Lion, this one is said to be “required” by the OS.

Another temptation would be to launch Mail, select Mail -> Preferences, and in the General tab choose a default email reader other than Mail. Regrettably, that doesn’t stop the behavior your describe.

“Surely,” you say, “there must be some simple ‘knock it off’ command that puts a stop to this.”

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Who said that? Let me scroll back in Messages to find the exact person. (Ah, yes, George Santayana.)

One of iChat’s nicest features was the way it allowed you to sift through the transcripts of past chats; you always had a record of the promises you made for work (or in the rest of life). Although the new Messages app in Mountain Lion doesn’t do away with transcripts, it repackages the feature in a way that many iChat veterans find obscure.

The key difference is embedded in the Messages interface: Chats are no longer things that live in their own tabbed pop-up windows. Instead, the app organizes conversations in the main Messages window: In that window (the one labeled Messages), chats appear in a conversation sidebar on the left. Entries in this list represent both active chats with a contact (across all the services they may use) and the historical record of those chats, if you’ve chosen to store it.

In iChat, you could set an option to save a transcript for every chat; that option is preserved but relocated in Messages. Under Messages > Preferences in the General view, check Save history when conversations are closed. If this option remains unchecked—its default setting—no transcripts are saved. Check it, and the app writes all conversations to disk. (If the option is unchecked, quitting the program doesn’t delete all record of a current conversation. But that record will be deleted when you close a conversation using the X button that appears when you hover over it with your pointer, or when a conversation is selected and you choose File > Close Conversation.)

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Safari for iOS was already perhaps the best mobile browser on the market. But in iOS 6, Apple has added a few features that provide much-requested functionality, as well as some minor tweaks that improve performance.

iCloud Tabs

If you’ve ever found yourself viewing a webpage in Safari on your iPhone and wanting to view it on the larger screen of your iPad or Mac instead—or, conversely, reading an article on your Mac and wanting to transfer it to your iPhone as you walk out the door—iCloud Tabs is for you. This feature syncs any open tabs among your Macs and iOS devices configured with the same iCloud account. Instead of going through the hassle of emailing one or more URLs to yourself, you can quickly view—on the device you’re currently using—any tab open on any of your iCloud-synced devices.

To access this feature, you first need to ensure that all your devices are configured with the same iCloud account. On  devices running iOS 6, you configure your iCloud account in the iCloud screen of the Settings app; on Macs running Mountain Lion, you use the iCloud pane of System Preferences. On both platforms, be sure that Safari is enabled in the list of data to sync. (Note that if you have multiple iCloud accounts configured on your iOS device or Mac, only the main account—the one configured in iCloud settings, rather than in the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen in iOS or in the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane in OS X—can use iCloud Tabs.)

Once configured, iCloud Tabs automatically syncs open browser tabs across all your devices—assuming that those devices have Internet access, of course. On the iPad, you'll see an iCloud icon in the Safari toolbar; tap that to get a list of the tabs open on your other devices. On your iPhone, you tap the Bookmarks button and then select iCloud Tabs. (If you’re already in a sublist in the Bookmarks list, tap the left-facing arrow until you reach the top level, titled Bookmarks.) Tabs are grouped by device, and each tab’s entry shows the name of the webpage and its URL; tap any item in the list to open that webpage on your device.

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