As I mentioned in Beefier MacBook Pro Models Now Available, the first thing I did with my new MacBook Pro was to move my connectivity over (using Apple Mail for e-mail and Adium for instant messaging). So far, so good, but then I installed iGTD and all hell broke lose. (Well, ok, I’m exaggerating, but how would you put it if your e-mail program inexplicably started crashing — the one program you probably rely on more than any other?)

iGTD is a Time Management tool in the style of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” As far as I can tell, iGTD follows the GTD methodology pretty well, and I’m really looking forward to getting things done with it. My problem came in when I tried to turn on iCal synching. The problem isn’t with iGTD/iCal per se. The problem is that Apple Mail keeps crashing with an error about “trying to set a non-ToDo MailboxUid for a ToDo.” According to http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6677175, this bug was supposed to be fixed in OS X 10.5.1, but I’m running 10.5.2. Anyway, my temporary solution was to turn iGTD/iCal synchronizing back off and delete all of the iCal TODOs that had been created to match the items I had entered in iGTD. Now, Apple Mail seems much happier. That is, I’ve been sending and receiving ok for a few hours now. I’m sure that I’m going to regret not being able to view my task list combined with my calendar, but I’d certainly rather live without that for now, than have to live without e-mail.

Note: One weird thing when I turned the iGTD/iCal synchronizing back off: iGTD kept popping us a message saying that the synchronization was still on. I had to shut down iGTD completely and restart it to make that message go away. And even then, iGTD still tried to sync with iCal a few hours later. Fortunately, iGTD is smart enough to recognize that just because I had deleted all those TODOs from iCal didn’t mean that I also wanted them deleted from iGTD. Instead, it popped up a message about how the synchronization would have deleted more than 5% of my task database, and did I really want to do that? One of my choices was to restore the database and disable the synchronization, which, of course, I selected. Hopefully, that means that the iGTD/iCal synchronization is now, finally, disabled for good.

Another report (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=429226) blames this problem on a Quicksilver installation hiccup. Now, I did happen to install Quicksilver at about the same time as iGTD, so I’m not really sure which one is the actual culprit, if either. If I get any more information, I’ll be sure to comment. Anyway, I just wanted to highlight the fact that although this problem manifests in Apple Mail, the root cause is actually somewhere within iCal; with iGTD and/or Quicksilver acting as coconspirators.

Related articles:

• Joining the Mac Family
• Beefier MacBook Pro Models Now Available

Read more: Mac