Sweet Irony
- Published March 22nd, 2008 in Tech Comment
vs 
Life is replenished in irony. I’ve been praying for IMAP support on Gmail for ages. I sent several emails, I had the chance to talk to one of Gmail team engineers at GooglePlex, I wrote several posts begging for IMAP support.
Google finally added IMAP support about half an year ago. I was relentlessly happy. In a flash I was setting up my dusty email clients (Thunderbird on Linux/Windows, Mailapp on Mac OS X) so I could use them again. When I finished doing it, I thought to my self: Great!
But then I started missing Gmail’s labels. So easy to support. Soon after I was also missing Gmail’s excellent email threading system. And the quick search! Only Mailapp on Leopard (due to Spotlight indexing) was as fast as Gmail on diving through thousands of emails.
All in all, I soon realized that there’s no advantage in having an email client comparatively to having Gmail’s powerful web interface. But I might be missing something. I’ll therefore ask our dear lazy web why should one use an email client like Thunderbird or Mailapp instead of Gmail’s powerful web interface.
offline
Better yet, why not going for a “mail client” that works just like the online Gmail?
That’s right, do it like me, use prism :). Works perfectly.
Plus, in ubuntu, all it takes is applications–>add/remove, search for prism and most google applications will show right away.
That way, all it takes is to fire up prism and use alltray to send the app to the system tray and voila, your own gmail client :).
Besides offline access?
I couldn’t operate without offline access to e-mail, but that’s just me.
Personally, I’ve never been subject to a situation where I needed to see an old email but I didn’t have access to an internet connection to get to Gmail’s web interface.
I bet they’ll come up with support for offline reading, like they did with reader, using Gears…
Anyway, the hability to drop files into emails, and integration like that (that is way faster than any AJAX they do on the web) still gets me.
I guess you should be asking for correct label support, if it’s that what you miss. I just stopped using labels.
I’m with you… I use Gmail as my main mail app and when I have to use other clients (at work), I feel sooo tied up!
I use gmail online all the time on all email accounts. Fast, organized and available everywhere (where there’s web access).
Offline can be an issue but I rarely need it and when I do I just print the thread to a pdf.
Aconteceu-me o mesmo na altura que saiu o IMAP. Na minha opinião a interface do gmail consegue superar as dos clientes de mail. Quanto ao facto de não suportar offline reading, isso a mim não me faz muita confusão, sempre que tou num computador 95% das vezes tenho ligação. Mas tenho de dar uma olhadela nesse tal Prism.
Cumps
I use the Mail.app + iPhone for all my mail, even Gmail! I was one of the first to complain about the implementation for labels (folders that generate duplicates) and stuff like that, but I kept using it and I barely use its web interface. Why? Centralization and notification. Mailplane is out of the ball game now as it is an unnecessary resource hog. Plus with with Mail.app I can sync with my mobile devices and .Mac (I know, I know, useless piece of crap… But I can say it after owning it :)). Add to that the fact that I find it easier to keep my Inbox Zero™ when using one central app with system-wide notification… (I’ve been doing that for some months now)
But for webmails, Gmail OWNS! I really really like its web interface… My host ( (mt) ) provides me with @Mail for a webclient, which is a nifty AJAX-desktop-app-alike webmail interface… I don’t like it nearly as much even though it LOOKS good.. :/ (I’m about to install roundcube on my server actually, now that it hit stable)
Enough rambling: no reasons to use a desktop app for gmail… but I surely like a centralized mail client, for my hosted imap + gmail! :And for that my choice relies on the (imperfect) Mail.app ;)