Apple Mail was also, in my experience, really flaky. Sparrow has been pretty darn solid since a couple of betas ago.
i would love to know what does that.
But I tried Sparrow when it was in beta a while ago. Perhaps I should give it a shot agian.
The new Postbox release is pretty solid and does almost everything I want.
It just saddens me that it's basically the future now and we still can't seem to get email clients that don't suck. Some are better than others, sure, but they all seem to suck in some fundamental way. FWIW, in Postbox it seems to be speed.
That's because Postbox is based on Thunderbird, which is not a path to creating a fast, lightweight mail app.
I can only think of a handful of desktop mail engines for the Mac (Mail.app, Thunderbird + children, Entourage, Sparrow). If mail clients suck, it's because more people need to write one.
Eudora was amazing.
Because of that, I assume that they've removed the Ads from the paid version.
still, it is very solid as _just_ an email client for gmail, and only $10.
* set GV to forward txts to GM, replying to the email will reply to the txt
* have transcribed voicemails emailed to you with a link to play the original in the email
* use the "Call phone" button under chat to make outgoing calls via the web for free (for now)
I think that's what he meant, at least. Only one of those things (the last) isn't available outside of Gmail itself.
But now I took the leap and spent the $10 and I'm loving every second of it, especially the amazing integration with gmail shortcuts. Pretty much every shortcut works instantly and reliability, without the lag and wonkiness of the web interface.
After turning on gmail shortcuts, I've found it to be one of the most keyboard friendly apps I've ever used. And the beautiful UI is still there animating all your actions. Makes me feel like an email ninja.
sending while disconnected results in message being saved as a draft locally.
and there's this really cool activity window that shows exactly what it's doing: http://d.pr/CSVm
If you've ever lost access to Google, you'll never rely only on webmail again. There is absolutely no way to get in touch with a responsive human there. You may mysteriously get access back after a few weeks. Or maybe not. In the meantime, their online "help forms" will direct you to other forms, none of which provide any indication about what to do in cases when Google has erred.
There is literally no recourse.
Maybe it's because I don't have an email problem - I don't know, but it seems like more buzz than substance, at least to me.
Edit: I have no qualms with this product, and I'll probably buy it just to see what the hype is about. I'm mostly just surprised that it reached #1.
http://getsatisfaction.com/sparrow/topics/gmail_priority_inb...
I love the increased signal-to-noise that Priority Inbox provides, and I'd miss it in a client that just shows my regular inbox.
EDIT: Got a priority email after posting this. It didn't appear in the 'Priority' label window. womp womp.
Having an easy way to get to the Priority Inbox is the only thing holding me back from using it regularly. Right now I'm sticking with Mailplane.
I did like the simple feel of it though and would be willing to buy it for anything less than $14 NZD.
The sparrow UI only shows one label in it's main list view, and then only the colour of said label. If you use labels to assist in scanning your inbox, then multiple labels on messages in your inbox increases their usefulness considerably.
In it's current state Sparrow obfuscates what i consider to be gmail's most valuable feature.
In a way, though, they just hacked the "debut at one price, then cut for a spike" model: They simply floated the idea of debuting at price A, and launched at price B. Which is pretty ingenious, as it essentially has the same Groupon-esque value psychology of the original model, but doesn't have the inverse effect on early adopters. Everyone's happy.
I just can't use it yet because in the list view the sender is emphasized more than the subject. That's completely backwards for me as I rarely get emails with the same subject but I get a lot of mail from the same small group of people. This causes me to just stare at the inbox without having a good overview of what I'm looking at. Here's my feedback idea if anyone wants to help push this forward:
http://getsatisfaction.com/sparrow/topics/emphasize_subject_...
I did switch back to Postbox after my first try with Sparrow, but I was sold when they added command-enter to send and the ability to remove the app icon from the dock. I wish Tweetie allowed menubar-only mode like that.
I didn't know there was a paid version -- I'm using the free version with ads disabled. I'll glady pay up.
The number one thing I look for in a mail program is threading. Then good filtering and usability.
* search: the built-in one takes ages compared to remote search. I understand that it makes the search behaviour the same both locally and remotely, but its still a hassle to have really slow search locally. * labels with archived items aren't shown in the sidebar. I'd like a reminder that there's unread mail in the mailinglists.
Other than that, it looks great!
