Really great app, but really disappointingly appends "Sent with Sparrow" at the end of sent messages, with no preference to turn it off.<p>Massively uncool, even if I can delete it myself.<p>EDIT: Found this on the author's Twitter feed. Weird interface for what is an otherwise intuitive app: "Open the preferences window and double-click on the account. You'll be able to edit the signature."
A nice little preview. I can see its appeal although I'm not sure I'm ready to make the switch. One little pet peeve though. Why do so many Mac apps want to create a menuling now? It's not the Windows system tray. There's no good reason why this mail client needs a menuling. It can communicate everything through its Dock icon.
Overall I like the idea and most of the design. There are a lot of awesome little touches in it. But a lot of small things seem weird. Maybe some of these can be smoothed out for the full release:<p><pre><code> - The status item (why?) that doesn't have a
drop-down menu at all, but simply shows/hides the
application?
- The slightly-off-feeling fonts and buttons
(especially labelled buttons like "save" and "send").
- The hidden-seeming account preferences that you can
only access by double-clicking.
- Some sort of custom implementation of a toolbar
that bypasses the normal configuration option for
toolbars in OSX apps.
- No option for plain text composing. I know it's
minimalist so you might want to minimize options,
but nothing's more minimalist than plain text.</code></pre>
Though it seems the opposite of minimalist, I really like MailPlane for managing multiple Gmail accounts at once on the Mac, without any syncing:<p><a href="http://mailplaneapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://mailplaneapp.com/</a><p>For starters, it incorporates Rapportive in place of the Gmail ads.<p>Plus, if you like minimal interfaces, MailPlane supports custom CSS, so you can apply Helvetimail or similar clean and designed interfaces:<p><a href="http://www.josefrichter.com/helvetimail/" rel="nofollow">http://www.josefrichter.com/helvetimail/</a><p><a href="http://jimmitchell.org/projects/mailplane_clean_css/" rel="nofollow">http://jimmitchell.org/projects/mailplane_clean_css/</a><p>The ability to have multiple Gmail accounts open in a dedicated mail app is worth every one of 2,495 pennies.
Hoping this is useful feedback, if the developers are here lurking. Agree/Disagree?<p>First, it looks absolutely great. I love the "tweetie"-ish UI. A very refreshing look and feel.<p>Hotkeys - very glad to see these already integrated, but wish they would have defaulted to the standard GMail hotkeys. Since your product is aimed at GMail users for now, I would go with those hotkeys<p>Scrolling - something weird is happening with the scrolling using a mouse wheel versus regular trackpad on my Macbook Pro. Feels inconsistent with other apps.<p>Windows - the message panel should be "docked" to the main window by default. a message/thread should only open in a new window when double clicked.<p>Search - fast (for me, small mailbox) and well done. great progressive disclosure with the options appearing above the results list.<p>Authoring - a more full-featured editor is a must, obviously. For a beta this is forgivable.<p>Preferences - getting to account-specific prefrences is unintuitive (double clicking on account)<p>All Mail/Labels - obviously a "must" in the left hand side if you're going after the GMail crowd.<p>Performance - performance starts to suffer if you add a larger account while it downloads/indexes your mail? My CPU was not pegged and I have an SSD so not sure what could be causing this slow down. Excessive paging?<p>NSStatusItem - not sure why this is necessary and I would rather not have it cluttering my status bar.<p>Unified Inbox - maybe not a 1.0 feature but a lot of people feel strongly about this. It's a must for anyone with more than 2 email accounts they have to juggle.<p>Message List - consider figuring out a way to show more messages on the left hand side, possibly by adding a preference for "include preview"<p>Overall, a very strong start and if you could get the above items worked out and a polished first version out I would happily pay you $20-$30 for this piece of software to replace my current thick mail client (postbox)
Really nice interface, but a huge problem: it seems to slow my whole system down as it syncs with my gmail account - to the point where I had to close the program because it was getting in the way of my other processes. I hope that once it finishes syncing that issue goes away, but there's no indication of how far along it is, so I can't just keep it on and have it ruin my productivity. I hope this issue gets sorted out because it looks promising.
I guess I'm probably the last person on earth not using GMail, but I downloaded this and poked around with it some. The conversation view is nice, but the app is clearly a long ways from complete. I don't often find myself saying this (because my computer is very fast), but better performance would be great. Also, stricter adherence to platform UI convention would be good, if not perhaps minimalist.<p>For me, I'll stick with my idiotically baroque setup (fastmail + offlineimap + dovecot + Gnus), and keep wishing for something better to come along.
Like for some others here, something feels off about the design. I think it's that the app feels a bit like an iOS app running natively on OS X: the icons on the left and at the bottom, the iOS mail app-style listing, and the tooltips that look reminiscent of the copy/paste menu. Not to say it's bad; it's just a somewhat confusing user experience, as if I'm running an iOS app with the Parallels like "unity mode" enabled.
This sounds odd, but just typing in a message feels unusually slick compared with e.g. GMail in the browser, which I struggle to explain. Has anybody else thought this? Is it a projection caused by a pretty-looking interface? Or the instant updates in the message thread while you type, noticed in the corner of your vision? Or perhaps the font choice? Or do the characters actually appear a millisecond or so sooner? Does the cursor work slightly differently? I can't put my finger on it, but it surprised me.
This reminds me, what ever came of <a href="http://lettersapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://lettersapp.com</a>? Last I had heard, John Gruber was taking the reigns. I wonder if it has been deadpooled?
I keep a fairly empty inbox with the rest of my mail archived and labeled for reference... so this app seems pretty useless when I can't see the majority of my mail.
I like the concept behind this app, and would definitely switch to it from mailplane if a few things were ironed out.<p>Here is my feedback thus far.<p>- I think this is a very nice editing of gmails features, I prefer it to the wrapping of gmail's interface that mailplane does<p>- The interface feels very "Tweetie"-ish, which I think is a good thing<p>- The tooltips feel really out of place and are obtrusive and unexpected<p>- I need inline spellcheck for composing messages<p>- I don't mind the menuling, but either it is showing something other than unread messages or calculating them wrong, also I would like some options off the menuling like compose, or mailplanes fancy do not disturb feature
I really like this app, particularly since I can click the notification and take action on an email almost immediately.<p>A few tweaks I'd suggest if there was a way to email back some feedback:<p>* Better performance (think it's slower in the beginning since it's indexing all past emails)<p>* A way to archive emails while in single message view (when I click the notification of an incoming email)<p>* A better way to visually separate unread messages. That blue dot is not good enough.<p>* Allow me to select how often to sync. I want to check email every 30 minutes so I can get real work done. It would probably help performance as well.
Is it just me or was spam arriving in the main inbox? This client would work well with an integrated to do list also.<p>Some feedback:
- Not sure its exact name but it needs the minimize of the toolbar to gain extra horizontal space.
- Spam in the inbox? Wasn't appearing in my gmail, only in the client.
- Something about the Compose window, from a visual perspective seems rather ugly.
- Growl support
- System resource usage seems sporadic.
- Either have a menu icon or a dock icon, or let the user choose.
- No attachment support
Off to a great start so far. Here are my suggestions:<p>-- Undo needs to allow you to undelete the last deleted message and allow you to undo a send for X seconds.<p>-- GMail address book browser. I need to be able to easily browse and edit my contacts as well as add a new contact from the currently active message.<p>-- Labels (yes, I know it's in the roadmap already). Especially and interface to rapidly add and remove labels like on Quora.<p>-- Plain-text emails<p>-- Mouseover/hover states for the menu buttons.<p>-- Double-clicking for account preferences is not intuitive enough.<p>-- Greater visual separation between read and unread messages. A little blue dot isn't sufficient.<p>-- Ability to set how often is checks for new messages. Setting for 30 minutes helps eliminate distractions.<p>-- It can be kept minimalist by only permitting certain actions via keyboard shortcuts. For example, there is no reason that bold and italics can't be made available via just CMD-B and CMD-I.<p>Question: When I delete does it delete just that message or the whole thread like in web-based GMail? If it deletes the whole thread, how can I delete single messages out of a thread instead of the whole thread?<p>If this progresses as I think it will, it looks like it will be worth buying. How much do you plan on charging for it? $19.99 is the sweet spot for me. You might want to use the Van Westendorp method to determine how to price it.
It looks great and really promising. I'll wait until a better integration of Gmail before the start using it. For now I'll stick to Gmail in my browser and Notify as "quick access" application for my emails.
I love the app. The minimal design is exactly what I was looking for in a desktop mail app. The Gmail intregration was excellent and took a lot of hassel out to setting up the app. I have since recommended this applciation to my friends and family, especially because it is so easy to setup.<p>One note, when I saw the "Star" I thought it would be correlated with my gmail stars, but it appears these are local stars. Other users may have been confused by this as well.<p>Love the app, and you should put up a donate button on your site or in the app. I would pay for this.
The reason I switched to gmail from Mail a few years ago was because of performance concerns. Of course now that I have an SSD I have far fewer performance problems in general, but even so my mail program needs to be fast and solid. Offline email access would be nice, and multiple accounts would definitely be nice because I seem to lose about 1 very important email a month due to my forwarding scheme from one gmail account to another, but it's gonna take more than a polished UI to make me switch back to a desktop client.
BEWARE: it appears as though it was auto sending (and then deleting) my replies every time it autosaved.<p>I see this <a href="http://cl.ly/2g4u" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/2g4u</a> at the bottom of the thread in gmail. If I check my trash in gmail I see multiple versions of my reply in various states, all with a sent time (they don't appear in the sent folder).<p>At worst it is sending out your email continually as you type it, at best its autosaving feature clutters up your gmail trash with every autosave.<p>Anyone else see this behaviour?
Is there any way to open messages in the same window? It's highly annoying to have to open messages in new windows and have to manage multiple windows.
Priority Inbox hasn't been out for long enough to realistically <i>expect</i> it to be in yet, but it'd be nice if it makes it into the final version.<p>Also, one thing that GMail does right is detecting which of my many linked accounts an email was sent to, and replying from the appropriate one. Whenever I send mail from Mail.app, I invariably end up with an extra copy of me floating around in the CC list.
The similarity of the UI to the iPad mail app really gives me the sense of this being a future incarnation of Apple Mail.<p>I haven't used it extensively, but Sparrow's adaptation of the iPad message list seems very usable so far. The Tweetie-style account navigation might even be better on the iPad than the iPhone-derived hierarchical menus Apple currently uses there.
We really need these kind of applications on the Mac. I love Tweetie and I love the way you can create a tweet using a global shortcut. It makes me forget that I have Tweetie open and as soon as I realize I have something to say - boom (as Steve Jobs would say) - I have the window for a new tweet open on my desktop!
Nice little app! As a longtime MailPlane user, I'm a bit hesitant to give up the web interface and the cool stuff that comes with it (labels, undo send, inline IM), but I'm potentially excited to never have to deal with the gmail html+js interface that is sometimes agonizingly slow.
A very good start!
My thoughts:<p>* menubar icon needs to go, not useful<p>* needs a performance upgrade, scrolling is un-smooth, switching accounts takes too long<p>* as a long time Mail.app user I miss save and send buttons being on top<p>* I can haz plaintext composing?<p>* it started crashing on me after I've added a second account
I have a quite limited use of email (with no 'inbox zero' problem... maybe I should worry :]), so a minimalist mail app would be perfect. I'll give it a try.<p>Edit: talking about a minimalist app being "not so miminal" is a great way to introduce it.
It seems developers are looking for glorified reviews (Daring Fireball, Macgasm, etc) and concentrating little on the problems. You can take the app, and shove it. It does nothing the web interface doesn't.
Nice interface, a little CPU-hungry though.<p>Noticed: Some dates of some of my emails are off (e.g. by a year or some just days). Gmail reports the correct date, so it might got lost during the sync.
Interesting UI, but it seems to only show my inbox, not all of my other labels in gmail. I filter a lot of messages, so my inbox alone isn't too useful.<p>Nice start though.
It looks nice, but what is the problem that it solves? That's not clear. I can see the multiple Gmail account support, but other than that I don't know.