Can I make OS X Mail and iCal work like iOS?

[bug]

For years I've happily used my Gmail account with my iOS devices - I see my calendar in the calendar app and my mail in the mail app and they basically mind their own business.

Now that notifications are here I decided to set Mail and iCal up on my computer to get notifications. I've avoided them in the past as generally I just use the Gmail web interface, but I thought I'd give them a try now that there's a reason.

So I set them up on all my Macs and Mail wants to email me for every notification. All my Mails on all my Macs all send me emails for every calendar event - in addition to gmail. iOS mail doesn't do this - it just leaves the mail reminders to Google where they belong. So now I get like 5 emails for every event in my Calendar.

...even worse, when I first set this up mail spawned asking which mail server it should use for basically every calendar event I've had since the dawn of time - it took forever just to dismiss all the windows.

I would have expected Apple to make the iOS mail/calendar experience generally the same as OS X, but apparently they are playing by different rules.

Is there a way I can continue to get emailed for events from Gmail (only!) and have the notification center on all my macs notify me of events and emails without spamming myself by having every Mac I run emailing me for every event in my google calendar? Basically have them work the same way iOS does (there are other differences that annoy me as well but this is by far the biggest)

I realize I can turnoff email notification in Gmail, but I want it there. I see I can also turn off all notifications in OS X, but the only reason I'm doing this is to get local notifications in my notification center.

Advice?

 

[bug]

I don't want my computer to "look" any different than it is - Just for the applications to follow a consistent set of functional rules, and it just happens to be that the iOS devices are the ones who's rules work properly with my usage patterns.

I'm not asking for any UI changes of any sort - just proper coordination of external mail/calendar systems which iOS seems to handle splendidly and OS X does not (at least by the specific criteria I've outlined above).

How did you get that I wanted OS X to look like an iOS device?

 

[ScoobyMcDoo]

I have noticed that iCal will set up email alerts for google calendar events even if when created via google, I don't have email alerts. I do not have a fix, but it has been this way since SL and still seems to act the same way in ML.

 

[BaldiMac]

Your description is very confusing, but I think that your problem may be solved by checking "Ignore Alerts" in the info for the calendar.

However, you don't need email alerts at all for your upcoming events to show up in notification center.

 

[Carlanga]

just remove the calendar alerts

 

[bug]

Apparently what I'm looking for needs external software...

Thanks for the tips everyone but it seems that since I want the alerts and not the emails I need to manage this with additional software.

Here's my exact problem and a solution in case someone else comes across this:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46024/how-do-i-stop-email-reminder-from-ical

I'm just surprised this isn't a bigger issue - seems like it would be a pretty common configuration, and on iOS it doesn't email you when you get a reminder from a Google calendar. The difference in operation seems strange.