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Former Apple Engineer Introduces Native Gmail Client for Mac With Multi-Account Support, System Notifications, and More

Anyone smell a lawsuit coming? And, if it's more stable than the mess he left at Apple (the Mail.app), this would beg the question: Why isn't the Apple Mail.app better?
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OKAY OKAY...

Lawsuit, because it looks exactly like the Apple mail app. If they are selling this app, they may have a problem, or at least a licensing issue? Maybe? Possibly? Or is that a picture of the actual Apple mail app in the OP?

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Apple mail app stability comes from my experiencing supporting the wife and her three exchange accounts, a gmail account, and two Apple .me accounts. Oh, and scheduling/calendaring, etc. It just goes sideways occasionally, and I think she has resorted to logging in to the exchange servers directly, and keeps a paper schedule book. I tease her about it, making it worse. Oops...


Is there a better, safer, mail client to use in her case? Getting them all in one app would be her goal to save time, and still having a way to tell from which account each message comes from. And also scheduling working more seamless than it does.
 
I would use Apple Mail if it wasn't for it's atrocious handling of attachments that are received. Seriously... receive an attachment? Save copy to computer. Open it up from mail? Save copy to computer. Forward email? Save copy to computer. Open it again from Mail? Save new copy to computer. WHY.
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I never had major issues with the native macOS mail client and Gmail, but I’m not surprised many do.

This project does illustrate however it’s perfectly possible for Apple/Google to develop a good Gmail client with push support.
 
MacRumors said:
Mimestream is free for a limited time while in beta and will eventually be a paid app distributed through the Mac App Store. macOS Catalina or later is required. Jhaveri says an iOS and iPadOS version of the app is planned for the future.
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So if we beta test it for him, do we get the release version for free or do we have to pay for it at that point?
 
jonnysods said:
I'm a Kiwi email fan myself as I use two G Suite accounts for my two companies - insanely handy.
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Just wondering but why don’t you use one of the businesses as a secondary domain so you only use one G Suite account? I used to have separate ones but it was a nightmare
 
casperes1996 said:
Looks a lot like the native mail client. Which brings up the point, why not just use the Mail app?
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Gmail uses non-standard IMAP implementation that creates an additional copy of every message for every folder it’s in or label it has. By default, every Gmail message is represented in All Messages as well as Inbox (taking up twice as much space in a Mail.app mailbox). More labels creates more copies of each message.

To my knowledge, this will be the the first email client to support Gmail properly.
 
This app is slick! I wish the guy would have just stayed at Apple and led the Mail team to deliver something close to this in Big Sur. He was probably up against some internal politics that prevented him from doing Gmail the right way in Mail, so he quit out of frustration and released this instead. ;-)
 
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matamoris said:
This app is slick! I wish the guy would have just stayed at Apple and led the Mail team to deliver something close to this in Big Sur. He was probably up against some internal politics that prevented him from from doing Gmail the right way in Mail, so he quit out of frustration and released this instead. ;-)
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The Mail team's track record has been pretty abysmal. In fact, much of Apple's software has been pretty mediocre aside from their OS. We're fortunate to have 3rd party app devs that continue to want to improve the experience.
 
This is great. People think all email uses IMAP and SMTP but the reality is those are old. Nothing does anymore. Gmail’s take is proprietary on IMAP. And using their API is a much better way.
Anything Microsoft uses is Exchange based with multiple protocols to access it - the worst of which is POP or IMAP. And even then, Microsoft’s newest methods they reserve for their own apps leaving the rest to use activesync or EWS. Which are old too.
I like this approach. Very excited to play with it.
 
This could be great!

As long as it does not mandate a unified inbox, keeps accounts separate with some buttons on the left hand side and is not a memory hog.

I stopped using thunderbird & mail when somehow I got unified inboxes during upgrades and updates. Way too tedious to scroll through the bulk and to keep filtering correctly for specific message types and senders.

I grew tired of memory leaks and issues with SHIFT. Even with just 2 simple gmail accounts, it would take ~1GB by default just starting up. Then grew from there.
Bonus is account switching with buttons on left hand side.

I have sampled KIWI, it seems OK, but I do not like their account switcher being in the far upper right corner. I like a three column view and wide screen. It would be far more logical to have that in the upper left. Too many mouse miles to switch accounts.

Looking at mimestream ... multiple accounts looks like it will be unified ... sad. I like strict separation between important mail, personal mail and whatever else with newsletters, etc. and have setup multiple accounts for that reason. So, I currently use three different browser to access the different accounts.
 
69Mustang said:
Maybe you're using the wrong ones. ;) They work perfectly fine on mine.
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I was HATING to use G-Suite tools on my iOS experience as personal and business. Google doesn't care iOS ecosystem at all, they just maintain app for G-Suite users for their ease and free google users for getting more data from ads etc.

I switched from G-Suite to Microsoft and they are really making better apps for iOS and Android where in both platform apps like Outlook,OneDrive,Word etc. works seamlessly and designed for that platform, where Google does its job everywhere.
 
thederby said:
Gmail uses non-standard IMAP implementation that creates an additional copy of every message for every folder it’s in or label it has. By default, every Gmail message is represented in All Messages as well as Inbox (taking up twice as much space in a Mail.app mailbox). More labels creates more copies of each message.

To my knowledge, this will be the the first email client to support Gmail properly.
Click to expand...

Gmail doesn't really support folders. Their labels work sort of like folders but not really, which is why people were bitching about folder support forever. Their IMAP implementation reflects the whacked out implementation they did. I'm pretty sure there's only one copy of the email tho, it just lives everywhere because labels not folders.
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
Anyone smell a lawsuit coming? And, if it's more stable than the mess he left at Apple (the Mail.app), this would beg the question: Why isn't the Apple Mail.app better?

OKAY OKAY...

Lawsuit, because it looks (almost) exactly like the Apple mail app. If they are selling this app, they may have a problem, or at least a licensing issue? Maybe? Possibly? Or is that a picture of the actual Apple mail app in the thread topper. Looking closer, it's probably different enough to get by.

Apple mail app stability comes from my experiencing supporting the wife and her three exchange accounts, a gmail account, and two Apple .me accounts. Oh, and scheduling/calendaring, etc. It just goes sideways occasionally, and I think she has resorted to logging in to the exchange servers directly, and keeps a paper schedule book. I tease her about it, making it worse. Oops...

Is there a better, safer, mail client to use in her case? Getting them all in one app would be her goal to save time, and still having a way to tell from which account each message comes from. And also scheduling working more seamless than it does.
Click to expand...
From every free app I tried, Spark was the one that's most usable with google api and map structure, however I don't use it for privacy reasons and I love Apple's default mail app, especially after Big Sur design changes.
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BaltimoreMediaBlog said:
Doesn't work in Mojave so DOA for me. Maybe Robert Wagner can use it on another tragic boat ride to Catalina? LOL
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It's SwiftUI implemented so it must be Catalina or higher
 
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Sandstorm said:
I'm quite happy with Mailplane.
But also hope that one fine day Google will just release a nice native app...
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Honestly, I use iCloud for personal and 365 for work and the only point Google is attractive there is the spam filter. Outlook came a long way of having less spam but they still have some.

Outlook is my second to go after Apple's mail too, and Google probably won't consider an app for macOS imo
 
MacRumors said:
Mimestream is free for a limited time while in beta and will eventually be a paid app distributed through the Mac App Store. macOS Catalina or later is required.
Click to expand...
Paid app model is encouraging, as it suggests the app won't require subscription. But I wonder how much it will be.

I installed the beta and it's very nice app -- fast and looks great. Beyond using Gmail API and nearly full support for Gmail features, which are all nice stuff, it doesn't feel significantly different from Apple Mail for me to justify spending more than $20.
 
installed the beta, def feels like the native mail app but better. super smooth and install was a breeze. There seems to be something going on with selecting an option after right-clicking on an item that makes the app crash. submitted feedback on it already.
 
egrimo said:
I was HATING to use G-Suite tools on my iOS experience as personal and business. Google doesn't care iOS ecosystem at all, they just maintain app for G-Suite users for their ease and free google users for getting more data from ads etc.

I switched from G-Suite to Microsoft and they are really making better apps for iOS and Android where in both platform apps like Outlook,OneDrive,Word etc. works seamlessly and designed for that platform, where Google does its job everywhere.
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I have G-Suite tools for personal and recreational use. MS' suite for business. My iPads are consumption devices only so they have my Google services added. So are my home PC's. I don't have any issues with compatibility, syncing, or functionality. I may not have issues because my tech isn't centered around one ecosystem. I don't have an Apple-centric viewpoint regarding UI. The only issue I've had in the past is Google creating and cancelling services at the drop of a hat. I long ago solved that issue by not utilizing any their newer stuff. The stuff I do use works, and works well... for me. Everybody's different. I get that. Blanket statements like "that just sucks" or "service x is no good" is just lazy opinion making imo. That was the primary point of my original comment.
 
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1144557 said:
What do you plan to do about that across the world in a country with its own laws? There are no ramifications other than their reputation; which Edison has showed average people dont seem to care about privacy/security breaches and brushed it off.
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I don't plan to do anything about it, I have no dog in this fight. Anyone who thinks email is a secure platform probably also thinks the telephone system is secure just because someone said it would be illegal to be otherwise.

My question was a serious one.
 
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