Not a fan of the software rental, but I will point out that you get FIVE machine activations with a license. Do with that information what you will.
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Former Apple Engineer's Mimestream Gmail Client for Mac Gets Official Launch, Free Beta Access to End Tomorrow
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You sound like you know quite a bit about this, so could you explain what the fundamental difference is between a paid upgrade and making a separate new app, eg Tweetbot 3 that effectively replaces Tweetbot 2 over time? Genuinely curious to understand.
That $99 upgrade to the whole 2.0 suite was pretty damn nice I will say.. Dont use anything but Photo, but for that price, might as well learn how to design our logos in Designer too.
i don't understand why people make a stink out of paying $7 a day for a product they uses a 100+ times in that day. the guy built something nice - let him get paid for his work.
Subscription? Not a deal killer but first strike. $50 a year, nope. I have no problem with web interface usually. But I subscribe already to Office discounted through my work (mostly for the other apps) and can use Outlook if I want something fancier.
It would have to be significantly cheaper to get me to bite.
It would have to be significantly cheaper to get me to bite.
The complaints here are as follows: great app but I can't justify paying for it.
And this demonstrates perfectly the parabola of technologies. They start as nascent, then get hot, then they cool off, and then they become ubiquitous. Trying to make money out of something that's ubiquitous is almost impossible.
Email is old. Really, really old. It was revived in 2005 when Gmail basically reinvented it, but even that's nearly two decades ago now.
To be able to charge for an app like this, you need the technology it's enabling to be nascent, or hot. For example, somebody might create a TikTok client that does some cool stuff you can't normally do, or they might create a Mastodon client.
But email? It just can't work. Even Microsoft recently made their Mac email client free of charge.
And this demonstrates perfectly the parabola of technologies. They start as nascent, then get hot, then they cool off, and then they become ubiquitous. Trying to make money out of something that's ubiquitous is almost impossible.
Email is old. Really, really old. It was revived in 2005 when Gmail basically reinvented it, but even that's nearly two decades ago now.
To be able to charge for an app like this, you need the technology it's enabling to be nascent, or hot. For example, somebody might create a TikTok client that does some cool stuff you can't normally do, or they might create a Mastodon client.
But email? It just can't work. Even Microsoft recently made their Mac email client free of charge.
You don’t fetch your mails from your mail provider. Instead you use another service that sits in between and stores and manages all mails for you.
Well, wrong concept then.
Better take C++, Swift or ObjC and build a decent local working binary instead of server based crutches.
Happily purchased a subscription. I'm not a developer. So have no skin in the game. But reading endless comments about how everything should be free is, frankly, moronic. It takes money to develop and maintain any product or service. Nothing is free. Want to use Apple's mail client? Fine, you're paying a premium for Apple products and part of that premium supports their mail app. Unfortunately it's not that great and not updated very often. Want to use Gmail on the web? Welcome to endless ads and again, an infrequently updated and maintained product.
Again. Mimestream is a classic mail client, no 3rd party involved, they don't need to pay for mail servers. They use the Google/Gmail API.
It's also a native application written in Swift.
I've been using it in beta for a long time. It's a great app but I use gmail for my personal account and simply can't justify the cost over just using the standard webmail interface. If it was more reasonably priced I might consider it. It's too bad really. Still I wish the developer success. I hope Google doesn't buy the app and then kill it like they did with Sparrow.
My thoughts EXACTLY!
Every feature shown is NOTHING new for most existing email clients that have been on the market for over a decade!
‘Categorize with labels’ whoopie.
‘Respond to calendar invites’ 🤣 💀 like really? Is this the best they can do?!
I’m not certain Googles API is the best way to go, or using anyone else’s API that is not a commonly shared protocol (aka ActiveSync for Push emails) as you never know when such a company will restrict access. Anyone recall Twitter API being restricted suddenly and without warning affecting so many 3rd party developers!!??
Focused inbox!
This was garbage when Microsoft first implemented this and it’s still garbage here as well. Some feel like it’ll separate spam and marketing emails but sooner or later it’ll separate critical emails and most will start to miss - especially time sensitive ones.
This is NOT the way! Even if the UI looks appealingly clean. They need to do BETTER!
That's like saying to an A&W customer "What's wrong with McDonalds?". Choice is powerful.
Was Spark that app that was proxying all email through their own servers, or was that another app?
If you believe Gmail is free, you've drunken the kool-aid. Google is profiting off of you, your email, your behaviour, your likes, your dislikes.
And business users of Gmail pay a fee. It's not free on that side of the fence. And they are protected from the information siphoning that happens with the "free" version.
Wow, emotional post. There's a big advantage to using a native app over a web-based app. That alone is worth a small fee.
APIs are used heavily across the web. They are not a fault or weakness. The Twitter fiasco was unique, driven by mismanagement and cluelessness.
But is your email "free" from prying eyes? That's the question you should be asking.
I bought Mimestream 1.0 at the introductory price of $29 ($32 with taxes). I’ll see how it develops over the next year to see if it merits the annual $50/year subscription. I just prefer a desktop client to the Gmail web interface. Honestly, it was partly to support the developer.
yeah im considering paying for the discounted first year to support them and see what happens since i like the app
but i dont like it enough to pay the normal yearly fee.
I'm a fan of what Agenda does. Their model lets you use a base version for free, but you can pay to buy premium features that are released over the course of a year. Once that year passes, you KEEP the premium features you paid for, even if you stop paying. If/when more features are added that you like, you can subscribe again to get caught up. It's a nice middle ground between tradition paid releases and software rentals where you're left totally empty-handed the minute you stop renting the software.
I would still call Spark a mail client. It's some software that offers you access to read and send emails. Calling the Spark app a "Spark client" doesn't really make any difference - I already agreed with you that Mimestream is using Gmail API to touch data, whereas most other mail clients use IMAP.
Call me old fashioned, but I am a person who prefers the perpetual license purchase… with a caveat: I do subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business at $149/year; it provides me with the “whole M365 package” plus Onedrive and manages my personal email domain.
At $49 a year, clearly the intention of this app is to generate ARR/MRR by going after all the low hanging fruit:
most lucrative customers in the PC Industry (Mac users) many of whom use the most popular email address (gmail). It might work, it might not work. My guess is that it will fill a niche, but my other guess is that they are missing out on some major money in not selling it standalone.
At $49 a year, clearly the intention of this app is to generate ARR/MRR by going after all the low hanging fruit:
most lucrative customers in the PC Industry (Mac users) many of whom use the most popular email address (gmail). It might work, it might not work. My guess is that it will fill a niche, but my other guess is that they are missing out on some major money in not selling it standalone.
Customer confusion and the belief that they are buying anew instead of an upgrade.
Oh, and more hassles in the App Store.
That is a really good suggestion, I'll look into that. Thanks.
There’s no way this is on Apple’s roadmap.
The point of this app is that it uses all the native Gmail functionality via Google’s API. Apple would never integrate with Google in that way.
The outcome of the integration is pretty awesome compared to the generic IMAP email client. For me, using server side search with Google’s algorithm is light years ahead of a normal clients search index. And there’s also a lot of other Gmail-specific goodies throughout the app.
With that said, I won’t pay that price for it. I can afford it with my business, but the price point is silly.
Hope they get the business to work though, it’s a great app.