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Gmail functionality options w/ a Mac...

N

noahsnyc

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 27, 2003
138
0
Los Angeles
Hello -

Well, I've pretty much given up on all the various ways to work POP functionality into Gmail through the venerable Mail.app. Nothing seems to work - FreePOPs, GmailToMail, etc. Maybe I need to do an Archive and Install of OS X and get a new BSD Subsystem down there...

Anyways, are there any Mac users here who have been able to comfortably organize a couple of accounts (multiple accounts, in fact) in OS X? gCount and GmailStatus don't support mulitiple accounts, and, obviously, POP access or whatever jury-rigged version thereof hates me.

Any tips on Mac functionality for a dummy with Gmail would be really appreciated!

Thanks,

Noah
 
you sound like you know way more than me...but i read on the gmail site that they dont yet allow you to connect to your gmail account via a email client...any email client...So yeah, if you know of some way around this then well...tell me @_@
 
altair said:
you sound like you know way more than me...but i read on the gmail site that they dont yet allow you to connect to your gmail account via a email client...any email client...So yeah, if you know of some way around this then well...tell me @_@
Click to expand...

Altair, there are a couple of "work-arounds" for Gmail through a POP client, such as Mail.app. None of them have worked yet for me. Some folks say that they work like a charm, but as far as I'm concerned, they all involve some kind of adjusting of the OS, and work "under the radar", which makes me nervous.

There are a couple of nice "notification" tool-bar-based applications, such as gCount and GmailStatus. They need multiple-account functionality, but other than that, they do a great job of notifiying you about new mail and taking you directly to your Gmail account (auto-login). Since Gmail is good Webmail, I'm kind of partial to these little programs....

Hope it helped,

n.
 
I don't think Google can provide advertisements to you easily in POP3 e-mail, as they can with their webmail system. Therefore, until they create their own e-mail client, they probably won't have it available. However, they're supposedly working on a browser right now, so maybe it's not so far off.

The only way I can imagine workarounds working is that they go to the URL, log into your account, check for messages, read the messages, and add each one to your inbox. Interesting but dangerous if you have important e-mail going to gmail.
 
bousozoku said:
I don't think Google can provide advertisements to you easily in POP3 e-mail, as they can with their webmail system. Therefore, until they create their own e-mail client, they probably won't have it available. However, they're supposedly working on a browser right now, so maybe it's not so far off.
The only way I can imagine workarounds working is that they go to the URL, log into your account, check for messages, read the messages, and add each one to your inbox. Interesting but dangerous if you have important e-mail going to gmail.
Click to expand...

Some folks have in fact worked out a POP Server Mirror deal to allow POP3 functionality - It's mostly BSD subsystem stuff and Python, which I'm blessed to be ignorant of. It all looks very confusing, but apparently, it works.

The browser concept is a very, very promising one, and I hadn't thought about it. Unfortunately, like the toolbar, it probably won't be for OS X, and we'll all have to wait untill Safari supports it on its own, huh?

As far as POP3 goes, I don't see why $20/year shouldn't allow for Google to offer POP3. They lose the ads, but know that they'll get the revenue. Also, saves them the disk space by having users keep email on their own computers. True, this is totally against the concept of Gmail, but it makes them money and keeps folks using the service...
N.
 
just wait until they offer imap support, they claim they are working on it. until then either understand it might not work for you and deal or whine about it. if you've tried everything, i guess you just get to wait.

not trying to be rude but you even stated that it seems to work for some but not others.. so you must be one of the others. guess you gotta wait until something else comes along to help you.
 
I once saw a page that Google had to list what they are working on, the problems they know of, and the status of them. I haven't been able to find it again. Anybody know what I'm talking about?
 
Remind me why it is so difficult to use a browser to check/send email? The only reason I can think of is that when you click a mailto: link, your default mail app would open. I'd imagine someone out there is working on a plugin for firefox...

Everybody wants so much for free, its getting ridiculous. Remember the free ISPs in the "good 'ol days", where are they now?
 
edesignuk said:
There already is one...it's been out for quite a while actually...
Click to expand...

I may have to look into that.

So then I am lost why people need their Gmail in mail.app :confused:

Personally, the less coupling I have with a specific computer, the happier I am. I like the idea of web based email clients myself and since were talking Gmail, its one of the fastest sites on the internet.
 
Gmail has all the features you need on the website. The nicest feature is the label feature. So if I label emails that I need for later I can just click on that label and it'll show me all the messages with that label on them. That is the neatest feature I've ever seen.
 
I have about 4 email addresses forwarding to my GMail account and then have filters set up in there dependent on what email address the email was originally sent to. This works out great. I also use gCount which keeps the Mail.app out of my dock so I have less clutter now!

Hooray for GMail, and screw using a program on my computer because I often need to access my mail from many other places (work, school, kiosks, etc...)
 
Freepops pulling mail but can't send

Freepops is pulling mail from gmail into entourage and mail with no probs but I get a broken pipe error when trying to send. Have been looking all over for a solution but no luck yet. Anyway here are the links for the latest versions of freepops and gmail.lua.

1- download latest SSL version from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=105652

2- get the latest gmail.lua file from the freepops cvs (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/freepops/freepops/src/lua/) and put it in freepops\lua folder replacing old one (when I did this pulling gmail broke so I had to reinstall the package and drop the gmail.lua file I downloaded into the root folder of freepops. I verified that it was using this file instead of the default lua for gmail by starting freepops with the -v -w options)
** skip this step if your using 0.0.15

3- in your email client, put:
server name to: 127.0.0.1
port: 2000
username: [username]@gmail.com
password: [your password]
 
ElRojo said:
Freepops is pulling mail from gmail into entourage and mail with no probs but I get a broken pipe error when trying to send.
Click to expand...
Can't you just use your ISP's SMTP server for sending, or something like that? Incoming is the big problem, ain't it?
 
The ISP I'm using out here -Iraq :-(- doesn't offer SMTP. Port 25 is shut so I can't use my .mac account to send through. It's not a huge deal because I can always just open safari and hop on gmail but I'm bored and thought it would be nice to get working with entourage. I also haven't had any probs with safari and gmail.
 
Okay, I had been kind of ignoring the sending side of the GMail kit thingy because I didn't think anyone cared. Now I know better and will do sometihng about it :)
 
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