Apple’s been spending a lot of time in the past couple years making innovations in iOS. The iPhone, iPod touch and iPad’s technology has changed the way we interact with devices and now Apple is bringing those innovations back into Mac OS X with Lion, which will be available this summer.
Last time I wrote, I talked about the onset of some really nice desktop apps that have taken over web-based services. One of them was Sparrow, which has since come out of beta and is available in the Mac App Store. At the moment, I think Sparrow is definitely worth the ten bucks, but after seeing Apple’s preview of OSX Lion and the changes they’re making to the native Mail application, I have a feeling Sparrow’s days are numbered.
Mail 5 for Mac takes the layout from its iPad counterpart and, in doing so, cleans up the mail viewing process, much in the same way Sparrow does. Actually, pretty much exactly the same way Sparrow does. This is going to be a problem for Sparrow’s developers, considering that its main selling point was its simplified layout and the great number of features its program lacks in comparison to Apple Mail.
So I ask you all: does Lion’s new Apple Mail make Sparrow obsolete? What do you think you’re going to use for email in Lion?
Only when it has the same threaded message view as Sparrow. That’s the only thing I really dislike about Mail.app.
Of course. I’m not a fan of Sparrow, but I appreciated what it tried to do, but when compared to the official Mail.app on Lion, it just cannot compete when it is going to come bundled with every Mac running Lion, plus in my opinion it actually seems so much better judging from my developer preview.
I’m a GMail user so I like that Sparrow is more closely tied to GMail’s functionality. I have also been using Mail Plane, but while functional, is just as ugly as the native Gmail interface.
I’ve got Lion installed (customer seed program). Mail is definitely an improvement, but it’s not much different in terms of GMail integration (as far as I can tell).
One thing I like about using GMail.com and MailPlane, is that my email doesn’t fill up my hard drive. I assume the that is not true with the native Mail app (and I’m not sure about Sparrow).
@Argelius – what do you mean “fill up your hard drive”? Don’t tell me you have your gmail set up as POP3. Use IMAP and you’ll have projection of what it is on your gmail cloud (mail storage). Not a single message will be downloaded unless you specify and use it even when you are offline.
Wow. Just happened to stumble upon this blog after posing the same question on one of the Mac Bulletin Boards.
I, too, have fallen in love with Sparrow Mail.
However, I had been using the beta of Lion OS X and I have witnessed the revisions Apple has done to their MAIL program. It seems to do everything that Sparrow Mail currently does.
I believe Sparrow is going to have a problem on their hands once Lion is released. The new revised Apple Mail is sleek, organized, and…well…looks exactly like Sparrow.
Personally I love using POP3 in Mail.app. I always like to keep Mail.app clean of any mails I don’t want to save locally since it keeps the mail program nice and fast. I have a couple of 1000 emails with heavy attachments and “need” POP3 to be able to keep all those emails safe on my web host while also keeping my Mail.app fast and clean.
I sincerely hope they won’t remove POP3 support in the new Mail5.
On the subject of Mail vs Sparrow though: Sparrow does things in a way more minimalistic manner compared to Mail. Personally I prefer Mail over Sparrow because of this. 🙂
I don’t know how I hadn’t read about this till now. Very happy I came across this post. Thanks!
Does the new app support the gmail shortcuts for navigating your inbox, like sparrow does?
I am pretty sure you can use selective IMAP folders in the Gmail settings on the web to decide which folders you want to show when you set Gmail up in Mail.app. I don’t think that has gone away with the Lion version of Mail.app.
I think this kill Sparrow. All what Sparrow had Mail.app now has too, plus it has these features that Sparrow hasn’t:
Spotlight integration. I want to be able to search my mails from Spotlight and have all my mails also available offline. For Sparrow I always have to open the app to search my mail.
Sparrow has some massive problems rendering Japanese Richt Text/HTML mails. For no apparent reason the letters get scrambled in the middle of the message and only partly (so not the whole message). Make Sparrow completely unusable for me. So I’m totally back to Mail now even if the folders integration is not as perfect with Gmail as Sparrow does it.
That’s a weird thing about the Japanese text, although I don’t get any emails in Japanese so I would never have known. I think Sparrow will always have its niche market, for those folks who want a desktop client that closely matches the Gmail interface. But even Gmail has changed pretty significantly in its design since Sparrow launched, and why would we run with a desktop app that has to keep pace with a web app when we could simply go for the web app? I like the *idea* of Sparrow, but in reality if I want to use a desktop mail application on a Mac it’s always going to be Mail.
The main reason I have NOT been using Mail app is the lack of a nice clean gmail integration. I used to use MailPlane and then converted to Sparrow after it came out, and both of those have been a big improvement over Mail app due to their gmail integration. Mail app does some odd things basically trying to create folders out of labels as well as with the “all mail” functionality of gmail (Mail App creates another folder with that and then houses a separate copy of pretty much every bit of mail). Also, say you apply three different labels to a given message, Mail app will stick that same message in 3 different folders then basically. Does anyone know if these issues have been solved in the new Mail app?
Jared: No. Same issues, and worse. With Lion’s new ‘versioning’ I found multiple copies of emails that were being written. I’m surprised Apple did not QC this. A good percent of people use Gmail.
I discovered sparrow because of Mail in Lion. It crashes a lot for me so I went looking for alternatives. I have had Sparrow for a couple of days and I love it!
Hey…love sparrow…have one gmail account and use an “aliases” to respond from my business accounts that are sent to gmail. Does anyone know if, how, and where the new Apple Mail does this too???
Dan: in mail you configure your gmail account as normal and then go to prefs -> accounts -> gmail account. In the “email address” field you simply add your aliases to the existing address, separated by commas. Don’t know why this isn’t made more obvious.
Now my question in return. Has anyone figured out how to get the apple Mail client to move stuff to “All Mail” instead of “[IMAP/Archive]” when you hit the archive button?
To be fair all software’s “days are numbered”. Its the nature of the beast. Also this is the nature of business and competing products will always come to the market that any software company will need to improve their products to compete against. The makers of Sparrow need to differentiate themselves inorder to attract enough customers
Finally, according to Sparrow’s FAQ it will run on OS 10.5 and up, something Mail 5 cannot do. Many people will continue to use these versions of the OS for some time to come for a variety of reasons and are a market the Sparrow developers can address that Apple offers no competition for.
my email to sparrow:
while i agree sparrow looks nice and is fast, it lacks 2 features i would need / want.
1- syncing of notes.. even notes period.. mac mail does this.
2- built in RSS reader.. again mac mail has this..
summation – mac mail better than sparrow..
i’d be interested to see what if anything you suggest..
For note syncing I use Evernote, which is a far better note taking solution than the featureless default Notes app on iOS. As for RSS, I use Reeder, which once again provides a much richer experience than Apple Mail for RSS reading. It is nice to have one app that does all three, but I find it depends on what level of user you are. As a power user I think it’s better to keep things separate and have one app that does each function supremely well. That said, I still use Mail over Sparrow right now because I need full support for mobileme.
I agree with the needed MobileMe/iCloud support. Sparrow just doesn’t cut it. Not does it provide cloud syncing, which means I need to refresh often to get my messages. I’m hard on arrival times and no other system beats Mac Mail when receiving messages arrive.
Lack of rule hurts too
Both Lion’s Mail.app and Sparrow give me a headache. I’ve never liked preview panes, and sorting mail without a column for each attribute is just weird to me. Where Sparrow is really useful, though, is letting me have separate native apps for my work and personal mail. I used to try running two instances of Mail.app at the same time; it can be done, but it’s a pain. Now I use Mail.app for work mail and Sparrow for my personal mail. Sparrow’s iPad-like interface is tolerable to me for the amount of personal mail I get.
I agree. Sarrow’s “simplicity” makes everything more complicated.