

Introducing the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch - Pewpewarrows
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/introducing-gmail-app-for-iphone-ipad.html

======
pilif
Aside of the fact that the app displayed an error message at first launch
("Notification error" - "no valid 'aps-environment' entitlement string found
for application" - how did this pass review?), it a) doesn't support multiple
accounts, b) is very laggy to use when you compare this to, say, the android
version and c) feels like another one of these "let's embed the website above
a little native toolbar"-apps

Because Safari gets to JIT-compile JavaScript and UIWebView embedded into apps
can't, this actually feels slower than the website (~0.5 seconds between
clicking on a message and seeing it load? really?)

I really think I'll move back to using their Exchange-Sync for push together
with the standard web shortcut for mail management as this is faster and
supports multiple accounts.

(edit) On a related note: Doing these "let's add a native toolbar to my
website and publish this in the AppStore"-apps feels nearly as stupid as when
everybody felt the need to add flash intros to their website. There's next to
no additional value (especially with the currently broken push) provided by
such a half-assed pseudo-native app.

This does nothing but hurt both native development (by leaving a bad
impression on what's possible with native apps) and the open web (by making
people believe that a website is not good enough)

~~~
ctide
Have you used the Google Voice app for the iPhone? It's literally the worst
app I've ever seen in my life. Crashed constantly, won't refresh from the
server, will close your text box randomly while typing a message (clearing
your message), will fail to make calls frequently, and since I upgraded to
iOS5 now has signed me out and crashes immediately when trying to sign back in
so it's been rendered completely unusable.

I can only assume that there's some desire within Google to make sure the
iPhone versions of their products are complete dogshit to try and encourage
Android adoption.

~~~
jad
> I can only assume that there's some desire within Google to make sure the
> iPhone versions of their products are complete dogshit to try and encourage
> Android adoption.

Do people think companies really behave this way? "Hey guys, how can we make
our products crappier? Surely if people think our iPhone apps stink, they'll
be motivated to go out and buy a whole phone from us!"

There are a whole host of mundane reasons why products turn out worse than
they could be, and they almost never include conspiracy or malice.

~~~
ry0ohki
I bet it's the same reason Apple products suck on Windows... the devs
themselves just don't use the platform.

~~~
omaranto
Well, I'm not convinced it's fair to say that Apple software is worse on
Windows. I don't know anyone who's tried Safari on Windows (so maybe it is
worse than on a Mac, but I wouldn't know) and while iTunes is certainly
absolutely terrible on Windows, from what my Mac owning friends tell me it is
just as bad on Macs.

~~~
shinratdr
> from what my Mac owning friends tell me it is just as bad on Macs.

Who told you that? I just launched iTunes on my Lion machine, it started up in
5 seconds and started syncing with my phone wirelessly while I scrolled
through 18,000 tracks without stuttering & a track played.

iTunes for OS X is arguably a little bloated and lacking direction, but it's
still hands down the best library based music player/jukebox for OS X. Nothing
else even comes close.

To be fair, you come right out and say you have little experience on the topic
either way, so why cast an opinion? As someone who uses Apple's software on
Macs and PCs extensively, there is not even a debate to be had about where
Apple puts its effort.

You can even test it yourself. Take any Mac, put Windows 7 on it. Launch a
clean copy of iTunes in OS X, then reboot and do the same in Windows 7. The OS
X version will start up instantly, the Windows one will stall for at least
10-15 seconds. This is just one obvious example, there are plenty more out
there.

~~~
omaranto
You're right that I shouldn't have offered a second-hand (my friends') opinion
about iTunes and specially not without spelling it out. What happened was that
I complained about iTunes on Windows (which I use to put stuff on my iPod
Touch), specifically that (1) it sometimes incorrectly marked podcasts as
played or as not played, (2) it sometimes hung trying to connect to the iTunes
store (for Windows users: if this happens run ipconfig /flushdns in a cmd
window and restart iTunes), (3) somethings where hard to find in the UI (I
can't remeber my concrete example now, but I did mention it when I complained
with my friends), (4) rearranging app icons on the iPod's homescreen is quite
buggy: you often windup with empty spots or duplicated icons in iTunes, which
then crashes if you try to sync. (I did not complain about startup time, since
it doesn't really bother me; and I should also say recent versions of iTunes
on Windows don't have some of these problems) My friends said that all of my
complaints save for (2) also happened on Macs.

------
martingordon
The app is so bad it sounds like they're saying: "If you really want a great
native Gmail experience, switch to Android."

Like Gruber said on The Talk Show recently (and I'll probably be downvoted
given how unpopular he is here): Apple gets people to upgrade their phones by
making them love their current one; Android makers get people to upgrade their
phones by making them hate their current one.

Seems like the strategy continues to holds true here...

~~~
frou_dh
That love thing is typically gushing and odd.

I like my iPhone 3G, but it's annoyance at no longer receiving security
updates, and lack of iCloud support, that would make me spend money to
upgrade. Not love.

------
rglover
Looks like they removed it from the App Store:

"Update: 11/2/11: Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS.
Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users
to see an error message when first opening the app. We’ve removed the app
while we correct the problem, and we’re working to bring you a new version
soon. Everyone who’s already installed the app can continue to use it."

------
bonaldi
Shows exactly how far apart the distance between native apps and web apps
really is.

People were impressed with the GMail web app when it launched; this is
basically a skin around that same app and they're recoiling from it in horror.

~~~
krookoo
What are you saying? web apps are better or native apps?

~~~
masklinn
That people accept (bad) things from web applications they will never accept
from a native application, I'm guessing.

This would imply native applications generally being better than web
applications, since the acceptability threshold is higher.

------
doomie
Incredibly, this app is slower than using their mobile website. Nicely done!

------
Lewisham
I'll echo other comments here that this looks like it needs a bit more work.

* Notification error on startup: ridiculous

* Laggy scrolling (how?)

* No support for Send As, which is actually what is really missing from the iPhone Mail app.

It's almost there. It needs a bit more love.

~~~
kyleslattery
The laggy scrolling is likely because they're not using native scrolling, but
rather using the same JS based scrolling they use in the web app to overcome
issues with iOS 4's support for fixed CSS positioning. However, since the
toolbar is native in the app, they should just use native scrolling.

------
robk
All those that ridicule Google's product quality on iOS have never tried to
use iTunes on Windows!

And given that lots of Googlers have iPhones, it's hard to ascribe malice when
just incompetence will suffice.

~~~
thenduks
All those that ridicule iTunes on Windows have never tried to use a Google
product on iOS!

:)

~~~
MaysonL
But hey: the current mobile version of Reader looks and runs much nicer on a
Mac than the desktop vertsion.

------
smackfu
So, if Google is supposed to only be hiring A people, who is making all these
crummy iOS apps?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Google hires the type of people who want to solve hard engineering problems,
not the type of people who want to really polish an app.

~~~
kbanman
Thing is, this app isn't just unpolished. They threw up this excuse for a
native app to avoid engineering a real one.

------
timjahn
Multiple accounts is definitely a deal breaker for me. I'm surprised they
didn't implement that out of the gate.

------
thought_alarm
When I want to remind myself of what it's like to use a non-iOS device, I'll
open up this Gmail app.

~~~
joelanman
But the gmail app on Android is excellent, and nothing like this?

------
madhancr
Google, hire some Mac/iPhone developers to do the job.

This is what happens if you hire 'generalist' and reject Mac developers by
asking some scaling and data center questions.

------
dendory
I've always been very satisfied with the iPhone mail app personally.

------
alexknowshtml
_sigh_ they (poorly) lifted functionality, all the way down to cache clearing
in the app settings, from <http://usemailroom.com>.

Between that and the Facebook navigation, this app is more stolen than it is
crappy.

------
ryan_s
I guess I fail to see the point of using this app. For me the mail.app and
active sync have been working great. I get push, I can attach files, etc.

Other than better searching, and different management I don't know why this
would be better.

------
digitalclubb
Searching for mail or finding 'labelled' archived content on the default mail
client was a real pain and this app answers those questions but as previously
mentioned..

No multiple accounts? I have several Gmail accounts that I need to manage on
the fly, and it is indeed quite 'laggy' when you have images or heavy content
in the email body (which it doesn't scale down!)

All in all, it's a step in the right direction and about time this app came to
market - let's just hope they resolve the issues and tweak the overall user
experience.

------
joshu
That blog post breaks scrolling behavior on iPad and iPhone. Amazing.

------
ropiku
It doesn't look like it supports multiple accounts unlike the web app

------
highwind81
Here's the link to the app in the appstore:
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gmail/id422689480?mt=8>

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edgeman27
Doesn't seem to support multiple accounts - back to Mail.

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mvkel
Super disappointing that it's just a native wrapper around a web interface.
They had a chance to kill it with this app and they didn't reach very far.

~~~
mitjak
All the more puzzling is that they waited so long to do it. There has always
been dissatisfaction with Mail.app but it's taken them 3+ years since the
launch of the iPhone SDK to come up with a half-assed wrapper around a website
that performs more poorly than running it in WebKit.

------
scottschulthess
I don't see it in the app store, unfortunately.

Edit: for me, the only way to get it is to download in iTunes and then sync

~~~
lancefisher
I couldn't find it in the app store either, but I followed the link in the
article on my phone and it opened the install screen for me.

------
nyrb
I was hoping to see the native Gmail app that can support multiple accounts,
but it is currently not. Oh well. I'll stick with Mail for now.

It look like the native Gmail itself is a browser and navigate to Gmail Mobile
website. Thus is the reason why the native app only can hold one account at a
time.

------
phoboslab
Apparently not available in Germany.

The AppStore search function only finds third party apps and the AppStore link
from the blog post opens the AppStore and shows the unhelpful error message
"Your request could not be completed".

~~~
bmj
Also not available for me, in the U.S., browsing the app store from my iPod
Touch.

~~~
bmj
And apparently this is because the app was pulled because of a bug.

------
sidwyn
Interesting how they decided to copy the sliding panels from Facebook for
iPhone. I wonder if it will become a standard on iOS.

~~~
cwilson
I've overheard lots of discussion from iOS developers lately on this becoming
a new trend. As certain apps increase in complexity the old Facebook home
screen style becomes much less scalable, and this new method seems to be the
answer.

My guess is we'll see at least another half dozen popular apps take on this
style as well.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
For us users that don't own an iOS device, what is this sliding panel effect
you're discussing?

~~~
mcdavis
When you click an icon for the menu, the entire page you're on currently
slides to the right to expose a panel of menu options.

See here:
[http://a1.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/119/Purple/eb/62/0a/mzl.uvhm...](http://a1.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/119/Purple/eb/62/0a/mzl.uvhmahke.320x480-75.jpg)

------
dabeeeenster
Can anyone explain if/how this app downloads mail in the background? I thought
that wasn't possible using the current iOS API?

------
gte910h
Can't swap to another account. At all.

Edit: There is a switch in settings to do it...

Doesn't work with GAFYD accounts...

------
extension
Ya know, a web page announcing your iPhone app should really be viewable on an
iPhone. This one refuses to scroll at all.

------
jimbrock
Not terrible but not at all great, either.

------
rimantas
Floppy disk icon for „Save“? I guess GMail alreadh has users who never had
that thing in their hands…

------
tvon
It feels like the mobile web client.

~~~
ceejayoz
It is the mobile web client, only slower.

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bejar37
Ha. Seems like it was pulled from the app store (Probably because of the push
bug). Nicely done.

------
jamesgagan
annnd...it's been yanked already, according to thenextweb:
[http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/02/google-pulls-
gmail-a...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/02/google-pulls-gmail-app-
for-ios-citing-notification-issues)

------
simon_weber
They have officially pulled it and are working on a fix. Check the update on
the blog post.

------
iradik
I just got a message saying the item I tried to buy is no longer available.

------
OoTheNigerian
Yesterday, when I asked people not to get too excited about the iPhone GMAIL
app and I was downvoted into oblivion.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180049>

The I maintain that the Android version is really unstable (take a look at the
app store review page).

Google is just too big to move at the pace required for so many products it
has.

------
helloimben
I tried downloading it just now- says the app is "no longer available."

~~~
sambeau
they pulled ti due to the notification bug:

<https://twitter.com/#!/jdalrymple/status/131795707295309824>

------
paolomaffei
Any good alternatives so?

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mdonahoe
iTunes error: "Not available in US store"

------
johndbritton
About time.

------
falling
I'm baffled that Google, of all companies, can't make a decent mobile web app.
The first Gmail versions from years ago on the iPhone were beautiful and they
degrade with every new version.

