After you said the only issues you had were two things I do not use, I was not content to just stick my nose in the rabbit hole, I bought a $9.99 ticket and lit my lantern and climbed down… this is what I found. they finally fixed two of the three issues I had with them.
they fixed the plainBody argument in the url scheme. no longer is it necessary to use htmlBody. when I was emailing support regularly, they denied this was an issue and said you needed to use htmlBody (even tho plainBody had worked in the beginning).
office365 works now. this was not working when I bailed a couple of years ago.
still no TE support but why would they, nobody else supports it.
So at this point, unless I am missing something, it is dead even with Spark 2. I am curious how Spark 3 will look now.
There is honestly a lot to like about it - when you are aware how the devs work. I find myself trying more and more to eschew having to resort to send later, which would free me from using Spark, because the task integration is so good.
I have been kicked out of the beta Slack for Airmail without any kind of warning. The only offense I can think of is having pointed out UX/UI inconsistencies and saying that the app was in dire need of polish (in those exact, courteous terms, it seems) to earn back its reputation. And that I wanted to be able to love and defend it.
Needless to say, it’s now dead to me. I suppose I am grateful as my choice has now been made for me.
I am however saddened by this incident, truly. Airmail was the gold standard and has so many great features. But it’s all wasted by horrendous quality control, and of course, if you’re not interested in users that tell you that things go wrong, it’s not going to help your quality control. Maybe that explains a lot…
This is pure speculation on my part but I have a few pointers.
Spark is on v. 2.9.xxx. I know, there can always be a 2.10, but it does not look like Readdle does that.
The iOS beta has been nothing but stability fixes for a long while.
Some long standing editor bugs have been actively worked on (as per the Twitter feed) for a strange long while. (I think that may hide a change of underlying tech)
Above all, the release notes in December have promised big things to come, asking the users to be a little bit patient.
I find Spark “fine” although on Mac I have now switched to Mimestream. I would find Apple Mail “fine” except for the fact it opens emails I don’t want it to.
I’ve never experienced that, that’s weird. I like Mail except for the lack of share extensions. I have no idea what it could be but Apple must have a good reason for not having it.
I bet you have, because it is a feature of many email clients. I was purposefully vague because lots of people think it’s how email clients should work.
Here’s how it happens. You have to have emails showing in a “preview” pane of the main window (which I think is the default layout for Mail). Click on an email and it shows up in that pane. Next, delete or archive that email. What happens? Does that preview pane go blank, like it (optionally) does in Spark? Nope. It opens another email unless your inbox is now completely empty.
Imagine if every time you closed a document in Pages if it just opened another one. Everyone would be infuriated by it. But apparently with email, we’re supposed to be “good with email” and process everything at once and in order. That’s just not how I use it. I know I’m not alone.
Mimestream looks a lot like Mail, is pretty simple, and has the all important option so everyone is happy…
I like to have (at least a measure of) feature parity with iOS and AFAIK, Mimestream only works with Gmail accounts, right? But it sure looks interesting.
If only Spark would take some cues from Airmail for task integration, it would be feature-complete for me. (Newton is. But Newton is… depressing to use and more importantly, it still feels very brittle. I’ve had too many things fail on me.)
Yes, Mimestream is macOS only at this stage, and still in beta. I think they say they will eventually go iOS but I’d suggest it’s a while off yet. (Not that they aren’t developing at a break-neck pace!)
I agree the task integration was top notch in Airmail. Just a pity that the little stuff like… you know… reliably rendering an email when you open it, didn’t really work.
I don’t really use any “features” of Spark. For me, it’s “the email client that works everywhere and doesn’t open emails unless I ask.” Except Mimestream has lured me away on macOS now.
@zkarj thanks for the clarification. I have mail setup with the list on top, preview on the bottom. If I click on an email in the list and read it in the preview then archive it, Mail highlights the next message in my list The same process happens if I double click a message to open it and then archive it. In neither situation does it “open” it as such–it is just in the preview pane. You are right, the preview pane does not go blank but I actually prefer the cursor moving to the next message and showing the preview. I tend to process email in bulk, which is probably why I prefer this behavior.
I’m beating a dead horse. I know. Sorry. But I just can’t for the life of me fathom how supposedly sane people can ship software like this.
I still have a copy of Airmail running at the moment to transition my actions fully towards Spark. I just saw v5 was released! Oh, great! Maybe it will be the terrific one that makes me forgive everything.
Now look at this preference pane. The whole of it. Tell me how even a power user is supposed to understand what it relates to, much less figuring it out.
has it been confirmed that the original devs left and this patchwork from the past couple of years is just contract workers from one of those “get a coder now” websites? did I read that somewhere or is that just my suspicions pretending to be facts?
I have not read this anywhere. When interacting on the Airmail beta Slack, I have talked to real people (using the broken English we all know and love in the update notes) who seem to be real developers. However, I am thinking along the same lines: whatever happened, the real talent and vision seems to have left the building for a few years.
Yes, and I won’t be moving anywhere for a while. Spark works entirely as advertised for anything important (like, sending emails and setting reminders…) and has been generally very solid and reactive, which is a relief. Their Smart Inbox filters emails well but the UX needs work, which is why I’m complementing it with Sanebox. I’m now sending all emails to OmniFocus, either with AppleScript or through the in-built task integration, which is not great, but I’ve designed a specific OmniFocus perspective to catch tasks with a Spark email link in the note field and no project and tag for further processing.
I’d like something a little more frictionless, but it works and it’s the best email system I’ve used at this point. It’s not perfect though, but after a LOT of testing, it provides me with the best possibilities of the features I need (send later is perfect, snoozing and reminders work, task integration could be better but is usable with a little creativity), and I trust Readdle to not start breaking things unexpectedly.
Now I have the beta for desktop installed, and I’m eagerly watching for the new major version that has been promised to drop!
and more importantly, it still feels very brittle. I’ve had too many things fail on me.)
