For those considering using Spark for the first time or are thinking of giving it another try, the developer just released what I consider a meaningful update.
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I would love to use Spark but regular or Beta, I get the ol’ spinning ball constantly. Very odd and their tech support can’t figure it out.
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I like Spark on iOS and was also using it on Mac. But the inability to change the text size for reading mail on Mac forced me to move away.
I also moved away. I have moved back over to Airmail. My main reason is that I do not like the order of the conversation threads from Gmail. For some reason Spark does not enable you to reverse the order of the threads, whereas Apple Mail and Airmail both allow you to make that change.
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I’ve recently taken up using Spark as my new email client since Newton has announced they will be shutting down in September. I must say that I am IMPRESSED. Clean interface, every just works, and navigating the app is easy. The only feature I miss from Newton is the ability to have Read receipts on emails because those came in handy many times.
I had tried Spark maybe a year ago and it wasn’t nearly this good, so they’ve obviously made major strides since then.
You might also want to check out Airmail 3. I’ve gone back and forth but I believe I’m going to settle on Airmail for two primary reasons:
- I don’t like having the most recent conversation at the bottom of a thread–the Gmail default that Spark uses and that can’t be changed. Airmail allows this to be reversed with the newest message at the top of the thread.
- Airmail has powerful integration, which are a big help for power users.
I was an Airmail user a couple of years ago and it was just too buggy for me. It has nice integrations, but the frequency I encountered bugs with their software was too frustrating. I got the feeling Airmail was trying to push out too many features without making sure they are well tested and function properly. That being said, they may have improved this recently.
FWIW I’m seeing fewer bugs now, but it still can’t get the badge count right.
On a recommendation from someone here on MPU (as well as a couple relay.fm hosts) a little while back, I’ve switched from Google Inbox (which is going away) to Spark. Overall pleased with the app, although like @MartinPacker I can’t get a badge count on macOS at all and on iOS the badge is slow to update.
However, this morning I stumbled into this reddit thread and although I don’t use the Teams feature, I’m concerned about how much of my data they may be holding. Reading the privacy policy, if I’m using the most appealing features of the app, they’re getting data about my personal contacts and seeing my email on their servers.
Why can’t these smart notifications be figured out on-device? And why do they need my emails on their server if I’m not using Teams?
Understanding that with my email hosted by Google privacy is kind of a lost cause, I’d still like to reduce my exposure as much as I can.
What would this tweet from them be about?
False red flag…