For Gmail users: decent to great apps exist for macOS. Less so for iOS, where Spark has had a plethora of features along with responsiveness.
Gmail’s own app would have been fine if it provided just a tiny bit more text formatting (or the ability to strip formatting).
Does anyone know of an iOS app that uses the Gmail API, much like Mimestream does for macOS?
Here’s a list of just how much of a downgrade v3 on the Mac is compared to the v2 and what’s missing. This should have been called a public beta but apparently there was a rush to put this up on ProductHunt as soon as possible.
I am so confused with the site information. It mentioned upcoming features for V3 but these some are here already on V2. Eg. Integration
I am running V2.11
and have these integrations already
If I may open another can of worms. I’m curious, why use an electron app on the Mac when there’s a browser equivalent?
Integrations are mentioned as an upcoming feature because v3 does not support any. It’s a half-baked piece of software resembling something that would otherwise be labelled public alpha or maybe early access beta, which is missing many of the v2 features, sadly.
Looks like bad timing, when Apple Mail just added some of the features that drove people to Spark – like send later or snooze.
Spark’s Send later does not depend on the computer being on, unlike Apple Mail. I’d happily pay a subscription for Spark given how much I love(d) it just for that feature alone, but the new Mac app is simply a huge step backwards in terms of usability.
Am I right in thinking that desktop v2 continues to work and be supported for the next year?
I’d rather not have to dedicate a chunk of time to evaluating my options for email right now, and I’m happy enough with Spark as is, so anything I can do to punt this decision down the line for a bit would be good. For i(Pad)OS, I’m assuming I can just skip the new update to avoid that “sent from Spark” banner being inserted into my communications… Minor inconvenience (turn off automatic updates) until I’m ready to make a decision to subscribe or move to an alternative.
I don’t mind paying for app subscriptions that I depend on, and again, Spark has served me well thus far, but it sounds like I really do need to assess how much is changing and whether I’d be better served elsewhere…
It seems v2 will not be developed anymore, but it will be kept around for a year. See the tweet from Readdle I linked above.
is this because your email is just sitting on their server along with your credentials to send it?
I wish for this, too. I use Mimestream on the Mac but haven’t found as good of an iOS client. Specifically the ability to send from my alias addresses.
I might just give the gmail app a try for a while.
Yes, but I don’t see how the send later feature could work otherwise: either your machine is on, or you let some server handle the task.
I’m not sure how they authorise, probably with a token, but they simply need to relay the email without getting it bounced.
I’ve been using the feature for years and with no issues, so there’s no reason for me here not to trust Readdle.
Apple will of course never go where they need to keep your authorisation token or whatever so the implementation in Apple Mail is always going to be lacking.
As I’ll have to drop Spark on the desktop once support for v2 is dropped and if v3 remains in this sad unusable state, I guess I’ll rely on Gmail’s built-in send later when I need that.
I think developers need to be careful in how they use the Gmail API in their applications to avoid their access being terminated. Mimestream is probably walking a thin line here.
From:
The Gmail API shouldn’t be used to replace IMAP for developing a full-fledged email client.
There seems to be a general hatred for Spark’s new version but I wanted to give another perspective as someone who uses the collaborative features of Spark.
The $60 a year for the collaborative features alone is worth the money. I work for a small business and we are constantly sharing emails and discussing them internally. I’m not aware of other email apps that do this. There are some Gmail add ons like Hiver but their pricing is considerably more. We’ve been using the teams service for free since it came out so we’ll most likely be upgrading to the paid version.
I don’t use Spark for my personal email as I like the separation from work. I don’t see this new version as something for personal use which is why so many people seem upset over the shift to subscription. For a business like ours, the subscription fee is worth the time savings alone.
He got as close as he could to obtaining approval from Google a couple years ago. Anything could happen, of course.
This is something I asked about a few years ago when it was first introduced, and the vague answer I got is that the warning exists because the Gmail API is not as optimized as IMAP for some common email client tasks. (Indeed, for better performance, I would like to switch a few tasks to use IMAP instead of the Gmail API someday).
Google did vet Mimestream as a general-purpose email client before approving API access, and on the paperwork for that process “general purpose email client” was the app category that I selected, so I’m hoping all will be OK, or else I will be really scrambling to implement new protocols
One thing that is worth noting that I forgot: The Spark team is based in Ukraine IIRC. I agree with many commenters that this seems like it was shipped before it was ready – no dark mode, performance weirdness, etc. – but I am willing to cut them a bit of slack on that given what I imagine their current development environment is like.
Fair point but I already bought the subscription for PDF Expert earlier this year which I technically didn’t need on the same premise. At least that was a feature-complete product, not a usability mess with features taken away like the new Spark for Mac.
From Spark’s blog, February 2020:
For services like Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo, we store an application-specific token. This means that we don’t have your actual password. You can revoke this access token at any moment from your email account on the web. For example, if you’re a Gmail user, you can do it here. For services like AOL, Exchange and custom IMAP accounts, this access token is your email login and password. You can also create an app-specific password to connect your account to Spark (for example, it’s a must for iCloud accounts).
If you’re using a standard IMAP setup, your email username/password are stored on their servers. Which:
To make everything as safe as possible, we don’t use our own servers. Instead, we rely on Google Cloud service, one of the most secure solutions available in the industry. Leading tech companies like PayPal, Twitter, and Atlassian also use Google Cloud to process user data. Our cloud infrastructure is hosted by Google in the US, which is fully SOC-2 and ISO 27001 certified. Google Cloud service meets the requirements of Standard Contractual Clauses. This is a mechanism (after invalidating the US-EU Privacy Shield framework) for the lawful transfer of personal data from the European Union to countries outside of the EU under the EU GDPR. Thus Google Cloud meets the GDPR standards for the transfer of personal data outside of the EU.
