Making the switch to GMail

Replacing Apple Mail with GMail

For ages i've been wishing i could use my Google Apps account as my primary email without having to step outside their interface at all. Well, i've made the switch.

Why did I wait so long?

GMail is a far better way to organise email and helps me keep my inbox zeroed :) So why have a had a Google Apps account for like 2 years and not switched to JUST the web interface?

Dependancy on my Browser

I work as a web developer alot. I often break my web browser.. it hangs because of bad JS code, or I forget and have like 7 million tabs open - whatever. The problem is, if i have my mail in ONE of those tabs and the browser crashes.. my mail goes away.. annoying (not a deal breaker.. but irritating).

Notifications

I like the Apple Mail dock badges that tell me how much unread mail i have - mostly so I can happily tell myself I've got everything under control (since the count badge is almost never there :) ).

Also, i like having growl notifications for my mail, and again this isn't possible with a web browser instance.

The Interface

The UI for GMail has always been impressively functional, however not really that pretty (in fact - until recently it was ugly as sin). However a few months back Google rolled out themes for Gmail, and a few months later than that the update finally got pushed through to Google Apps accounts (including mine) - so now the Gmail interface isn't ugly anymore.

Offline Mail Access

Well, we all know that Google Gears has been around for a while. Well you can now ...