Gmail done right?
So I got Mailplane.app exactly 30 days ago. (I know because my trial expires today) I’ve been using it and I love the approach of putting GMail in it’s own app, but I’ve found I’m really not using any of Mailplane’s built-in features except for multiple accounts. That was the main reason I downloaded it. So time to bash.
Useless-ness
I love toolbars as much as the next guy, but I found myself never…ever…using it in Mailplane. GMail is meant to be as standalone as possible, so every function is already there. I found this was a pointless addition.
Bugs
Don’t know why but sometimes the window would gray out like this. Not too much of a problem but annoying. It eventually goes away randomly.
GMail added support for dragging files into the window, to attach, a few months ago. It works great in Chrome (see below).
This is how it should look but Mailplane seems to be getting in the way.
I can’t put a picture of my chat window (for obvious reasons) but, if I rearrange the Chat box below the Quick Links, it goes back to being Chat on top in Mailplane but in Chrome it works fine.
Not a bug so much as an annoyance but if we’re wrapping GMail, let’s give the facade that it’s native at least. I hate the loading bar in my browser as much as in a separate app. I don’t care if you fake the loading with an old image or keep it cached so aggressively that the user never see’s it, but it shouldn’t ever be visible.
Price
$24.95 is fairly steep. This, I think would’ve been a fair price when Mailplane originally came out. (~2007) It added a lot of missing features and optimized GMail which at the time wasn’t as full featured as it is today. But now, it really is too much IMHO.
My take
Let’s say I was going to make a “mailplane.” What would I add. The obvious features that everyone under the sun needs, multiple accounts, and dock icon unread indicators and Growl notifications. But what can we do to extend GMail, we’re working with the app here, not just an extension sandbox so their is a lot of room to play with. Extensions like Better GMail, and it’s unofficial Chrome Port don’t get to do whatever they want. They have restrictions, we don’t. :D
