Now that Gmail, including Apps, supports the Exchange sync protocol, the iPhone native email client allows a rather nice way of using Gmail. After a few days of really flaky performance when it was launched, and little filter surgery so that all my list traffic doesn't hit the iPhone inbox, I have a really slick almost-Blackberry experience going on. The Calendar and Contacts sync just works, and the email integration is very nicely implemented.
For example, the Gmail way of doing things is to put mail into the 'archive', not to delete stuff. This works especially well with paid-for Apps, where one gets 25GB of storage per user! So, the trash icon on the iPhone archives the mail. Actual deletion works differently. Sounds counter-intuitive, perhaps, but it's absolutely the right choice and it works really well.
That's something that happens a lot with Google applications. They may not always be the prettiest, but someone's really sweated details like that. It would have been trivial to make the trashcan delete stuff, and force users to (say) move to a special folder in order to archive. Instead, they chose to deviate from the canonical function and do the thing most likely to work properly with Gmail, risking the wrath of the legions of Apple UI fascists.
It's a bit arrogant to change the way the trashcan works, sure, but Google are still the industry's rockstars so to my mind that's the kind of thing they should be doing. When they stop doing 'fuck you' stuff like this, we'll know it's all over and start looking for the next big thing.
For example, the Gmail way of doing things is to put mail into the 'archive', not to delete stuff. This works especially well with paid-for Apps, where one gets 25GB of storage per user! So, the trash icon on the iPhone archives the mail. Actual deletion works differently. Sounds counter-intuitive, perhaps, but it's absolutely the right choice and it works really well.
That's something that happens a lot with Google applications. They may not always be the prettiest, but someone's really sweated details like that. It would have been trivial to make the trashcan delete stuff, and force users to (say) move to a special folder in order to archive. Instead, they chose to deviate from the canonical function and do the thing most likely to work properly with Gmail, risking the wrath of the legions of Apple UI fascists.
It's a bit arrogant to change the way the trashcan works, sure, but Google are still the industry's rockstars so to my mind that's the kind of thing they should be doing. When they stop doing 'fuck you' stuff like this, we'll know it's all over and start looking for the next big thing.
Leave a comment