coldfusion1970saidthis

I find this app excellent for switching between my Gmail accounts.
It also means that i dont have to tie-up a Safari window/tab to have access to Gmail.
I will buy it if its really cheap.

I really enjoy the custom CSS feature. Allowed me to hide the "WebClips" at the top, as well as the "Sponsored Ads" on the right side of emails. Also, I used the CSS from a Greasemonkey script that alters the theme for a cleaner looking Gmail.

cbserra: You can simply turn off WebClips in the Settings. And concerning the Ads - Camino/Firefox does also block them.

It is nice to have the unread count in the icon and to be able to switch accounts so fast - but for me, that was it already. Since it uses WebKit, there is no chat and no quick contacts. Limits me too much, I still prefer keeping Gmail open in a tab in Camino. More features, the single loss is the ability to drop pictures. Nevertheless, I like the idea, keep it going!

I love this app. It's super fast.
The only problem is that the full version won't be free...

I absolutely love this app.

At first I didn't "get" the point of this app...until I got a beta invite and started to use it. It's incredibly fast, much faster than either Mail.app or Gmail in a browser - for me, the killer feature has to be double-clicking to switch between accounts; fast, and seamless. If you're a heavy-duty Gmail user, this is the app for you; if you don't use it for much beyond sending/recieving mail, I recommend Gmail Browser: http://willmore.eu/gmailbrowser/

I would like someone to spread some light on bradbeattie's question down earlier. I wonder the same.

"Maybe I'm missing the point here, but why not just use Mail.app with GMail through POP3?"

Mail is good for conventional email use, but if you want to use GMail as a webmail and take advantage of all its features (labels, archives, search...) from anywhere, you shouldn't use POP3. Mailplane allows to use GMail as a webmail (so the messages stay available online) through an independant software (with buttons, Growl and dock notifications, no need to launch a web browser...)

The pricing has been announced: $25 for a single user with a family license for $8 more.

That price is ridiculously expensive for what this app does. I was interested before, but at that price I'm not. I think $10 would have been more reasonable.

I think the app has its niche, but for $25, it is horrendously overpriced. Let's face it, Google does all the work and offers Gmail for free, MailPlane adds a few little features and puts Gmail into a window and offers it up for $25.

No talk of what happens if any of the functionality is broken by Gmail updates (there are rumblings of a major update, including offline access, coming up).

Echoing the statement that 25$ is simply way, way too much. I was interested in it during the beta phase, but what it offers isn't worth 25$ when I can just use Gmail's web view for free.

5$, probably even 10$, would have been the sweet spot for me. Nice app, not so nice price.

Someone posted this for another piece of software with a controversial pricetag on iusethis, and I think it bears repeating here:

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/168/the-price-is-wrong

And also: http://daringfireball.net/2006/11/pinprick

@rampancy, the thing is though that in this case Mailplane isn't really doing much. Apple and Google are the ones doing the lion's share of the hard work here. This a rather simple app. I'm sure it's easier to lower a price that's too high than to raise a price that's too low, though (iPhone not withstanding).

@ macskeeball:

You could just make that argument for OS X and the Finder: after all, it's just a file browser - why not use Linux, since it's free? It's the Unix-derived underpinnings beneath the fancy UI that's doing all of the hard work anyway.

@rampancy: No, because Apple still does an extremely significant amount of hard work with OS X on top of the Unix layer. Mailplane does a handful things on top of using the WebKit framework to show a web page, but nothing that is really very significant.

If you think the price is worth it, pay it and use the app in all good health. If you think it's too much, don't pay it and don't use it in good health. But bickering about it is of little use.

If you don't feel like paying $25, get a better Gmail using this GreaseMonkey script:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4866

Forget wasting $25, get IMAP for Gmail and use it in Mail
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=75725

Nice App and I was considering buying it for my girlfriend. But with Gmail's IMAP support I willl spend the money on drinks and set her up Apple Mail.

It is a great application for people with many active gmail accounts, however if you only have the one account then, as suggested, IMAP your gmail and save your money.