Gmail or Mail.app? Both winners
Elliot at Home by Six has written an excellent review 
of the various strengths and weaknesses of Mail.app compared to Gmail.
He scores them both in categories of spam filtering, ease of use, interface, access, import/export features, power potential, stability, security, integration and more.
In the end he decides that it’s a draw. Both are winners:
Tags: Apple Mail, email, GMAIL, Google, mail.app, reviewMy final solution, and one I plan to continue using for the next year or so, incorporates all the best parts of both programs. I love the Gmail junk filtering and “never delete” concept, but I also love the tangible feel, customizability, and snappy interface of Mail.app.
Now, all of my email addresses forward to my Gmail account, so they can be spam-filtered and archived. Then I use Mail.app to check my Gmail account via POP. This way, I don’t have to keep Mail.app open all the time, because the Gmail Notifier lights up when I’ve got something new. I also have the benefit of being able to use multiple hierarchical mailboxes, while still maintaining Gmail’s flat storage as a backup. Score!
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April 24th, 2006 at 12:54 am
The big downside to POPping your GMail account is that it’s even more difficult to POP GMail from multiple computers. (I suppose this isn’t a downside if you’re always at the same computer)
On a normal POP3 server, each client on each computer can “leave messages on server” and keep track of the last message it downloaded. However, regardless of what your settings are, GMail acts like you’ve deleted messages from the server until you login to the web client and reset your message counter via your personal settings. (it never “deletes” messages from the server, but on the server it keeps track of the last message ANY client has downloaded)
I think this too can be filed under, “Annoying things GMail does to keep people logging into the web interface.” (on the other hand, it is nice that GMail automatically POPs the messages you’ve sent via the web interface (and does not POP the messages you’ve sent through smtp.gmail.com); this lets you even keep track of your sent mail)
April 24th, 2006 at 5:47 am
This is the solution I chose as well. Even better is that I added a rule in Mail that will take messages that I compose and send through Gmail and automatically move them into my “Sent” mailbox inside mail.app.
Mail needs to improve the accuracy of its search engine — Google is far superior to Spotlight.
April 24th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
I agree that they both have their purpose. But instead of having mail forwarded, I just have gmail host my domain email. Then use pop3 to check it in mail. Seems a better way.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
dave: I think the reason why people are forwarding their mail isn’t because they aren’t able to have GMail do it all. The forwarding allows them to leverage good aspects of both GMail and, for example, hierarchial IMAP mailboxes elsewhere.
Additionally, POP3 only works well in GMail if you plan on POPping your mail only from one program on one computer. There’s very little flexibility there.
Additionally, as it’s been mentioned, GMail is not the be all and end all of spam filters. Forwarding mail to GMail after it’s been filtered by a more reliable spam filtering service may be a better solution for some people. That way GMail allows for a nice way to do searching and archiving of old legitimate e-mail. However, they can still have all the flexibility of a private IMAP/POP3 provider.
And on top of all of this, there are reasons to approach all Google ventures with a little bit of hesitation. Google has given a lot to people for what appears to be very little cost; however, it provides little flexibility and has the sheer size where it could squash alternatives that do have much more flexibility. It doesn’t seem too extreme to suggest that GMail could effectively deprecate POP3 (and thus Apple Mail) when Google becomes the Microsoft of the web.
April 25th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Thanks for the mention, I’m a big fan of Hawk Wings! Glad you found my review useful.