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Sparrow for iPhone

sparrowmailapp.com

31–40 of 103 posts

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#32
I wonder if they have plans to turn this into a universal app or if we will have to purchase another version for the iPad (not that I'm complaining about paying for a valuable product).

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#33

I have several (breaking) issues with the paid desktop version of the Sparrow.app. I've posted the most bothersome one on their support forums about two weeks ago: no reply at all. Nothing. As a company that does epic UI, they should figure out that customer support is a form of user interface as well. I'm not ready to give them any more money at this point.

Same thing happened to me. To be fair though, I had issues with the app around a year ago and they promptly answered. It seems like they are a bit swamped with support issues now.

"swamped ... now" might be an understatement. From the looks of their support page (https://sparrowmail.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions) - the last reply actually made by sparrow support was on December 8.

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#34
post #4
post #3

I can't get into my head why Google, with so many resources, can't a least do something like Sparrow for iOS.

To take the cynical standpoint, it's hardly in their best interests to make a first-class app for a competing platform.

Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but the gmail mobile web app is actually pretty great.

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google has an OAuth extension to IMAP for gmail https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/oauth_overvi...

That doesn't really solve the security concerns as their servers would still need to be authorized to read all of your email on your behalf. If that database was unknowingly compromised there could be a lot of fallout. I think that's a much bigger concern than leaking passwords.

Yeah: what we really want is a way to strictly limit Sparrow's permissions, so they can only see new mail as it is passed in, and maybe only just enough for something like push. However, that's really on Google's end to implement, and I'm not sure just how much interest they have in third party Gmail-specific mail clients.

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#36

I'm becoming very irritated with Apple's behavior in the app store. While it's nothing new, I hate that they're restricting apps that compete with native apps. Sparrow? No push notifications for you. Dolphin? Here's an NC17 rating (wtf?) for you, and by the way-- no way to change the default browser. I'd really like to see a reasonable explanation for both of these scenarios by Apple. My guess is the only reasonable…

I tried to explain it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3707183

More condensed, it's a combination of Apple not wanting each app re-implementing push (or constant polling), Sparrow not willing to take on the responsibility of being able to access your email, and Google not providing low-privileges access for Sparrow to only be able to see the little amount of data that push needs.

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to me. To be fair though, I had issues with the app around a year ago and they promptly answered. It seems like they are a bit swamped with support issues now.

"swamped ... now" might be an understatement. From the looks of their support page ( https://sparrowmail.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions ) - the last reply actually made by sparrow support was on December 8.

Their support forum is kinda weird. Every time I add a question it ends up as private. I assume that is why there is a lack of public activity there.

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#38

I've been a beta tester of their iPhone app for over a month now, and while the UI is stellar, I still haven't found it to be a replacement for Apple's Mail app because of Sparrow's lack of push.

I've been a beta tester for the last month or so as well and I can definitely say this has replaced Mail.app for me. I feel relieved not seeing the red notification bubble growing. It's been freeing and I've got a much better way of managing my emails now. I hope Apple comes around on notifications though so this app will be even more popular(already broken the top 25 paid apps here in Canada.)

You easily remove that red dot badge, for all the apps you want – in Notification Center.

Re: Sparrow for iPhone

#40

I have several (breaking) issues with the paid desktop version of the Sparrow.app. I've posted the most bothersome one on their support forums about two weeks ago: no reply at all. Nothing. As a company that does epic UI, they should figure out that customer support is a form of user interface as well. I'm not ready to give them any more money at this point.

Same thing happened to me. To be fair though, I had issues with the app around a year ago and they promptly answered. It seems like they are a bit swamped with support issues now.

I can say from my experience so far with Buffer, that it is easy for this to get very hard to keep up with. Seems like they had similar great intentions like us to be amazing at support as well as build a fantastic product. We had a period where our support response time lagged as we reached a certain scale. We've since hired a freelancer for a few hours a day to help us and that's really transformed things to the point where we're better at support than we've ever been, and at the same time we can focus on what each of us in the rest of the team is good at. Whilst the freelancer does a lot, we dip into support every so often and have things assigned to us, so we're always in contact and understand customer problems, which I think is very important.

We used UserVoice for a while and were responsive, then as we scaled we found it hard to keep up with, and ended up good at our email channel but bad at our UserVoice channel. Since then we've improved again and are generally good at all channels. With this experience in mind, I'd suggest reaching out through multiple channels if you want to get through to them. Try email and Twitter as well as the obvious channel.

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