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Sparrow acquired by Google

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Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#131

Post by msmithstubbs »

jcurbo wrote: post #77

First Thunderbird then this, what's a native-email-app user to do? I wonder what ever happened to that Letters email app for OS X that people were wanting to build? There was a flurry of activity and complaints about Mail.app and then nothing.

There is some code for Letters.app is on GitHub, but I don't think it got very far and the last commit was two years ago.

https://github.com/ccgus/letters

I remember thinking at the time it sounded quite interesting, so it's a shame.

I'm guessing the need for it evaporated with the improvements in Mail.app and the development of other native clients.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#132

Post by pwenzel »

kyleslattery wrote: post #35

The email Sparrow is sending out, looks like there won't be any future feature additions: Hello, We're excited to let you know that Sparrow has been acquired by Google! You can view our public announcement here, but I wanted to reach out directly to make sure you were aware of the news. We will continue to make available our existing products, and we will provide support and critical updates to our users. However, as…

This is extremely sad. I use Sparrow all day, every single day.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#133

Post by guelo »

tvon wrote: post #123
wyclif wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but Gmail isn't a crappy app in my way of thinking. It was the best webmail in 2004, and it still is. You may not like it, but that doesn't extrapolate to crappiness. Although I'm sorry that Sparrow is being end-of-lifed, Gmail is a best of breed web app. well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail. Sounds like a feature to me, not a bug. Desktop software is going out. Wh…

When I say "crappy app" I'm talking about the iOS gmail app.

I believe that's Apple's app, not Google's.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#134

Post by SeoxyS »

Sparrow and Tweetie's acquisition are kind of a slap in the face of the argument for making paid and self-sustaining products that don't rely on a exit event to be in the black. Both were widely-successful paid products, and yet they both managed to get acquired by a mega-company that manages to destroy the product.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#136

Post by wyclif »

tvon wrote: post #123
wyclif wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but Gmail isn't a crappy app in my way of thinking. It was the best webmail in 2004, and it still is. You may not like it, but that doesn't extrapolate to crappiness. Although I'm sorry that Sparrow is being end-of-lifed, Gmail is a best of breed web app. well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail. Sounds like a feature to me, not a bug. Desktop software is going out. Wh…

When I say "crappy app" I'm talking about the iOS gmail app.

Got it. I concede your point, but I still think it's a bit too early to issue a death certificate.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#137

Post by Aykroyd »

From their message "We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google."

I wonder if that means that they're going to work on plus. What else would Google think of as a bigger vision for how people communicate?

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#138

Post by LVB »

ceejayoz wrote: post #72

Sparrow had a $4.99 (half-off) sale last weekend ( https://twitter.com/lifehacker/statuses/223750237490126849 ). Borders on fraud, if you ask me - scamming people into buying what they had to have known by then they were planning on turning into abandonware a week later.

Fraud? Scam? In any case, I suspect the victims could successfully get a refund from Apple.

I also suspect that the people who bought it are going to decide that the app is great, the Sparrow statement about "we will provide support and critical updates to our users" is at least something, and giving up the app for $5 is not worth it.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#139

Post by rogerchucker »

minikites wrote: post #99
rogerchucker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this romanticism that a company should always be built for sustainment. A small company has only two ways of being successful - either disrupt and be radically different or fill in a piece of the puzzle that a bigger company has not achieved. If you look at the nature of the product the Sparrow team developed - an iOS/Mac client - it wasn't radical. So being gobbled up by an appropriate bigger company…

It's important for software like a mail client to be platform-neutral. What if Facebook bought Camera+ and only let you export photos to Facebook?

Camera and mail apps don't need to be platform-neutral simply because the content and output of those apps are platform-neutral themselves. Mail apps push and pull apps from servers which can be accessed from other outlets/apps. As for camera apps, as long as they are saving a local copy (like Camera roll), other apps will still be able to access those photos. So yes, convenient form of sharing like direct export-from-app may be lost but the real output would still be platform-neutral.

Re: Sparrow acquired by Google

#140

Post by MediaSquirrel »

wyclif wrote: post #116
tvon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good app has been EOL'd so the developer(s) can go work on a known crappy app. We've gone from "known good" to "hopefully this will work out and the gmail iOS app will be good"... how is that not frustrating if you're a fan of the iOS apps? As for the Sparrow desktop app, well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail...

Sorry, but Gmail isn't a crappy app in my way of thinking. It was the best webmail in 2004, and it still is. You may not like it, but that doesn't extrapolate to crappiness. Although I'm sorry that Sparrow is being end-of-lifed, Gmail is a best of breed web app. well, obviously Google isn't going to be developing a native desktop app for Gmail. Sounds like a feature to me, not a bug. Desktop software is going out. Wh…

Desktop software is not going out. See Dropbox. It syncs desktop AND cloud. Does not require constant connectivity. Sparrow enables offline usage of cloud services like gmail, which is huge, as connectivity to the cloud is not a constant.
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