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Comment by yanw | Hacker News Reader

The thing I like most about the iOS Gmail app is that it’s an elegant solution, they packaged the excellent webapp (the soon to be released redesign) and endowed it with native notification capability. It’s a cost-effective solution and one that makes sense, packaging webapps and augmenting them with native capabilities, voice control in the case of the search app. Now my question is when will we see the new Google design on the desktop?

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Web-app repackaging instead of a tailored native app seems mostly of benefit to the developer rather than users. I don't especially care how easy a time developers of apps I use had.

Reminds me a bit of the "console port" phenomenon that ruffles PC gamers sitting with their gleaming machines.

Even when the webapp is great? I don't see why they or anyone else should maintain several versions of the same app, focusing on one version and iterating quickly is surly to everyone's benefit.

Some desktop app developers don't see why they should maintain several versions of their app, put out a single Java GUI across platforms, and get shunned for it. (Granted, web look and feel on mobile likely won't be that bad).

I think this issue boils down to perceived ROI on development costs (and 'push web technologies' agenda in Google's case) rather than quality.

The web app is fine, but there's definitely room for improvement in a native app. This thing offers me nothing that I can't get by using the web app for most stuff, and using Mail.app for notifications. Which is what I've been doing for a year, and will continue to do.

I wouldn't describe the webapp as great. Since it attempts to emulate aspects of UIKit it suffers greatly from the uncanny valley effect. The performance and feel is poor compared to a native app.

I realise it's more convenient for Google, but I struggle to believe that's the primary concern when a company of their size develops an app for a platform with hundreds of millions of users.

To me it feels the app is intentionally crippled for some business reason. Perhaps it would be more difficut to target ads in a native app, or maybe they want to push people towards Android. As a user, I really don't care and it reflects poorly on them to produce a substandard experience for their users.

Roll on Sparrow for iOS.

The iOS Gmail app was a sore disappointment, for me. I desperately wanted it to support multiple accounts, and the fact that it doesn't is my deal-breaker.

Granted, I get it, I'm probably a fringe case. But still, I think that elegant solution or not doesn't matter when it doesn't do what I need it to do.

One of the advantages of repackaging webapps is that they can be quickly iterated upon and in any case that is the Google way: release early, iterate often. The app should gain the missing features soon enough.

That's the argument that one of my fellow writers made, as well, when he felt I was overly-critical of the app. Here's the problem, for me - I didn't use it on day 1. What are the chances of me installing it later, if I'm Joe User?

Honest question there. I really don't know the statistics about that, other than to say that I'd guess the chances are lower after a poor first impression.

The app wasn't meant to attract new users but mainly to support existing ones, so it's an option that is "good to have" rather than the product itself. If a user or a company deploying Google Apps felt that they needed a native option then it's available, and for Google it won't cost much to maintain because they are already investing in the webapp.

I don't see why it is necessary for the desktop. Gmail web app already supports notifications and file attachment drag-and-drop (if you use Chrome). And on desktop, you have much more resource and don't need to worry about closing the gmail tab to release resources.

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