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Comment by steezeburger | Hacker News Reader

Do most Apple users not just use the Gmail apps and web app? I haven't set up an email client in 20 years

I don’t know what most do, but I certainly prefer the default Mail.app over the vendor-specific mail apps.

If you’re already using one of the major providers (GMail, Outlook365, etc.), there isn’t much to configure; you go to Mail Accounts, click your provider like Google or Microsoft, and login on their website to authenticate.

Oh for sure. Huge assumption on my part. I just feel like 90% of people I work and interact with have a gmail account, and the last 5 companies I've worked at used gmail. I think the last time I setup Apple Mail was for my Grandma so she could see her old Cox account emails and Gmail emails in the same app.

The default Mail app still doesn’t support push Gmail, does it? That’s the only thing keeping me from using it. I otherwise strongly prefer Mail.app.

That’s Google’s choice, not Apple’s lack of support.

Source? I thought Apple gated XAPPLEPUSHSERVICE so 3rd party accounts on the mail.app fallback to fetch/poll.

Push works with Yahoo and Exchange. Google used to allow it, but stopped (apparently in 2013): https://www.engadget.com/2013-03-26-gmail-push-notification-...

Also with FastMail. (I don’t use them but they’re on the top of my list next time I decide to switch.)

https://www.fastmail.com/blog/push-email-now-available-in-io...

Mail does support it, but Google refuses to allow it. They used to, in the past.

Absolutely not. I see a huge number of iPhone users for in person tech support and most use the Apple Mail app. These are ordinary people who know nothing about pocket computers.

Thanks for your data for sure. I used to work in customer facing hardware support, but only have my friends and coworkers to go off of now.

Even many people familiar with pocket computers use the iOS Mail client. I was an email user over a decade before Gmail existed, and I used mutt for most of those years. I happily use the iOS email client because of the OS integration, clean UI, well-designed interactions, and decent support for wherever my email happens to live that year. I think mostly it’s because I’ve dicked around with computers enough in my life, and I’ve no interest in doing so with my phone, too.

I recently switched from android back to iOS and tried to use mail.app for everything, as I rather like it.

Unfortunately it doesn’t sync properly with Gmail. I am in the process of de-googling my life so that’s okay with me. I use mail.app with my fastmail account and it’s perfect.

> Do most Apple users not just use the Gmail apps and web app?

People here are discussing email apps, not Gmail apps.

Gmail apps only work with 1 provider (gmail), while email apps works with all email providers.

You can add other emails to the Gmail app actually

I think you can actually add other providers to Gmail, but my comment was about how most people I know only use Gmail, and they have no need to configure their os-of-choice's mail app. I guess that was kind of implied. Sorry if I was ambiguous!

I might be an anomaly. I've ran iPhones before and have an iCloud email address presumably, but have only ever used the Gmail app for email on my iOS devices. And on my other machines I just use the web app. This seems to be the same for most people I've worked with in the last 5 years or so. Obviously it's super anecdotal and just from observation.

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