As a long time Gmail user (its iOS/iPadOS apps), who also has three other email accounts from different providers, including iCloud Mail, I thought it would be great to gather them all under Apple Mail’s umbrella, eventually shifting from Gmail to iCloud if all worked well. Except that it did not…
I have added a total of four email accounts to Apple Mail, one of them from Gmail, another from iCloud and two from the same smaller Swiss provider.
Three major issues that made drop Apple Mail after two weeks of testing:
1) Delayed incoming messages notifications - an incoming message always pops in first in Gmail app and then in Apple Mail with a delay that can go up to 15 minutes in the worst case, as I set Apple Mail to fetch messages every 15 minutes, the shortest possible time period offered. As I have learnt, this happens because Apple wants to save our devices batteries, so does not use more energy-demanding IDLE email fetching system. A good reason, I agree, yet Gmail iOS app uses the same (or less!) battery power on my iPhone according to the battery stats and on an iPad, with much bigger battery, it is a no brainer.
Ok, I told myself, I am not in a particular rush and when I am (receiving confirmation codes, etc,), I can just manually check for messages and AM will pull them through. Then came a hotspot issue…
2) So there I was, tethering my iPad to my iPhone at work as I had done for the last 10 years or so, with a pretty solid 4G connection. I open Apple Mail, go to drafts and try to add a freshly created PDF to one of the messages and… nothing happens. In fact, the whole “write a message” icon is grayed out and I cannot do anything. So I quite Apple Mail, reopen it, the “write/compose” message turns back on. I go “hey, it’s working, must have been a small glitch!”, but then when I go back to the Drafts folders the same thing happens, it goes offline! So I cannot actually use it properly while tethered, which is two days a week.
3) The last straw was Apple Mail’s half-implemented dark mode support within messages. For some reason, if the message was pre-formatted, like any modern newsletter, with a white theme, AM is unable to render it dark, so you get the whole thing flashing right in your face when it is dark. Open the same message in Gmail app, and the very same message is rendered nicely.
I will be trying Apple Mail again in iOS 19, I guess, but for now it is trailing well behind Gmail or other third party apps, like Spark, which is a real pity, IMO.
Update: the Hotspot issue was fixed by selecting “Improve compatibility” in the hotspot settings of the iPhone, so just the two elements remaining now.
I have added a total of four email accounts to Apple Mail, one of them from Gmail, another from iCloud and two from the same smaller Swiss provider.
Three major issues that made drop Apple Mail after two weeks of testing:
1) Delayed incoming messages notifications - an incoming message always pops in first in Gmail app and then in Apple Mail with a delay that can go up to 15 minutes in the worst case, as I set Apple Mail to fetch messages every 15 minutes, the shortest possible time period offered. As I have learnt, this happens because Apple wants to save our devices batteries, so does not use more energy-demanding IDLE email fetching system. A good reason, I agree, yet Gmail iOS app uses the same (or less!) battery power on my iPhone according to the battery stats and on an iPad, with much bigger battery, it is a no brainer.
Ok, I told myself, I am not in a particular rush and when I am (receiving confirmation codes, etc,), I can just manually check for messages and AM will pull them through. Then came a hotspot issue…
2) So there I was, tethering my iPad to my iPhone at work as I had done for the last 10 years or so, with a pretty solid 4G connection. I open Apple Mail, go to drafts and try to add a freshly created PDF to one of the messages and… nothing happens. In fact, the whole “write a message” icon is grayed out and I cannot do anything. So I quite Apple Mail, reopen it, the “write/compose” message turns back on. I go “hey, it’s working, must have been a small glitch!”, but then when I go back to the Drafts folders the same thing happens, it goes offline! So I cannot actually use it properly while tethered, which is two days a week.
3) The last straw was Apple Mail’s half-implemented dark mode support within messages. For some reason, if the message was pre-formatted, like any modern newsletter, with a white theme, AM is unable to render it dark, so you get the whole thing flashing right in your face when it is dark. Open the same message in Gmail app, and the very same message is rendered nicely.
I will be trying Apple Mail again in iOS 19, I guess, but for now it is trailing well behind Gmail or other third party apps, like Spark, which is a real pity, IMO.
Update: the Hotspot issue was fixed by selecting “Improve compatibility” in the hotspot settings of the iPhone, so just the two elements remaining now.
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