@gmail.com to @me.com - anyone making the switch?

[Prototypical]

My primary email address has been @gmail.com for years now. Initially it was fantastic, but as Google grew, so did the invasion of advertisements, links to everything on the Internet, etc. I've never been fond of the stacked email format either (I live in Outlook all day, every day at work) and the brand new Google+ish format didn't help. I also had my account hacked on two separate occasions with emails sent to EVERYONE I ever had email correspondence to... The only solution was to go to 2-step verification. Such a pain.

Since picking up a 4S I have forwarded my Gmail account to my new @me.com account and used either my phone or the web interface. I had forgotten what clean, pure, EMAIL was all about. No ads, no unnecessary functionality or garbage, just EMAIL. I'm sold. I'm also hoping @me.com is a little less prone to hackers as well.

Anyone else making the move?

 

[AlanShutko]

I currently use a gmail account, an iCloud account, and a personally hosted account on my Mac OS X Server. I never use the web interface for any of them, so they've always acted very similarly on either the desktop or phone. It's all just imap.

Currently, only my wife really uses the me.com account, so I have push email turned on there, and manual fetch for the others. So only my wife's email makes the phone go beep.

 

[PlaceofDis]

i haven't tried the new iCloud email since i'm waiting to see how it pans out. the MobileMe email was horrible and i really would rather use Gmail since it is at least dependable in comparison.

so i guess i'm playing the "wait and see" game at this point.

 

[James Godfrey]

I have made the switch from hotmail, and I am glad apart from one huge problem.... cant get my Apple ID as my @me.com email address - REALLY ANNOYING!!!! and apple support dont seem to have any clue on this matter either.

 

[Mal]

Where's the poll option for both? I use both, and have several other accounts as well on a variety of services. They're all used for different purposes, though I check them all in Mail on my MacBook and on my iPod (only my Gmail accounts go to my phone so I don't get bothered by less important stuff there).

jW

 

[MadGoat]

I use both. My gmail is for junk like account signups and crap like that and my mac.com email is for professional, consulting, family and anything that requires something that's not as amateurish as gmail.com which gets forwarded to my mac.com email and rules filter them accordingly.

 

[pancakedrawer]

I use both. My gmail is for junk like account signups and crap like that and my mac.com email is for professional, consulting, family and anything that requires something that's not as amateurish as gmail.com which gets forwarded to my mac.com email and rules filter them accordingly.

You should create an alias within your @me account to do the same thing as your gmail. I have a couple that go from email@me.com, email1@me.com, email2@me.com etc. depending on the degree of doginess of the site. Great thing about aliases is that if you can delete them easily without hassle.

In regards to the original topic, I've switched to @me because I know it's going to be easier with my apple ecosystem eventually but it doesn't push as well as the gmail did and I prefer the web version of gmail...

 

[MacManTexas56]

i've been using gmail since it 1st started back in like 2004ish. i decided to give MobileMe a try and liked it for the short email address. ever since moving to iCloud it's pretty awful and not reliable. Switched back to gmail and won't ever leave. It's steps ahead of iCloud.

 

[S.B.G]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4S: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I've been with GMail since it was first a beta service. I won't switch to anything else. I do have an @mac.com address but it's not primary.

Your account being hacked isn't Googles fault, but yours. You must have a strong password that can't be broken by a brute force dictionary attack.

 

[0dev]

I've had GMail since it was beta, loved it ever since. The web UI and its features are brilliant, the e-mail service itself is generally reliable, and the security is excellent (two step verification is the ******!)

I have an iCloud e-mail (just out of curiosity), and the UI looks cool, but it's lacking in actual functionality severely. E-mails seemed to take 10 minutes to come through last time I used it. Security is average.

I will certainly not be switching anytime soon!

 

[richard13]

I use both... reluctantly. I had @gmail.com for a lot longer and am slowly but surely moving away from it. I absolutely *hate* their tagging system which makes it to hard to understand *where* my e-mails actually are and when I've actually deleted something. Except, of course, when I really need something back, then it's lost forever.

I've had my @me.com account for about two years now and I prefer it, hands down! No confusion, no ads, no "your account has been hacked by someone in China", no invasion of my privacy, etc. like Gmail. Also, people seem to really get a kick out of me saying "at me.com". Like the address is truly meant for me. I know this is just a happy coincidence but it's cool nonetheless.

 

[Menel]

Bluehost hosted personal domain email, using MobileMe account to receive and send email using personal domain address.

Apple ended that ability with transition to iCloud.

So I went full bore gmail free/Standard Google Apps account for my personal domain email.

MobileMe\iCloud user pushed away to gmail by Apple with iOS5/iCloud upgrade.

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I use both. My gmail is for junk like account signups and crap like that and my mac.com email is for professional, consulting, family and anything that requires something that's not as amateurish as gmail.com which gets forwarded to my mac.com email and rules filter them accordingly.

Free/Standard Google Apps account and a mere $10/yr domain registration from GoDaddy/Bluehost/other etc. Service provider independent. I've moved my email from being registered/hosted at Bluehost to GoDaddy to Google Apps. Easy to transfer.

Personal/custom simple professional looking domain name.
Upto 10 accounts free, 7+GB each.
*@custom.com catch all to your main for any random signups you want to do.
Incredible spam filtering.
Great UI.
mobile push.
Calendar, Docs, Google Talk sharing within 'company' (family). Great for maintenance records and such that Dad and I track. And creating a few network maps at our different homes to help him out, other such things.

It's really quite incredible.

 

[r0k]

I've had a .me account for some years now. I never give it out. I have my own domain so if I change email providers, I'm not sending out dozens of "new email" notices. For now my domain is forwarded to iCloud and then to gmail which serves as a "search repository" so I can find stuff from years gone by. I have my iphone set to check both accounts because if I reply to the icloud copy of a message, it insists on making my return address a .me address which I refuse to give out.

I like iCloud better because Apple will talk to me on the phone if I ever have a problem and one of these days I might let my personal domain expire and just use .me. I lost access to gmail a couple of times over the years and I was horrified to find out google insists on handling everything with bots. I had to try to convince a bot that I was me. Finally after waiting the mandatory 72 hours for the account ban to expire, I got access to my account again using the very same password gmail had claimed was not valid. I never saw so many captchas in my life. Every screen had its own captcha because gmail simply assumed I was a bot and was trying to drive me off. Trying to drive me away from what was at the time my only copy of my email. Not something I ever want to deal with again. Gmail will never again be my primary email and I have everything backed up.