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Glennster

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 30, 2014
417
69
Canada
I’ve been using Gmail for almost 10 yrs but I’m really tired of how annoying their online email function works, esp with the stupid advertising.
Is iCloud a better option?
 
Gmail is faster. The search is better. It is far, FAR more configurable. I especially like the "space density" option so I can have tons of content on the screen instead of whitespace. To me, the more email looks like Excel, the better. Also I don't like bright white light blasting into my face all day long, so I appreciate that it has a dark theme.

What I don't like about Gmail is its invasiveness. Some people will see this as a feature, but to me it is creepy that things in my email automatically end up in my calendars, maps, reminders, etc. Even if I did want this (I don't), it is problematic because my email address happens to be a word that is occasionally typed by random people accidentally when they are trying to enter their address. So I end up with all kinds of email from people all over the world, which is a problem. For example when someone buys an airline ticket and the email gets sent to me, it ends up on my calendar. Then I get reminders to catch their flight, with directions to drive thousands of miles to the airport they are leaving from, and the time I need to leave my home in order to make their flight.
 
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AM has is broken down pretty well, it's speed/features (Gmail) vs. [much] less invasiveness (iCloud).

We use Gmail, but it's a GSuite business account so we don't have any of the ads and whatnot.

You *could* always just setup a business account, I mean, it doesn't require any kind of validation, just your own domain. Get GlennsterIsAwesome.com registered with someone cheap and good like Hover, and for $5/month you can have a Gmail account, with something like 30GB of storage, plus tons of other services and whatnot (even if you don't use the whatnot, it's still pretty cost effective).
 
Gmail is faster. The search is better. It is far, FAR more configurable. I especially like the "space density" option so I can have tons of content on the screen instead of whitespace. To me, the more email looks like Excel, the better. Also I don't like bright white light blasting into my face all day long, so I appreciate that it has a dark theme.

What I don't like about Gmail is its invasiveness. Some people will see this as a feature, but to me it is creepy that things in my email automatically end up in my calendars, maps, reminders, etc. Even if I did want this (I don't), it is problematic because my email address happens to be a word that is occasionally typed by random people accidentally when they are trying to enter their address. So I end up with all kinds of email from people all over the world, which is a problem. For example when someone buys an airline ticket and the email gets sent to me, it ends up on my calendar. Then I get reminders to catch their flight, with directions to drive thousands of miles to the airport they are leaving from, and the time I need to leave my home in order to make their flight.
You should be able to opt out of/disable features like that: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/6084018
 
You are my hero. I've made the change.
Yeah, had to do that myself at one point too for my personal account (on the other hand another work account that I have thrives on that feature as I use it to have even and meeting invites forwarded to it and automatically get added to my calendar so that I can see what's going on and what's coming up without having to do anything essentially).
 
I use Apple Mail more for important stuff. It seems more reliable to me?
GMail I use for site registrations mostly because I find their spam protection second to none. I don't need advanced features like many others do.... just a bit of spam protection and reliability and I'm good to go.
 
FastMail is the best option for email with your own domain if you're in the Apple ecosystem. It works flawlessly across iOS/MacOS. It's incredibly fast as well. Webmail client is sleek and the antithesis of bloated. Also nice to know they're not mining your data like Google does.
 
FastMail is the best option for email with your own domain if you're in the Apple ecosystem.

Very true. And also true if you don't own your own domain.

FastMail has dozens of their own domain extensions you can use to select your email addresses from (not just @FastMail.com). You will likely find several that are short and incorporate your personal or business name. I have probably a dozen aliases in addition to my main account ID, all of which are short, meaningful and easy to remember. No additional charge for this.
 
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I use three G-mail accounts. One for my general email, one for registering on sites that I know will bombard me with junk mail and one for stuff I put on Craigs list. Works great for me, and their system stops so much of the spam!
 
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I’ve been using Gmail for almost 10 yrs but I’m really tired of how annoying their online email function works, esp with the stupid advertising.
Is iCloud a better option?

I’ve closed down all my gmails and have been migrating everything over to iCloud. If you use a lot of google products then your choice is obvious, but if you’re concerned about privacy, as I am, go with iCloud. Plus iCloud gives you push email while gmail doesn’t.
 
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I’ve closed down all my gmails and have been migrating everything over to iCloud. If you use a lot of google products then your choice is obvious, but if you’re concerned about privacy, as I am, go with iCloud. Plus iCloud gives you push email while gmail doesn’t.
I know this sounds like a silly question but with iCloud email how do you sign on to your email when not using an apple device? you can't sign on using gmail can you? you only view your emails using the 'mail' program on IOS devices?
 
I know this sounds like a silly question but with iCloud email how do you sign on to your email when not using an apple device? you can't sign on using gmail can you? you only view your emails using the 'mail' program on IOS devices?
You should be able to access it using a browser at www.icloud.com or using another mail client either on iOS or basically any OS -- basically pretty similar to how most other online email services (like Gmail or Outlook, for example) work.
 
You should be able to access it using a browser at www.icloud.com or using another mail client either on iOS or basically any OS -- basically pretty similar to how most other online email services (like Gmail or Outlook, for example) work.
Ok
Just say your on a windows computer and you want to view your iCloud email account.....you go on to www.icloud.com?
Because with gmail and outlook you just go on their dedicated websites....so I guess my question is iCloud email's dedicated website to view emails/reply etc is iCloud.com?
 
Ok
Just say your on a windows computer and you want to view your iCloud email account.....you go on to www.icloud.com?
Because with gmail and outlook you just go on their dedicated websites....so I guess my question is iCloud email's dedicated website to view emails/reply etc is iCloud.com?
That's correct.
 
Ok
Just say your on a windows computer and you want to view your iCloud email account.....you go on to www.icloud.com?
Because with gmail and outlook you just go on their dedicated websites....so I guess my question is iCloud email's dedicated website to view emails/reply etc is iCloud.com?

Correct but iCloud online is a joke - it’s extremely slow and while I have only used the mail and calendar iCloud online they both feel so archaic and very limited.
 
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Correct but iCloud online is a joke - it’s extremely slow and while I have only used the mail and calendar iCloud online they both feel so archaic and very limited.
Weird, I haven't had that experience. I use gmail as my primary now because of the filtering and custom domain name, but since I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem, I'd probably jump ship if Apple gets their email filtering act together.

Also, with Google apps I was able to write and schedule a script to automatically delete old email from my "deal" email subscriptions. Newsletters with "deals" get dumped in a Subscriptions folder, and the script deletes the ones more than thirty days old.It runs on Google's server's not on my computers.

With Apple email , I'd need to write the same script but also leave a computer on running Apple Mail for the script to work. :(
 
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