Which do you guys prefer? I've been using Gmail for the past few years since there was no free solution. Now that I've got a free iCloud email address should I use it or should I just keep doing what I'm doing? I'm a Sparrow user because it was a no brainer for Gmail so that might be a factor as well.
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iCloud email or Gmail
- Thread starter podsorcerer09
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GMail has been running without major issues for years. I don't see why anyone would use iCloud if e-mail was important to them.
I'm moving most of my stuff off gmail and onto iCloud. Why? Because its a paid service (well, i'm paying for more storage, etc anyhow).
Gmail, being free, well... isn't free.
Datamining = the payment. I don't want my entire life (basically contained in my email) mined by gmail.
Gmail, being free, well... isn't free.
Datamining = the payment. I don't want my entire life (basically contained in my email) mined by gmail.
"No free solution" ?
Sorry, I don't follow. There are a few other free e-mail services that integrate nicely (Hotmail especially now with ActiveSync and Yahoo! that I've used since day one). I definitly must have missed something in your post.
Sorry, I don't follow. There are a few other free e-mail services that integrate nicely (Hotmail especially now with ActiveSync and Yahoo! that I've used since day one). I definitly must have missed something in your post.
I am staying on gmail, contacts, calendar . . . No reason to move away. I use an Android phone to it makes iCloud email service less valuable to me than someone with an iPhone. I am using Back to my Mac, and Find my Mac services from iCloud. When I get my iPad later this year I use the documents feature also. So parts of it will be useful.
Gmail was great in 2005 when I first started using it, but I've moved beyond webmail. I want something that works correctly in the mail clients on all of my connected devices, and Gmail - with its nonstandard archiving, labels, etc - does not.
I use iCloud.
I use iCloud.
I'm using Gmail with Mail.app and my iOS devices. Works really well, better than iCloud. You just have to assign folders using "Use This Mailbox For".
Yeah, I have Gmail setup the same way on my Mail.app and my iDevices too. I agree that it works fairly well, but not as straightforward as iCloud (or any other regular IMAP or Exchange) mail.
I like Gmail. I was an early adopter, in the "10 invite era" if I recall correctly, but the things that made it so awesome and revolutionary then - the search, the filters, tagging, starring - just haven't made the transition to the mail clients on the mobile devices that I use. For the "full Gmail experience" I've found that I really need to use a desktop web browser, which I'm doing much less often these days.
There is definetly something to be said for searching. It is google after all. Obviously if I had an android phone, or maybe even just a tablet things would be different but seeing as how at the moment I use all apple devices it might make more sense to go to iCloud. There's nothing wrong with gmail of course, I'm just trying to get some feeling on the issue.
And for whoever was asking me about "no good free option" I think i meant to say that gmail was the best free option at the time.
And for whoever was asking me about "no good free option" I think i meant to say that gmail was the best free option at the time.
I've transitioned from Gmail to iCloud for my email. Why? Because I don't want Google to have more data about me than they already have. I don't want my email to be analyzed to serve me ads.
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I've given this same topic some thought, so I have some information you might find relevant to your decision.
I've used MobileMe mail (pretty much identical to iCloud mail) for several years after release, up until recently. While I really enjoyed the service, I ran into several issues that sent me to Gmail, where I will be staying for the foreseeable future. And these issues with Apple's mail service are still occurring, even well after the iCloud transition.
The major issue is spam filtering. MobileMe/iCloud has the worst spam filtering of any email service I've ever used. Despite having gone for the first couple of years with MobileMe nearly spam-free, in the past year or so spam mail getting into my inbox has increased significantly, and I was given a first hand look at how terrible Apple's implementation actually is. When you get spam mail, you have two options, according to Apple's web support (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4019): either go to the webmail interface (only accessible via desktop) and actually open the email to mark it as junk (thereby loading the mail and letting spammers know your address is valid), or you go to a desktop mail program and forward junk mail to an Apple spam address (just marking it as junk in an app isn't sufficient). So essentially, you cannot report spam from iOS as things are. On top of that, the spam filter still does not seem to learn from all this reporting. I've reported hundreds upon hundreds of very similar spam messages in the past year, and still I get up to 20 spam messages a day in my inbox (no spam has ever shown up in iCloud's spam folder, it all just goes to the inbox). Thanks to notification center in iOS, I'm painfully aware of the volume of spam. It boggles my mind that Apple believes that they can offer a supposedly "modern" email service with such a shoddy spam filter. Gmail can manage to watch the Junk folder on the server side, and when I move a message to the junk folder on iOS mail, Gmail actually marks it as spam and learns. Why can't Apple do this? If you use iCloud, you had better hope that websites where you use your address or people who store your email address in their contacts never get hacked, because if your email address gets on a spam list, you'll be in for a world of frustration. Apple Support is absolutely no help in this regard, and believe me, I've tried. iOS has no native spam filter, making server filtering crucial. It is not acceptable to me to have to run my desktop 24/7 with desktop Mail.app running with its spam filter enabled to get proper spam filtering on my iCloud email account.
A second problem with the spam filter is that when some Apple filter does find "spam," the message is deleted before it even hits your inbox. Again, I've never noticed mail actually end up in the Junk folder. It is well documented on Apple's Support Boards that a number of people are seeing the spam filter pick up false positives, and legitimate emails are flat-out being prevented delivery. The iCloud users have no idea that this is even happening (nor does the sender ever get informed that their message was not delivered), and it is not until the sender asks them directly about the email that they realize that they are missing anything. This is also a big problem.
Other minor issues for me with iCloud are terrible webmail, poorer security than Gmail, and less uptime than other email providers. Gmail has better security with features like 2-step verification and a log of recent account connections detailing the mode of connections made along with IP addresses.
I do want to like iCloud mail, I really do. I use all Apple devices and iCloud is just so easy to set up and use, and it works so well with the Mail apps on iOS and OS X. I use many features of iCloud already, and I'd love to go all in with it and use the mail service. But as it is now, I will absolutely not return to an Apple mail service until they fix the spam issue, at the very least.
I've given this same topic some thought, so I have some information you might find relevant to your decision.
I've used MobileMe mail (pretty much identical to iCloud mail) for several years after release, up until recently. While I really enjoyed the service, I ran into several issues that sent me to Gmail, where I will be staying for the foreseeable future. And these issues with Apple's mail service are still occurring, even well after the iCloud transition.
The major issue is spam filtering. MobileMe/iCloud has the worst spam filtering of any email service I've ever used. Despite having gone for the first couple of years with MobileMe nearly spam-free, in the past year or so spam mail getting into my inbox has increased significantly, and I was given a first hand look at how terrible Apple's implementation actually is. When you get spam mail, you have two options, according to Apple's web support (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4019): either go to the webmail interface (only accessible via desktop) and actually open the email to mark it as junk (thereby loading the mail and letting spammers know your address is valid), or you go to a desktop mail program and forward junk mail to an Apple spam address (just marking it as junk in an app isn't sufficient). So essentially, you cannot report spam from iOS as things are. On top of that, the spam filter still does not seem to learn from all this reporting. I've reported hundreds upon hundreds of very similar spam messages in the past year, and still I get up to 20 spam messages a day in my inbox (no spam has ever shown up in iCloud's spam folder, it all just goes to the inbox). Thanks to notification center in iOS, I'm painfully aware of the volume of spam. It boggles my mind that Apple believes that they can offer a supposedly "modern" email service with such a shoddy spam filter. Gmail can manage to watch the Junk folder on the server side, and when I move a message to the junk folder on iOS mail, Gmail actually marks it as spam and learns. Why can't Apple do this? If you use iCloud, you had better hope that websites where you use your address or people who store your email address in their contacts never get hacked, because if your email address gets on a spam list, you'll be in for a world of frustration. Apple Support is absolutely no help in this regard, and believe me, I've tried. iOS has no native spam filter, making server filtering crucial. It is not acceptable to me to have to run my desktop 24/7 with desktop Mail.app running with its spam filter enabled to get proper spam filtering on my iCloud email account.
A second problem with the spam filter is that when some Apple filter does find "spam," the message is deleted before it even hits your inbox. Again, I've never noticed mail actually end up in the Junk folder. It is well documented on Apple's Support Boards that a number of people are seeing the spam filter pick up false positives, and legitimate emails are flat-out being prevented delivery. The iCloud users have no idea that this is even happening (nor does the sender ever get informed that their message was not delivered), and it is not until the sender asks them directly about the email that they realize that they are missing anything. This is also a big problem.
Other minor issues for me with iCloud are terrible webmail, poorer security than Gmail, and less uptime than other email providers. Gmail has better security with features like 2-step verification and a log of recent account connections detailing the mode of connections made along with IP addresses.
I do want to like iCloud mail, I really do. I use all Apple devices and iCloud is just so easy to set up and use, and it works so well with the Mail apps on iOS and OS X. I use many features of iCloud already, and I'd love to go all in with it and use the mail service. But as it is now, I will absolutely not return to an Apple mail service until they fix the spam issue, at the very least.
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Add a line about the lack of push updates for read status and deleted/moved messages to your issues with spam and security and you and I are in lock step on the same page.
Really, really want to use it....and have tried to a few times....but each time I have been pushed (not pulled) back to Google.
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Yeah, it's really a shame Apple can't seem to get the mail service right. Do they think that adding these server side features would confuse the average consumer too much? It's certainly technically feasible, so it's not like Apple couldn't do it if they chose to do so.
ugahairydawgs said:
Yeah, it's really a shame Apple can't seem to get the mail service right. Do they think that adding these server side features would confuse the average consumer too much? It's certainly technically feasible, so it's not like Apple couldn't do it if they chose to do so.
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Personally, I've used .Mac, MobileMe, and now iCloud since mid 2007. While the email seems to work fine on Apple devices and on the web on other devices. I must say that I choose Google over Apple when it comes to managing my messages, calendar and contacts.
I've had authorization issues with Mac mail on my Android device, While Google runs flawlessly.
I've also had many syncing issues when it came to syncing my contacts and calendars over Apple's services and that was just between Apple devices. So I trust Google when it comes to all that.
Google is simple, easy to setup and it just works. Frankly in my opinion it is everything I think Apple's service should be.
I've had authorization issues with Mac mail on my Android device, While Google runs flawlessly.
I've also had many syncing issues when it came to syncing my contacts and calendars over Apple's services and that was just between Apple devices. So I trust Google when it comes to all that.
Google is simple, easy to setup and it just works. Frankly in my opinion it is everything I think Apple's service should be.
I converted from Gmail to iCloud. I couldn't be happier after I got it all completed. Now I have two emails forwarded to my iCloud. I have very little junk mail these days. Very simple and does everything I need with email, contacts, calendar, etc... Love it!
iCloud = Apple
Gmail = Android
iCloud = Apple
Gmail = Android
So I guess you're right. iCloud is way better than Gmail because Apple makes it. Nothing else to say, you have the best argument
So I guess you're right. iCloud is way better than Gmail because Apple makes it. Nothing else to say, you have the best argument
Heh, to be honest, it's the fact that Apple has integrated iCloud in so well with their software that draws me to it. It is so easy to set up, and everything works as expected almost 100% of the time (I know there are some horror stories out there about losing data). It is not anywhere near Google's feature set, nor will it ever be, but it does just enough for the majority of users, myself included. The downside, however, is the mail service is too subpar to use at the present. I'd take a better spam filter over rules, vacation replies, even webmail access. When I used MobileMe, I never checked the webmail because I was either at my Mac, on the iPad, or had my iPhone on me to check with Mail. I look back at those years of spam-free use with longing and a tear in my eye... Those were the good old days. I have no idea what happened in the past year to cause the deluge of spam, but it completely ruined the service for me.
Well I agree with your privacy wants but it was my understanding that any "cloud" service (and there are lots of them out there now) has ripe opportunities for data-mining and other privacy intrusions. Just because your email account is password protected on some server that is located who knows where, doesn't insure privacy. In fact law enforcement, government agencies can log into email servers anytime of the day or night without a search warrant or prior notification to anyone and read/download our emails. Part of the new Patriot Act II or III -(whatever number we are up to now).
Heck even a novice who is computer savvy can break into any email account. That's computer 101. Just my 9 cents.
If you're computer savvy, then can you really be a novice?
Anyways, that whole sentence just confuses me, and makes me wish I went to a different college.I mean, I took Intro to Computer Science 101, and they never mentioned anything about hacking e-mail accounts. I feel kinda cheated.
You sure you just haven't watched too much tv?
The one ding against GMail for me is the way contacts are handled. I do not like having a contact created for every single person I send an email to, and no, I don't want to GoogleTalk with them. Now, I know there's a way to set things so those contacts aren't on your phone. I still don't like it, and I always feel compelled to go clean up that list. I want to decide who to add to my contacts, and when to add them, not Google.
As for all the other points about reliability and spam filtering, I agree 100%. I've actually been torn about which to use since GMail first started. But I've been using my mac.com address since the iTools days, and I don't want to go through the trouble of notifying everyone.
To the OP, if you're on the fence keep one thing in mind. Apple has a history of taking this free service and charging money for it later on down the road. Everyone loves iCloud now that it's free, but for me there will always be that nagging question of "When are they going to decide to charge for this again?" If you choose to use iCloud email, I suggest you have a backup plan in case you need to jump ship quickly some day.
As for all the other points about reliability and spam filtering, I agree 100%. I've actually been torn about which to use since GMail first started. But I've been using my mac.com address since the iTools days, and I don't want to go through the trouble of notifying everyone.
To the OP, if you're on the fence keep one thing in mind. Apple has a history of taking this free service and charging money for it later on down the road. Everyone loves iCloud now that it's free, but for me there will always be that nagging question of "When are they going to decide to charge for this again?" If you choose to use iCloud email, I suggest you have a backup plan in case you need to jump ship quickly some day.
