Time to add some Spark to AirMail
Because I use the Google Universe (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs), I look beyond the native Mac applications. MacOS Mail or Calendar do work with Gmail and Calendar. However they are just not as seamless.
Perhaps the issue stems from a different overall philosophy in how different applications should work together. Apple takes the viewpoint that applications should be rich native applications, connected through the iCloud pipe. You get hooked into the Apple client-sphere. Google is all about data living in the Google Cloud, accessed through a variety of clients, running on a variety of clients. You get hooked on the Google Cloud service.
For a year or so, I used Airmail for email. It is a great email client, and provides most of the features you expect in an email client. I like the MarkDown edit mode (unless you want to switch back and forth between MarkDown and Formatted Email — this just doesn’t work.) One special killer feature is the ability to schedule email. You can for example work during odd hours, and schedule email to be sent only the morning. Thereby you can avoid creating email anxiety in the team where people may feel that if they are not always online, they may miss the action. (It is probably why France outlawed late hour work emails.)
Airmail lacks a lot in search. Most often I went back to Gmail in the browser if I wanted to search through my email.
Recently, I switched to Spark email. It solves the search problem. It also provides a nifty Smart Inbox feature. However, it falls short on many other aspects. For example you can not customize the email font. If you are going to spend a lot of your day in email, you want to customize the font. There is no easy Ctrl-K to add links to your emails — this is now a quasi standard shortcut for email. On iPhone Spark has serious performance issues. Oh, and I miss the Send Later feature.
My ideal email client for Mac combines both: add a Spark to Airmail. AirSpark. Sparks in the Air. Whatever you want to call it.
