A new email client for Mac - Sparrow

Email has been by far the most used of all the internet technologies. Hotmail changed the way we looked at internet communication. Gmail altered it to perfection with conversational view, integrated chat, video, sms and now phone calls. Microsoft Exchange has held a strong hold at large businesses in the way they communicate internally.

If you’re a Mac user, you would have sure had a chance to test the default Mail app. If you ever took a deep dive in finding ‘the best’ email client, I am sure you would have come across many more. Microsoft’s very own email client for mac, Entourage stands close to the Outlook’s feature set.

Earlier this week, I came across a new, slick, amateur email client for Mac – Sparrow. I wanted to give it a spin for a couple of days before writing about it.

It’s been a mixed feeling of good and bad with the app. It’s currently in beta and supports only Gmail for now. If you’re a fan of Tweetie for Mac, you would love this app. The interface is pretty close to Tweetie, as in the vertical arrangement of accounts and emails, ability to set the right drawer come out and sneak back, rounded corners on avatars and minimalistic design and functionality.

Gmail has always flaunted it’s threaded view functionality. The same is an integrated feature within Sparrow. Flicking through the threads is seamless. Integration with Growl allows notifications, as and when needed.

While the app allows you to view the a message in a slider that snips out as a right window pane, a double click shall let you open in it a new window, altogether. There is a slick and easy drop-down button on the top right of all messages to reply, reply all, delete, forward, mark as unread and print. On the bottom of all messages, there is a reply and a forward button.

My experience with the app has been good in terms of the simplicity and the user interface. It makes your job of reading and replying to emails, simple. Just that! However, there are times when the email message you would click on the window shall refrain from opening in the right pane. It may also go into an infinite loop of loading a message!

This was typically expected off an app that’s still a beta release. Coming up next, in the future release, it shall support other IMAP email providers and add labels for Gmail into the app.

If you’re a Mac user, I would suggest you to give it a spin and keep an eye on the next release. You may want to check out their blog or follow @sparrowmailapp.

Happy emailing!