Google's New Gmail Native App for iOS

MG Siegler reported yesterday that Google was working on a native Gmail app for iOS.

High Expectations

I instantly had high hopes for such app because I really hate the current paradigm of folders for managing emails, and the native iOS app has many flaws.

On the other hand, Gmail’s mobile app has several flaws too; most of them comes from it not being native in the first place. As many have pointed out on Twitter and elsewhere, while Mobile Safari benefits from speed improvements, homescreen web apps and in-app embedded web views don’t for obvious security reasons.

MG Siegler emphasized a lot on the app being native. He also wrote:

Google doesn’t have the greatest track record with their iOS apps (they’re often full of bugs and fairly ugly to boot). But again, all indications are that this is a good one. And I believe it’s the first one built after Google’s new commitment to design as a core feature across all of their products.

At the time, I really believed in Google’s ability to pull out a true native app. One that’d bring real push notifications, true performance, features available to native apps, etc.

Failed attempt

Today, Google released its Gmail app. And it really failed to deliver on its promises. The company embedded its current mobile app into a native wrapper. Needless to say that the app performs really badly in comparison to true native apps. It also lacks important features such as multiple accounts sign-ins. Moreover, they went with the folder paradigm instead of the colored labels, but only did so in the sidebar.

Google also botched its app launch, now pulled out from the App Store: they didn’t properly codesign their app to enable push notifications. Blatant and amateurish mistake, in my opinion.

All in all, it looks like a half-assed attempt to port its Gmail app to iOS, three years after the platform’s launch.

What should have Google done, instead?

In my opinion, they should have developed true APIs that works in parallel to the current IMAP, POP and Exchange protocols, allowing Google to add upcoming features as they are developed. These APIs would only be used by Google’s own Gmail apps for Android and iOS, and other capable smartphone platforms.

Using these APIs, Google would be able to develop true native apps for both Android (in Java, as it is currently) and iOS (in Objective C, as it isn’t currently) that take full advantage of Gmail’s unique features and paradigms — like labels instead of folders — and allow for future expandability instead of being forced to rely on ageing protocols¹.

Until then, I’ll sadly stick to iOS’ native Mail app, with all four of my Gmail accounts configured as Exchange addresses.