Mavericks Mail App and Gmail folders

m_a_c wrote:

Hello all,

I know this is not a fix for mail but I can tell you this,.... you wont be dissappointed!

But you will be very disappointed if using an Exchange account, or a real Imap account. Airmail is a One Trick Pony, good as a Gmail client, bad at everything else and as many of us object to handing over our data to Google so they can sell it that makes Airmail useless (if you value your privacy)

I tried Airmail for a long time, but found it rather buggy in some ways I couldn't deal with (e.g. Sent mail not always getting labeled as sent) and so since I use Gmail, I ended up switching to the more expensive Mailplane. While not perfect either, and has its own quirks, at least is designed to sync well with Gmail since it basically is Gmail with a native wrapper.

I would have preferred to just stick with Mail though and not have wasted a couple of months trying to find a mail client which worked well with Mavericks.

doug

I can see your point Doug...

I guess its down to personal prefference. All I need a mail client for is to read, reply and compose messages and Airmail (so far) has worked well for me.

I've also given up on Airmail. I purchased it not long after Mavericks came out to get away from the problems that Apple's native Mail app was having with Gmail. However, Airmail also started experiecing a lot of crashes a few weeks ago after I had added another Gmail account to it, effectively making it completely useless. I then turned the native Mail app back on and it mostly works for me (a lot better than when Mavericks first rolled out), but it still has its bugs too.

I'm doing OK with Mailplane. It is on the pricier side - $25 - but is very fast and works perfectly with Gmail. In fact it only works with Gmail. So for 2 of my accounts which were not Gmail, I had the accounts forward the mail to Gmail and set up the new Gmail accounts to use my old address (free).

doug

Haven't checked out the update myself just yet...

"Mail Improvements in OS X 10.9.2" ( http://tidbits.com/article/14547 )

Not sure if its "actually fixed" but just had an update installed and mail seems to be pulling mail quickly... will keep testing

I'm afraid the fact it pulls mail does not mean much - the buggy mail also pulled in my gmail for hours on end and would just stop working at random times of the day for no apparent reason. That said I will try the update and hope it works!

Tried the update and still see the exact same problem of a lack of synching with my gmail inbox. So I can't see that this issue has been properly addressed yet with 10.9.2

Ya from what I can tell litle has changed. Still delete a bunch of mail, switch inboxes, switch back and the mail reappears. 😟

The early reports on the web are that the 10.9.2 update fixes some, but not all, GMail problems, and adds a few new ones.

This article from TidBITS outlines in detail the changes in the program (as documented by this particular author, of course). Notice that "accurate and timely synchronization with GMail accounts" is unfortunately not listed. 😉

I did a quick test this morning, and my results were positive: I found received email to arrive as quickly on 10.9.2 as it does on my 10.8.5 machine. Also tested reading the email on my phone to see if the "unread" status would be updated on my desktop computers. That didn't happen immediately (I'm guessing it happened at the next email check time), but it did update correctly (again, on both OSs). Lastly, I tried to archive the message and that change was reflected almost immediately.

Of course, those are just my results this morning. As we have seen, things vary quite a bit.

Bark.

This article from TidBITS outlines in detail the changes in the program (as documented by this particular author, of course). Notice that "accurate and timely synchronization with GMail accounts" is unfortunately not listed.

GMail does not support push on free accounts (paid apps accounts can) so email is fetched by Mail at whatever interval you set, unless your 2 Macs are (a) on the same schedule and (b) never off the chances that one will collect it before the other does is extremely high. iPhones and iPads do get push services from Gmail so they would be different from the Macs but identical (well, very similar) to each other.

Apple can't control mail delivered from a system that does not support push (idle)

Yes, Csound1, you are correct, immediate mail alert requires push notifications (although my understanding is that GMail no longer supports iPhone push either: see this article), but the delivery delays seen by many people on this discussion have been far more serious than just lack-of-push.

Several people reported that Mail would not see new messages in the GMail inbox for hours, and that even a manual "Check Mail" would not reveal these new emails (this occasionally happened to me as well, but not often). Rebuilding the inbox and other "voodoo" techniques didn't help either. Some people were successful following Apple's support document suggesting one take accounts offline and then back online, but this did not work for everyone.

Bark.

Unfortunately I have been unable to replicate those issues with any version of 10.9. Gmail works correctly (as far as such a non standard system can) on my installations. But hours of difference in delivery time can't be explained away by push.

Push is still supported on iPads and iPhones, but will go away when you buy a new device it seems (the article is not the clearest) I use Gmail only as a junk collector now (I don't mind Google storing my spam) so am not relying on it for anything. But it does appear that I could if I wished to.

For me, incredibly, OS X 10.9.2 does not fix anything in terms of syncing the Gmail Web inbox. If I read or archive an e-mail at gmail.com or elsewhere, Mail.app still doesn't reflect that action. In other words, the e-mail still sits in the Mail.app inbox, marked as unread. How could this be? I've installed and then reinstalled the update, rebuilt the mailboxes, trashed the Mail folder in Library, done everything and still it doesn't sync. None of my Gmail settings or Mail.app settings is unorthodox. I have no "Google" specific mailboxes enabled in IMAP. "All Mail" is enabled in Gmail's settings and shows up in Mail.app in "Archive" under MAILBOXES. There's got to be a reason why 10.9.2 seems to have fixed things for the majority of users but not for me. Selecting Synchronize All Accounts under the menu item Mailbox or Get All New Mail does absolutely nothing to force a sync either. Same as in all previous Mavericks versions.