The fact that all this is the same on my Macbook Pro, on my Arch Linux desktop, or when I reboot to Windows, without any effort on my part to synchronize settings makes this all rather excellent.
That beeing said, I wouldn't mind running my own webmailer as long as it has most of the google apps/office 365 features.
I'm hoping for mailpile myself even if it still takes some time.
Encryption means nothing unless both parties are using using it (obviously), and if it's only a few users who are encrypting emails using Thunderbird+Enigmail then there's that "why are you encrypting, you must have something to hide" and so the theory goes that you are more likely to catch the eye of big brother who then keeps a closer eye on you... if everyone is encrypting everything then we are all on the same footing.
Unfortunately things need to be made easy for the masses to adopt, like the way iMessages works, which is seemless. I don't want to worry about which pgp server upload my key, or having to go to 10 different places to revoke my key.
BUT, I don't trust any web-based encryption either since it's liable to be tampered with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail
Thunderbird+Enigmail is the safer way to go in general (and is actually what i use also).
PS: Not even the Android Gmail client can replicate that. It can show my important labeled mails, but also shows the already read ones and doesn't have that split.
Also, I'm sending 90% of emails from my phone anyway and I don't know of any good client that works both with gmail (with transparent caching of recent/viewed messages) and gpg.
HAHAHAHAHA good one