Hacker News Reader

Comment by patrickaljord | Hacker News Reader

Not the official app.

True, but hopefully if they are allowing unofficial apps, the official one will be allowed.

If it is not allowed by Apple again, maybe the "clarification" promise of the new App Store rules will officially tell Google what Apple doesn't like. At that point (i assume) Google will do one of the following:

1) Make the requested changes and get it approved.

2) If they don't like the requested changes, they will make a very public post on the Google Public Policy or Voice blog like they did about their complaint to the FCC about the original app rejection (http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-complete-...)

Also to note, it is possible that the original Google Voice app submitted last summer would not work with changes Google has made to Voice in the past year. So theoretically now that they know (or found out) that Apple will accept gVoice apps, Google could be working on updates to the app to get it to work before re-submitting it to Apple.

Either way, I think (hope?) that at some point in the near future the official app will come through.

What makes you think there will be one? There is no native "official" Gmail app.

Google submitted a native, official Google Voice application to the App Store in the first half of 2009. That application was rejected, though Apple told the press and FCC that it was still "pondering" whether or not to accept it (which was clearly bullshit).

Last week I asked Google if they planned to resubmit/release the official app, and was told that they had nothing to announce at this time.

why would anyone in their right mind use a native gmail app when you can use it in to iphone mail client for multiple accounts.

The Mail app doesn't follow the exact same behavior as the Gmail interface. I tend to prefer the mobile web interface for that reason (e.g. archiving, tagging, mark as spam work the same, whereas are somewhat broken through the Mail app). One could imagine that an official native app would follow the same "philosophy". (though the mobile web app is very well done, and can be used offline to a certain extent)

iOS4 actually has great support for gmail finally. You can enable archive instead of delete in the options now (may have to re-add the account). In iOS 4.1 they even changed the icon away from the trash can when you have this enabled.

That being said, I miss support for priority inbox already.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com