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Comment by brianlovin | Hacker News Reader

I finally reinstalled now that they support multiple accounts - but really? No unified inbox? Sparrow still has a leg-up, in my opinion, despite being out of the dev cycle for a few months now.

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I specifically don't want a unified inbox. For that you can simply use the regular iOS mail app. What I use gmail for is accounts that I want to keep separate, for consulting business and not get that intertwined with my personal email. What you see as a shortcoming is for me a feature.

someone always complains, but really, this is a great app. Google had a bit of a shake start with their gmail app, but now the suite of google apps, Drive, Gmail, Search, Voice Search, Goggles, YouTube, Chrome etc are all world-class. When Google Maps comes out I am sure that will be too.

It's not like you have to pick between the two even with the default Mail.app - you can browse one inbox at a time or select "all inboxes". I happen to like unified view 90% of the time, but for that other 10% it's literally two taps to view a single inbox at a time (back, select specific inbox).

Don't get me wrong - v2.0 is vastly better than the last version. I guess I just check multiple accounts frequently enough that the three taps it takes to switch inboxes is a bit of a drag.

It would be nice if iOS let users install multiple copies of an App (like gmail, instagram etc) for different accounts.

I wonder what the usage figures are on a unified inbox by Gmail users. I have multiple accounts, which I suspect puts me in a minority, and don't even want to use unified inbox.

They don't even have that for their web or Android clients - I doubt you'll see the iPhone client ever surpass those.

In what cases is unified inbox relevant ? I don't like to mix my personal emails with my work emails. Did sparrow make a clear distinction between which accounts the email was from ?

I have 5 email accounts for various side projects - one for all my personal emails, one for a blog that I run where I receive user submissions, one for a product I'm working on now that receives notifications of all new sign-ups and payments. Things like that.

I know Gmail lets me pull all those into one inbox with account importing, but there's a limit on those too. Maybe it's just time for me to simplify all my accounts :/

It's relevant for those who do not care about such delineations and find it more efficient or so. I like having the unified inbox for several reasons such as being able to get see a quick overview of my personal/university/work accounts and act relatively to them. Sometimes though I'll switch into one account alone.

i sort of get it, but I switch the tone of how I respond depending on which of my accounts the email is received. Its seems more troublesome to look through them all and try to figure out after the fact.

Good question! Given I work for Unified Inbox, my reply is more about the nature of a unified inbox that what Sparrow are doing.

So the reason I use a unified inbox is that I only have to login to one place. I can then choose (using the filters) what work I'm going to concentrate on - eg I might look at the support@ addresses, or my personal ones, or all the addresses of one company/project. It can take a while to learn the use the filters well so you're not presented with an overwhelming list of everything but I'd hate to go back to individual inboxes now :)

Both worlds (business / personal) merge anyway. So a Unified Inbox makes sense eventually. The key is to be in a position to set up individual filters that put you in command and control scenario across communication platforms and devices.

Does gmail web have a unified inbox? Not that I've seen. Why should the mobile client by Google have one.

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