The-Electric-Daily

Mail clients are a dime a dozen these days.  It seems that every day there is a new Gmail extension or app, a new way to experience Gmail in your browser or on your desktop.  I have tried several of these over the years, looking for that perfect email experience, but after many trails and errors, I always went back to Mac Mail, because I love all things Apple and staying Mac native when possible, seems to work best for me.  Well that was then.  Don’t get me wrong, I still love Mac Mail, I just don’t use it anymore.  I started feeling the weight of that “heavy email client” and I wanted something lighter, something simpler, something like Tweetie Mac App (now Twitter for Mac).

Sidenote: Atebits, the genius behind Tweetie, set the standard for Twitter clients, both on Mac and iOS, so much so that other devs started copying them, so much so that, to an extent, Apple copied them with the new and improved Mac Mail for OSX Lion, so much so that Twitter done went and hired Loren Brichter as an official developer.  Man talk about having your finger on the Twitter pulse.  In the process of hiring him, Twitter excelled with the official Mac App but destroyed the official iOS app.

Continued Digression: During the whole #dickbar fiasco and after horrible updates and bugs, I ditched Twitter iOS for the amazing Tweetbot by Tapbots

Anyway, a few weeks ago I came across a Gmail Mac App called Sparrow – the new mail for mac.  I read about it on blogs and saw it in the Mac App store on sale for $10.  Upon visiting their website I noticed they offered a free version that had a few “limitations” (one account, ad-supported and the “Sent with Sparrow” tag at the end of every email).  As I perused, I noticed excellent design and UI, it looked simple, it looked easy, it looked Mac native…it looked like Tweetie..aka…now Twitter.  It looked awesome!!!  So… I decided to take a leap of faith and make the switch.  (which some of you may know, can take a while with setting up accounts, synching mail, contacts, labels etc…)  First of all, it was free.  Second, I route all of my email accounts through my main Gmail account, so the one account “limitation” was no big deal.  Third, the ads were unobtrusive (I actually found myself clicking a few of them).  And last, since I love the app, I am happy to promote the devs with the “Sent with Sparrow” tag.  Win, Win, Win!!!  Sweet!!!

I won’t go into the details of the app.  I encourage you to give it a try for yourself.  I will say that Sparrow is perfect for my email needs and the switch proved worthy and does so everyday.  It has breathed new life into the daily task that is emails and that is a big deal. Thanks Sparrow.  Thanks for making my workday better.

P.S. – Sparrow has a great blog with tips and trick to help you get started.  Enjoy!!!

If you are a regular reader of The Electric-Daily then you know that we love Instagram.  You then also know that we love our Macs and Apple products across the board.  Well, when I came across Carousel by Mobelux just last week, I found a new favorite app.  Carousel is simply the best way to experience Instagram on your Mac. This beautifully designed app allows you to view your photo feed, view the most popular photo feed, like & comment on photos, as well as view your profile and the profiles of others, all in a simple and fun design.  Though my favorite features are the ability to drag and drop to save full size photos to your desktop, preview full size photos by pressing the spacebar and the option to save any photo straight to iPhoto.  A 15 day free trial is available here and it is available in the Mac App Store for $4.99.  Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Bonus: under preferences in the menu bar you can customize the appearance of the app, “nothing special” “no big deal” you say?… well it is a big deal when each customization is of Wes Anderson influence.