Billy Pilgrim Has Come Unstuck In Email

I had been using Google’s Gmail for years until quite recently. Among other things, it offered high speed access to a large store of email, until earlier this year when it seemed to start slowing down. And, as I had transitioned to iPhone, it seemed increasingly unintegrated with how I was living.

A few weeks ago, after downloading the iPhone 4 OS for my old iPhone 3Gs, I noticed that Apple had announced a beta of a new version of their MobileMe Calendar:

It looked so good that I had to take a closer look at the entire MobileMe suite of tools. I signed up for a MobileMe account (which is not cheap: $86/year), and hooked things up, and tried to walk away from Gmail and Google Calendar for awhile. The results are interesting.

First, I started using the MobileMe apps via browser, but these sync with Apple’s desktop apps, like Mail and Calendar, as well as the apps on my iPhone (now my new iPhone 4). U haven’t been traveling since this experiment started, so my experience has been principally around the desktop and browser.

MobileMe Mail. I tweaked things so that my Gmail account is being pulled into MobileMe Mail. I like the interface and user experience, especially because of the endless ‘loading’ I seem to be experiencing on Gmail, but even without that it is cleaner and easier to read:

It’s not just the lack of ads in the emails, either. Gmail’s UI is kind of ugly by comparison.

MobileMe mail lacks the integration with Google services that Gmail touts, but I didn’t use many, except for the erratically implemented tasks and calendar integration. So moving over I simply decided to start with the minimum and see what was possible.

Relatively quickly, I noticed that my Gmail Notifier — a tiny app that runs in the background on my Mac — was no longer helpful. It still sent Growl alerts, but they were attached to Gmail, not to MobileMe. I found Vibealicious’ Notify as a replacement, and that has dramatically skewed my experience of MobileMe.

Basically, Notify is a lightweight but nearly complete email client on its own. It is extremely well integrated with MobileMe Mail, so much so that I can read and file mail into MobileMe folders, and even reply to, create, and send messages.

This has led me to become unstuck in email. (Extra points for the literary reference alluded to in the title: anyone?)

In the past, I would open my gmail, and my calendar, and keep them basically open all day.

Now, I do the opposite. I open Notify because of seeing an alert, or noting that I have a certain number of unread emails, and I glance through them, filing some, deleting others, and occasionally sending a brief response. For more in depth emails, I will click through which brings up MobileMe in a browser window. After finishing that email, though, I close the window. And email doesn’t seem to dominate the landscape on my screen like it used to.

MobileMe Calendar.  It’s pretty clear that the Calendar beta is what I want: calendar sharing, invitations, etc.

The current Calendar (I don’t have access to the beta yet) doesn’t allow me to import external calendars, like my travel schedule from TripIt, so I have actually been using the desktop Mac Calendar and the Calendar app on my iPhone. I find that I am leaving my iPhone Calendar open — it does show all subscribed calendar feeds, like the desktop Calendar.

This also includes a simple task list, which I have adopted. But I think I will reserve my judgment about calendaring. Those who have played with the beta say that tasks will be supported in the browser version, and sychronized with the desktop Calendar, but not available on iPad or iPhone. I bet they will rethink that in subsequent releases, but not a real factor for me at present since I don’t have an iPad and I schlep my 13” laptop around nearly everywhere.

Tentative Conclusions

I am still sending email from my Gmail account, and using it as a store — I have to go back for old threads and email addresses — but I can envision slowly transitioning to MobileMe permantently, so long as the beta turns out as advertised.

The biggest change has really been the sense of becoming unstuck, of treating email more like text messaging, and less like email. Partly that is because of the lightweight UX of MobileMe Mail, and partly the use of Notify. And I like that feeling a lot.

(Again — Extra points for the literary reference alluded to in the title: anyone?)