Google Unveils Three Pane Gmail Interface

Typical.

I started using Sparrow this week — a Mac OS X lightweight email client — partly to get a three pane email view.

Then today, I read that Google announced a three pane display on Gmail, similar to what they did on the iPad.

So, I am out the $9.99 for Sparrow, I guess.

Sparrow is a reasonably good email client, but I was a bit misled by the positioning as a ‘social email client’. What’s the social part? It’s just email in a slightly more fluid UX.

There is a place for social email — as I wrote about in Liquid Email in July — but Sparrow isn’t it. And neither is Gmail.

So I’ll go back to Gmail. mostly because I can have a more-or-less similar experience on all platforms I use.