Photo courtesy of Apple
THAT FAIL BEING THE LAUNCH of their first native Gmail app, which was released in the Apple store on November 2nd. It’s not that the app was bad – it’s that it didn’t work. After entering their login info, most users were greeted with an error notification.
Google pulled the app, stating that there was a bug, and released a new version (1.0.2) today. It works. It’s still nothing special.
The big hoopla is over push notifications, which up until now, the iPhone couldn’t do for Gmail. Version 1.0.2 does indeed have functioning notifications, but no text, only sound. Other than that, the experience of using it is more or less exactly like using Gmail on your computer.
Which, at least in my opinion, is a step up from the standard Mail app. I’ve always had issues with it, mostly with the search function. And while the Gmail app is nothing fancy, I think it has a nicer interface – I particularly like how the menu is presented down the left side.
Major drawback: you can’t log in to multiple accounts. This is one of my favorite and oft-used Gmail features, and it’d be great to see it worked into future versions of the app.
The Gmail app is free – worth a shot if you’re not a fan of your Mail app. 
Michelle Schusterman
Michelle is a musician, writer, and teacher just trying to see the world while doing what she loves for a living. She's taught ESL in Salvador, Brazil and kindergarten in Suwon, Korea, and now she's a full-time freelance writer living in Seattle (just to keep the city alliteration going). She'll try pretty much any food once and believes coffee is its own food group.
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I was thinking about downloading the app but then decided not when I saw that it didn’t have good reviews.