Mailplane Version 2.0 Reviewed

by Bill Martens


As the amount of spam being received by our accounts increased, the more I redirected the accounts to a GMail account, allowing much greater SPAM deletion prior to receiving mails. This method of SPAM filtering unfortunately produced the side affect of needing an application which allowed control over multiple GMail accounts. Then came Ruben Bakker's Mailplane application to the rescue.


Over the past year or so, I have steadily followed the progress of what I consider to be the best GMail reading app developed. The Mailplane program is not only intuitive but allows easy control over all of the email accounts that I manage. It has allowed me the peace of mind that none of the SPAM that gets sent in will ever make it to my inbox. But in spite of the program being great, Ruben did not rest on good enough. Now he has released version 2.0 and made it all that much better


41 new updates were made to the program including Quick Links, Video Chat Support and full support of GMail 2 features. While most of us think this many changes could only come from Apple, think again. The new application is bright, fits into leopard nicely and even looks good now.


We started from version 1.6.x of the application and upgraded via the upgrade feature in the Mailplane menu. Not only did it pick up the upgrade immediately but it upgraded the application in less than 60 seconds.


Once restarted, the application came up and showed an email with a list of all of the new features included in the application. This allowed me to easily go through the feature list and see if there were any in particular that enthralled me. One such feature was the new Attach Folder and File Bundles feature in composing emails. No more clunky single file attachment nightmares. Now it can be performed in a single swoop.


Growl also seems to play much nicer with the application now. Many features related to notifications are among the half dozen items in the program related to notifications that been update. This in turn has made the application much less annoying when mail items come in while working.


While, I would like to say everything is wonderful, there is one new item that I do not like whatsoever. If you have any accounts that have over 999 new mails in it, the accounts tab shows the number as something that is not really readable. It puts the thousands digit followed by a comma and "..."; i.e. 1,.... I have a few accounts that have system notices in them and this was the one negative thing I found during my experience with the latest version.


Other than that, this version of the Mailplane application is not only a solid application but a well thought through and complete application. It certainly makes my life easier and I am sure will make yours easier too if you have numerous Gmail accounts.


What is best about this application is not just that it is useful but also that the cost wont break the bank. At $24.95 for a single license, it is well worth your hard earned money. If you have multiple machines like I do, you will particularly like the $15 family option that Uncomplex Ltd offers. The system requirements for the program make it easy to handle too. The program runs on either Mac OS 10.4.11 or 10.5.5 meaning it should work comfortably on any G4, G5, or Intel based Mac.


For those users who are still using Windows, I know that Ruben has been considering a version specifically for the Windows platform. (http://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/would_mailplane_for_windows_make_sense/). Obviously he is awaiting feedback from users prior to building that version though.


You can download the Mailplane application from the Uncomplex Ltd. website at: http://mailplaneapp.com/


Rating: 4 out of 5 Apples


About the Author

Bill Martens is the user group Ambassador for Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) and is also the production editor for Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine. (http://www.callapple.org)