Sparrow vs. Mail.app and Mountain Lion

Did you hear that Google bought Sparrow? Sparrow is a really cool email client that I for one have been using very happily for a while now.

Did you hear the announcement that there would be no more development of sparrow?

Did you hear that some people were upset at this, while others defended Sparrow's "right" to let themselves be sold? (Huh????)

Anyway, I am not getting into that discussion. I was selfishly sad , because I am very fond of Sparrow and I know (from first hand knowledge, more than once, but also as a customer) that the product that is acquired doesn 't often do well in its new home, and so I need to end my addiction to Sparrow.

But then came the announcement that Mountain Lion (the new OS X for Mac) was coming out today. I thought I had a theory: Maybe Mail.app on Mountain Lion would be every bit as good as Sparrow.

*Sparrow, seeing the writing on the wall decided better*not to wait for the inevitable, and ran into Google's arms. (After all, I can think of many worse companies to be acquired by.)

For that and other reasons (like impatience) I bought my Mountain Lion ($20 for all three computers -- good deal!) First impression: Hmm, what's changed? Second impression, quick let's go look at Mail.app!

Bad news. Mail.app is a clunker compared to Sparrow. It's slow to launch and slow to work with compared to Sparrow. Sparrow works much more nicely with GMail than Mail.app.

I guess I will stick with Sparrow, for now.