I decided to leave Gmail. Not Google. Not their search or their browser, just Gmail. Because Google is, at its heart, an advertising company and as we all know, if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product. Seriously.
My decision was slightly accelerated by the numerous new idiosyncrasies of that Mavericks introduced to Apple Mail when dealing with Gmail, but the idea of moving to a paid email service had been germinating far longer than that. Apple Mail had also grown a bit wearisome for me due to its lack of robust keyboard shortcuts and MailMate was beginning to look increasingly interesting. (I’ve been trying it for a few days now and it doesn’t just look interesting).
I’ve done a lot of research on alternative email providers, particularly looking for something that:
- costs money (I’m their fucking customer);
- has bitchin’ IMAP support (I haven’t used a web-based interface in ages and don’t plan on starting now);
- and has a decent track record.
The fan-favorite and heir apparent is FastMail so I’ve decided to give it a go. I’m syncing contacts and calendars over iCloud and slowly changing everything over to use my new FastMail email address.
It’s an experiment that may, or may not, work, but it was one I needed to try. So, we’ll see.