OAuth in My Inbox.
I’ve been on Gmail since ’04. We use it at Full Stop. I have it installed on my personal site. I love the search, the conversations view, the fact that tags are first-class citizens. I use half-a-dozen Labs projects to make the experience even better.
But you know what? There’s a lot of really valuable data locked in there. OAuth to the rescue:
You may or may not be excited by the acronyms OAuth and IMAP/SMTP, but the combination of them all together is very exciting news. Google Code Labs announced this afternoon that it has just enabled 3rd party developers to securely access the contents of your email without ever asking you for your password. If you’re logged in to Gmail, you can give those apps permission with as little as one click.
Prediction: all major email providers will eventually support OAuth and serious Gmail competitors will have it within the year.
devan
That’s awesome! Can’t wait ’til Mail.app supports OAuth in 2015.
Nate
That’s really the difference between Apple and Google. Apple strives for aesthetically pleasing, productive user interfaces that work exceedingly well in isolation. Google is content with functional user interfaces that provide powerful frameworks, leveraging scale and third-party innovation.
Apple thinks UI-first, Google thinks ubiquitous Internet first. Both strategies are excellent. To each company’s credit, I think they know this. They play to their strengths and are aware of their weaknesses.
The tension between interoperability and elegance, though, is hardly new. It’s nothing more than a restatement of the age-old dilemma of “just works” and hackers paradise.
Right now, Apple and Google clearly sit on opposite ends of the spectrum, and by all appearances are moving further apart rather than closer together. I’m hopeful, however, that appearances can be deceiving. Ideally a third way can be found that preserves the stability and speed of iPhone OS while providing ample hooks for the vast potential of the Internet.
Devan
Yeah, I guess that’s my point about Apple: These things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. This is a company with over $7 billion in free cash flow (and over $200 billion in market cap). Surely there’s a little bread in there to bring the back ends of Mail and iCal up to date. The only part of the UI that would have to change is the account setup process.