It’s not very often that I actually get pissed off by app updates, but then iGmail comes along and updates itself to 2.3.1 just so I can hate it. iGmail is a full-screen app that is supposed to make the Gmail web app more convenient to use. It has a few buttons along the bottom so that you can easily switch from message to message, and the previous 2.1 update added push notifications and Google Apps support as in-app purchases. I was wondering (after the release of 2.1) about whether or not the 2009 PUSH support was really only for 2009, or whether it was some sort of bad description. That’s all dreadfully clear now that the 2.3.1 update is out, and I’d call this one of the rare occasions where an app actually gets worse with an update.
There is now a 2010 Push support in-app purchase, which means that users that bought the $0.99 subscription for 2009 (which was only released on Nov. 19) are going to have to pay again in the new year. This might very well be due to some sort of limitation of in-app services, but it still seems incredibly silly to offer a 1.5 month subscription for $0.99 and then offer a similarly priced subscription that covers all of 2010. It’s their right to do this, and the onus is on users to read the descriptions properly, but it’s still a crappy move in my book.
However, what really ticks me off is how misleading the new “feature” to hide the shopping cart icon is. There’s this little shopping cart icon right beside the main controls which you can tap on to make in-app purchases, and it’s pretty easy to press accidentally, so the ability to hide it is a very welcome one. In the last version (2.1), you could hide all of the app controls along with the shopping cart under one green arrow at the bottom of the screen. In a very subtle move, iGmail 2.3.1 now features the shopping cart right beside the green arrow at all times, unless you hide it in Settings -> iGmail. Well, sort of. To be allowed the privilege of hiding the snotty little shopping cart, you’ve got to make an in-app purchase. “That’s alright”, I thought, “I already purchased the PUSH for 2009”.
Apparently not. Despite the fact that I wrote a blog post about testing the new PUSH features in 2.1 a few weeks ago, the new version of the app seems to have completely forgotten about my in-app purchase. No matter how many times I tap on the redeem button and enter my iTunes password, I’m always told that I have never made any in-app purchase. So instead of actually hiding the cart, iGmail shows a pop-up every single time I launch the app that tells me it won’t hide the cart unless I make an in-app purchase.
It’s not as if the shopping cart is insufferable, but as of the last version of the app, I was still able to hide it as long as I hid all of the controls. The fact is that the cart wasn’t really a huge problem last time, but this new version makes it an issue while simultaneously claiming to have made it even easier to hide.
I’m not saying the developers are being dishonest, but there is definitely a plain lack of consideration for the user base. This app has been tugged every which way: it started off at $1.99, then turned free, and now costs $0.99. It also disappeared for about two or three weeks after I wrote my review about it, and there was never any word in the App Store description about where it went. I could probably appreciate this new, slightly more obtrusive UI if the app had stayed free, but why should a $0.99 app be so aggressive about presenting its in-app purchases? Some users just want to use the app as a full-screen Gmail browser, and I paid the initial $1.99 price for version 1.0 for that very reason.
I’m guessing that the app’s bad memory for in-app purchases will be fixed soon enough, but I won’t be a user long enough to care. This latest shopping cart move, the lack of any real support for the first few months of the app’s release (the website only came up recently), and the silliness of offering a 1.5 month subscription for “the full year of 2009” starting on November 19 is more than enough reason for me to delete this app and never come back.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
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TAGS: gmail, rant, web app
