Edit: I finally now have IMAP for my Gmail account.
Google is simply slow and frustrating when it comes to updates. I’m sure everyone who pays any sort of attention to technology news already knows that Google has introduced IMAP support for Gmail. When I first saw that, I was ecstatic. I’ve been using POP access to check my Gmail mail for quite a while. Unfortunately, because of the way Gmail is setup that means balancing my online Gmail account and my local mail application. It just bugs me if they’re out of sync with one another.
I use a local mail application (Apple’s Mail) because I have several e-mail accounts (some POP, most IMAP) that I check on a regular basis and found that to be the best and easiest solution for me. Gmail is the only POP account that I consistently check on the web, so keeping it in sync with what I have on my computer is important to me. As soon as I read about Gmail supporting IMAP, the first thing I did was get on Gmail to set it up. The problem is that the option for activating IMAP simply isn’t there. I checked Gmail’s help documents and found nothing useful. I only found instructions that I couldn’t follow because I didn’t have the appropriate options in my Gmail settings.
I checked the help documents again later and found out that they haven’t implemented the IMAP feature to all accounts yet. That’s the part I don’t understand. Google certainly should have the resources and the ability to implement features into all Gmail accounts at once. Admittedly, I don’t know exactly how it all works, but it seems to me that it shouldn’t be so difficult to flip a switch (or a lot of switches) to turn it on; or at very least make it an automated process. Give the users the option to enable IMAP. If the user enables it, but they’re account isn’t setup for it, make the setup an automated process that will setup it up on the fly. Certainly they could do that.
Google has done this with other new feature in Gmail as well. I won’t go into detail about them, but I just find it kind of frustrating. Or maybe disappointing would be a better word for this particular instance.
Edit: I finally now have IMAP for my Gmail account.
Ever heard of “flash crowds”?
Switching it on for everyone at once would overwhelm their servers when everyone tries to download 100,000 messages each the first time their IMAP client syncs.
Here’s a tip to get your Gmail account to show IMAP: change your interface settings to English (US). I was set on English (UK) and no IMAP option showed. I then read an article saying on their US interfaces had been given the upgrade to date, changed mine and VOILA.
Hope this works for you.
If you’ve built a new power generator and installed lightbulbs in a billion homes, wouldn’t you want to try turning on only a few thousand first and see how the power generator responds, before turning them all on?