On Sparrow and Doing Small Things Well

Sparrow takes flight: how a startup built the Gmail app Google couldn’t

The Sparrow team has given mail, not only a beautiful UI, but a highly efficient one as well.  This is easily saving me 5 seconds per email and I’m finally using starring in Gmail.  Those seconds add up quickly, especially with the amount of mail that I go through…

“The problem with Sparrow is that I’m happy with what we’ve done,” Leca told me. The next step for Sparrow is optimization and seeing what aspects of the app people actually use — seeing where people click and how the UI can be even further optimized.

For Leca, sometimes the right thing and the obvious thing coincide.  I just hope Apple will give them a chance to really shine.

Sparrow could use its own servers to push emails, but then the company would be responsible for keeping track of every user’s email credentials. This isn’t a risk Leca is willing to take, citing the gravity of a security breach since emails are so personal.

It’s interesting to consider the implications of an Apple acquisition of Sparrow - but what about Google?  They could use more UI/UX help than anyone at this point.  For a company so driven by data b__eautiful function would be the perfect combination.