Mountain View, California — Even though Google has a few apps that come pre-installed into the iPad, the search titan has spiced up the Gmail interface specifically for Apple’s latest iPad and other tablets that are due for arrival soon
Whether you admire or envy the iPad, you have to admit it is the hottest gadget in town right now. But surprisingly not like many of the companies vying for the attention of new iPad owners, Google is not promoting a native iPad app. Its Gmail app for the iPad device seems to have taken its cues from Apple’s own iPad mail client, and is based on Gmail for mobile, a Web app that is accessed through the iPad’s Safari Web browser, embracing a two-column layout with your inbox on the left and messages on the right.
Apart from the two-column layout, it resembles a corresponding look and feel to the Gmail iPhone interface and allows you to star, label and archive emails. It also offers you a threaded email view, giving it a distinct advantage over Apple’s native mail client. The iPad interface also offers offline access and caching to reduce latency.
“We are releasing an experimental user application for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 Web app that we introduced last year for the iPhone and Android devices,” said Google mobile product manager Punit Soni in a blog post. “Those devices have large screens compared to other phones, and tablets like the iPad give us even more room to innovate.”
You can now reap the best of the large 9.7-inch multi-touch supporting touchscreen of the iPad and check your Gmail in a jiffy. This move of bringing two-pane Gmail interface would really make you wonder if Google and Apple are still on with their cold war? As known to many, Google has already introduced Gmail interface for iPhone OS and Android mobile OS based devices.
Google already provide native apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. These include the YouTube app and the Maps app, which were developed in accordance with Apple and are included on Apple’s devices out of the box, and the Google Mobile App, which users can download from the iTunes Store.
According to Soni’s post, Google only had an iPad Simulator to test its Web apps. Apple’s favored iPad development partners received actual hardware units to test their apps, under strict security arrangements.
All other features of Gmail Web App have been incorporated in this special interface for iPad. Alex Nicolaou, an engineering manager with Google, stated on the official Gmail blog that all the features of the Gmail web app that you are used to, such as offline access and aggressive caching to reduce latency, are present in the iPad version.
Google shared its view on tablet computing, saying:
“We are particularly thrilled by how tablet computers create the opportunity for new kinds of user interaction. Here on the mobile team, we often talk about how mobile devices are sensor-rich: they can sense touch through their screens, see with a camera, hear through a microphone, and they know where they are with GPS. The same holds true for tablet computers, and we are just starting to work through how our products can become even better on devices like the iPad.”
So far, there are not really many devices like the iPad at the moment. But there will be, running Android, Chrome OS, Linux, and Windows.