Notify (or why I <3 OS X apps)

I love Gmail, I really do, but it can be frustrating to always be tied to a web application. I tried using Fluid to give my email experience more of a desktop-y feel, and I even wrote a nifty userscript to display a Growl notification when you receive a new email. It worked for the most part, but high memory usage rendered the fluid app painful unpleasant to use, and I eventually abandoned the setup all together. Recently, I’ve been using my iPhone as a email notification system, and Gmail lives happily inside Chrome.

That is, until I found Notify. I only installed it a few minutes ago, but my first impressions are extremely positive. It’s a sleek, no-nonsense app, it supports multiple accounts, and Google Apps. The $10 pricetag seems perfectly reasonable, but even better, the free version does just enough to make me happy.

Notify is a perfect example of why I’ve fallen head-over-heals in love with OS X software. The attention to detail is just phenomenal and is present in every part of the application. I mean, just look at the website! It’s this insane quality that make me sometimes wish I could give up this whole web thing and just write kickass Cocoa.