Gmail IMAP

Gmail IMAP seems to be talk of the town these days. IMAP is offers much better functionality than POP. POP is passive way of accessing your email, you download your message through your email cleint and then read it. IMAP actively communicates with your mail service provider and marking read items and deleting email when you do the same on your email client simultaneously. Gmail is rolling out IMAP functionality to all users in stages. I didn’t get it yet but would sure love to see what all this about.

This is what What’s new on Gmail? page tell you:
” Sync your inbox across devices instantly and automatically. Whether you read or write your email on your phone or on your desktop, changes you make to Gmail will be seen from anywhere you access your inbox. Don’t fret if you don’t see “IMAP Access” yet under the Settings menu. We’re rolling it out to everyone over the next few days.”

Whats interesting is that the page shows how to setup a device for IMAP service. This device happens to be Apple iPhone in particular, complete with a picture. Why is Google trying to be good to Apple? Are they forming an alliance at last? After all Yahoo and Microsoft are cordial if not too friendly.