Sparrow takes flight for Gmail

Sparrow, the minimalist mail application for Mac, has left beta and been officially released through the Mac App Store for an introductory price of $9.99. It offers a streamlined user interface through a window that pops up from the program's Dock icon, cutting out the clutter and delivering an unfussed experience to collecting, reading and sending mail.

Version 1.0 currently only supports Gmail accounts -- support for other mobile providers, including Mobile Me, AOL and Yahoo!, along with general IMAP accounts is promised for version 1.1, which is about to undergo private beta testing.

Sparrow boasts several features: support for multiple accounts, labels, threads and inline attachments, plus features a quick reply box that appears in the same window as the original message, a good example of Sparrow's intentions to keep things as simple as possible.

A free version of the main app, Sparrow Lite, is currently awaiting approval from the Mac App Store. Sparrow Lite will be ad-supported, and work with only one account.

Sparrow 1.0 requires Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) or later, and the beta will need to be manually uninstalled before downloading and installing version 1.0 from the Mac AppStore -- full details are on the program's FAQ.