Inbox by Gmail heads to the iPad, bringing yet another Google app to Apple tablets

Google is on an iPad app streak. Shortly after introducing a version of Google Play Music for iOS that works natively on Apple’s tablet, Google has done the same thing for Inbox by Gmail. Google’s new email app—designed to surface the most important messages and better organize the rest—first came to the iPhone in October.

The impact on you: The iPad version is once again a Material Design copy of what you get on Android and the iPhone, only bigger. The main part of the screen is taken up by your messages and bundled categories such as “Updates” and “Social.” The slideout drawer on the iPad has all the same menu options you see on other apps, including the Inbox view, snoozed messages, and bundle categories like travel, purchases, and finance.

To kill a sparrow

Inbox for iPad appears a day after Google pulled Sparrow from the App Store. Sparrow was a popular and simple iPhone and Mac mail client for Gmail that first hit our radar in 2010. The app was hailed for merging Gmail’s approach to mail conversations with a traditional mail client.

Sparrow teased an upcoming iPad app in June 2012, but that version never got a chance to come to fruition. Shortly after the tease, in July of that year, Google acquired the company and directed the Sparrow team to work on new projects within Google.

Google continued to maintain Sparrow for iPhone, but never released the hoped-for iPad version.

Now Sparrow is gone as Google hopes users will focus on the company’s two main Gmail apps: Gmail and Inbox.

Inbox is still an invite-only app. To try it out you either need to snag an invite from someone you know, or you can email inbox@google.com in the hopes of receiving one.

[via TechCrunch]