Having spent one year of my life trying to replicate Gmail's interface in a desktop app through IMAP (www.betterinbox.com), I can say with confidence that IMAP

Having spent one year of my life trying to replicate Gmail's interface in a desktop app through IMAP (www.betterinbox.com), I can say with confidence that IMAP is completely unsuited for the Gmail paradigm. If we had this API back when we were working on BetterInbox in 2011, our lives would have been much easier.