Gmail IMAP OAuth for desktop clients

Question

Recently Google announced that they are supporting OAUth for Gmail IMAP/SMTP. I browsed through their multiple documentations, but still I am confused about if they support

Answer 1

Yes, Oauth is supported for installed applications; see Gmail IMAP and SMTP using OAuth documentation.

1. Documentation is simply outdated (2008)
2. It makes sense but just for application that does not store access token in a safe way.

Your setup is good although i don't think having a web-app that talks with google is mandatory; for example your users could just copy and paste "request token" to your desktop client application.