I've stated that I like Mailbox more than Inbox multiple times now. But I also think that if you don't like Inbox, you probably won't like Mailbox. It's one of those things that you just have to learn to integrate into your workflow, and for some people, like kleinbl00, it's not even close to being a viable option. I love Mailbox. But your mileage will definitely vary.
So 8bit I've finally checked the promos for both out. I've been curious because of your stated opinions for a while. First though to address the question of the title: if you are able to offer two different methods which you have realized the general population tends to use to manage their email, then why would you only offer one? Appeal to as many people as possible. Give them options. From a competitive standpoint it's better they have two options out of however many from you as opposed to one. It's like Pepsi, diet Pepsi, Pepsi Max, etc. At no point was Pepsi like "Oh, well, we sell regular cola, that's enough." Pepsi saw there were multiple markets to appeal to and offered multiple offerings designed to appeal to each. Inbox: I feel like I already do half of what inbox offers, just perhaps in a more manual way - but it certainly reflects at least somewhat how I use my email. I doubt I would use reminders though. Generally, I tend to not open emails I know need to be dealt with but I can't at the moment, or that contain things I need to get back to. Having a timer on an email wouldn't really help me. I get to things when I get to them. The only benefits I can see to Inbox is that, theoretically, it seems it would do a lot of the sorting and labeling I already do but automatically. Right now I put everything into folders, archive, trash, or all mail manually. However, the plus side (for me) is that this means I read/review each email as I do it. If they all automatically went into files/folders I might forget to check them. (Not a bad thing for spam, though, eh?) With Mailbox it seems much of the same: the app would allow me to do what I already do faster, which is nice, but some of the features, like the reminder/timed reminder, I don't think I would readily use. I am not nearly so important as klein and barely get any interesting or "must read" email on a daily basis. The most mail I get comes from Hubski. I read it, then trash it.
My wife gets between 200 and 400 emails a day. We tried a few of the triage processes and got her inbox from 1800 messages to 600. Then she took a day off and it was back to 1300. I have 19 messages in my inbox right now, up from 3 a week ago. Important I ain't.
What I haven't been able to figure out about Mailbox: is there a browser version, or did they just completely ignore all Windows users? And, do you happen to have an invite? I'm digging Inbox pretty well - it has its flaws, but my mail work flow is massively improved, as I am that guy who only gets a handful of emails per day anyway.
This is how bad it is: - Cloudmagic on phone - gmail on phone - Postbox on laptop - Thunderbird on studio computer Why? because that's what I need to do in order to get the eight accounts I maintain (across 3 services - and that doesn't include the email addresses like Yahoo and msn that I have for other services) working. And every month, I fire up Mac Mail on the Monster to run MailSteward because you know what? I do need to find shit written three IMAP VARs ago in 2004 every now and then. Email is such a pigfuck.
So could an email app not be created that could let you manage all eight accounts on all 3 services in one app? Like a sort of dropbox for mail? Or is it something intrinsic in the services themselves that prevents a one-app-fits-all scenario?
All accounts are on all devices. That isn't the problem. CloudMagic can't get its shit together on Android to properly address the notification screen with regularity. Gmail can't be deleted from Android and I'l be damned if I know how to get it to shut the fuck up. Meanwhile, the EFI on the Macbook is more stable with Postbox than with Thunderbird, for some reason, while folder performance is better on the Mac Pro with Thunderbird than Postbox. Neither of these Mozilla forks will talk to MailSteward, which is the best mail database program I've found, which only talks to Mac Mail, which is a bloated pig that can't get out of its own way most of the time. And get this: it doesn't concatenate its queries. And you can't tell it how often to query. So if you've got 5 IMAP accounts on your Hostgator account and Mail decides to check every two minutes, that's 50 queries every 10 minutes. And if you have those same accounts on your iPhone, that's 100 queries every 10 minutes. And if you leave Mac Mail running on the tower while you go to work, that's 150 queries every 10 minutes. And only Mac Mail does this, and when you talk to Hostgator about the fact that your website keeps going down, they say "yeah, Mac Mail is so uncivilized that it effectively DDOSes your own server if you have more than a device or two talking to it. Better switch to something Mozilla. Or, you know, upgrade hosting to the $150 a month package." So on the Mac side, it has to do with the fact that the native app is bullshit and the 3rd party apps are half-assed. I mean, it's not like Mozilla gives a fuck about Thunderbird. Postbox is basically a Thunderbird haxie with not-very-good support but for an extra $10, it works better sometimes. And on the Android side, I get a real Ikea-like vibe - yeah, theoretically you can build Android into behaving like iOS, but the instructions are vague and you're missing a few parts, so you have to go back to the warehouse and fish through bins of picked-over bits to find the right screws to hold your hutch together. And that's how you end up with four different apps (6, if you include the archiving) just to check your goddamn email.
I just disabled notifications, took me a minute to figure it out, but the option is there in the settings. Granted we're probably on two entirely different versions...