Sorry, But I Like Apple Email
I have been coming across a lot of tweets and articles about the demise of Mailbox. People have been expressing how upset they are and how they feel like there is no perfect replacement for Mailbox out there.
Over the years, I have been a loyal user of Apple Mail. I did try Mailbox a while ago but immediately switched back to Apple’s email client.
Apple Email surely is not the perfect client. It lacks some features (like snooze) that Mailbox had. But, I still feel Apple Email is the best client for me. I have shopped around and used various clients like Spark, Handle & Google Inbox.
Yes, each of them is better than Apple Email at some things in terms of functionality. But, none of them feels native.
They don’t fit my natural flow of doing things on my iPhone. Once I got past the honeymoon phase of using these shinier clients, I find myself getting back to the old and natural Apple’s very own email client. Apple could surely improve it on various aspects like introducing the snooze feature that most people loved about Mailbox.
We all use our emails clients tremendously daily. Sometimes, more than we would like to admit. Now, when it is something that we use so much daily, I would like that experience to feel natural. Apple email feels intuitive. Not many features or buttons or settings to worry about or fumble with. Its plain. You open it, you read your emails, you respond, you exit. Nice and easy. For me “snoozing” is essentially marking an email as unread. I know this is not the best and most efficient practice. But, Apple has a way of hooking its users to its simplicity and not functionality. It feels Apple-y if that makes sense.
I think of Apple Email’s comparison with other email clients in terms of iOS’s relation with Android. I surely enjoyed Android for a couple months. Its functionality and customization seemed phenomenal. But, the honeymoon phase wore off. I craved simplicity. I did not want to think much and give much conscious thought to things that I inevitably use daily.
That being said, there are some upcoming email clients that I am excited about. I am currently testing the Alpha version of PolyMail on my Mac. They dont have a mobile app yet. I am not sure why they did not go mobile-first. But they timed their Alpha launch perfectly. It has gotten over 2450 upvotes on Product Hunt. The public beta is not even out yet. It has a neat interface. It feels like Slack for emails from a design perspective. It has capitalized on everything (notably swiping & snoozing) that Mailbox had. I think most Mailbox users are jumping on this service.
Another upcoming client that I think will make some waves for certain user group is MailTime. It’s currently going through YC. It’s a messenger but for emails. With the current explosion of chat messengers, MailTime leverages the trend of “chatting” in its email service. It has everything that Mailbox offered and much more. It’s mobile app has a neat interface. It is appealing but I am not going to switch over just yet.
Both Polymail and Mailtime will undergo lots of changes in the upcoming months as they compete with the incumbents like Outlook and Google Inbox in the emailing space. I look forward to what they have in store for us.
Until then, I am surely sticking to my Apple Email. :)
