A Positive Outlook
Microsoft got it right with their new, mobile version of Outlook.
If you’re as much of a productivity geek as I am, you might have tried a great iOS app called Acompli sometime in the past year. It was an email app that also included calendaring and basic contacts. And unlike most of these trendy “reinvent email” apps, it included support for Exchange, the backend of nearly every corporate email account in the world. Acompli was in essence a mobile version of Microsoft’s Outlook desktop app, at a time when there was no real mobile version of Outlook.
Microsoft apparently agreed, and a little under two months ago, bought out the company for around $200 million. Today, they released a new version of the app which they are calling Outlook for iOS. It’s basically Acompli with new branding, but since Acompli was one of, if not the best, mobile email client around, that’s fine by me. Microsoft is saying in this blog post that they are planning on iterating on the app quickly, adding new features on a weekly schedule.
Outlook for iOS is a universal app, so you can use it on both your iPhone and iPad. It features Mailbox-style swiping and snoozing of messages. You get lightning-fast push notifications for new mail, too (although this requires Microsoft to hold the passwords to your email accounts). And in contrast to many other email apps, Outlook lets you see and interact with your contacts and your calendar without jumping to a separate app. That comes in handy when you’re trying to schedule a meeting or grab someone’s number.
All in all, Outlook is the best email client on iOS. This morning, I saw a comment on Twitter to the effect that while it says it something interesting about Microsoft that email nerds with iPhones are trying out their app, it tells a deeper tale about Apple. I couldn’t agree more strongly. The built-in mail app on iOS just isn’t that great (nor, for that matter, is Apple Mail on Yosemite). It hasn’t been meaningfully updated in the past several versions of iOS, and still doesn’t have basic features like email snoozing. Apple has, quite simply, fallen behind in this area.
With more and more email every day, we need a better way to triage our messages and save time. Apple has yet to provide one, but thankfully Microsoft has stepped up. If you have an iPhone, I’d recommend giving Outlook a shot. It certainly helped me wrangle my inbox.
