A few replies (and past discussions) have mentioned some very valid points that are worth resurfacing:
- Email itself is broken; as a protocol/format, it was not designed with modern day uses in mind; and
- My own approach to email is probably flawed, and I should fall in love with the annoying knocking sound1 and get on with it
I don’t disagree with these ideas. However, I submit to the floor that some recent apps have shown that there’s a lot more that can be done with email clients. A brief overview of some of the exciting things I’ve seen recently:
Airmail’s automation hooks
Airmail offers amazing customizability. On iOS especially, it is trivial to set up a swipe action that does any number of things with the swiped message/conversation, including using URL schemes to share data from them to e.g., Shortcuts. I use this to quickly add contacts to contact groups. I use server-side rules to then filter messages from those groups into particular inboxes.
Postbox’s Topics
Somehow Postbox’s implementation of Topics is the most elegant “tags” design I’ve seen in email. It is very clean, navigable, and easy to use.
Postbox’s composition goals
Postbox offers a simple time tracker for each message you compose. This is a neat way to try to get you to get into and out of email faster.
Hey’s Focus and Reply
I would love to have Hey’s Focus and Reply UX on other clients. It creates a clean, minimalist way of replying to a bunch of conversations in sequence.
Tempo’s Focus Mode
Very similar to Hey’s Focus and Reply, Tempo offered a Focus Mode that let you batch-process messages one at a time.
Image credit: TechCrunch
Hey’s Screener
The Screener was arguably the most popular feature from Hey. It makes sure that the messages that are most emphasized are part of real conversations that deserve your attention.
I have created a Screener-like UX with Airmail custom actions and Fastmail rules. It works, but Airmail’s kludgy nature makes it a little awkward.
Surely there are other email innovations that I haven’t captured above.
I guess it’s easy to complain about email. Really, there are some interesting things happening.
The trouble is that each client comes with brutal trade-offs. Airmail’s powerful, but untrustworthy (from a glitchy perspective, not a data/privacy one, IMO). A bunch of great clients are macOS-only. A bunch of great clients only work with certain services. And so on. From my perspective, “all I want” should be easy, but what we’re getting is a variety of exciting options that are incompatible with one another.
Damned competition. Maybe we should socialize email apps?
Alas, this thread was a good reminder of something: when I last reviewed my approach to email, I had a Mac Mini. My away-from-desk option was an iPad Pro. At the time, I tried a “let’s only use a Mac for email” philosophy, but was quickly limited by my Mac mini’s annoying lack of portability.
I haven’t revisited that idea since. Yet, now I have a laptop again. I may try uninstalling most email options from my iPad/iPhone and sticking to the Mac (and probably Postbox) once again…
^1:
(Dang. Can’t embed Apple Music iFrames. For shame.)