Why are (iOS) email apps so bad?

This would be an absolute dealbreaker for me.

I’d just like better filing - with the Machine Learning capabilities now built into iOS devices and M1 Macs, there’s no reason Mail should only suggest a single folder and leave you to pick a folder otherwise.

A bit OT. I remember listened on a Podcast (either one of Relay’s or MacStories’) that Mail.app on iOS used to be very unreliable in slow connection. The issue fixed because one of Apple executives tried to read and reply important email in airport, but they fail to do so because of super slow internet connection.

I tried Googling & DDGing for related article but cannot find one. Can someone confirm that my memory serves me well? :grin:

I’m totally with you on that one. (though for me mail.app works perfectly fine)

Problem might be though that people interested in these forums are probably a (very very) small subset of the people using Apple devices. And for the very large majority the mail apps are completely fine.

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As always, each to their own. :grinning:

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if Apple would just make attachments work in Mail the way they do in third-party clients, that would solve one significant gripe many have with the stock app. Since there’s been no word of any such change since WWDC ’21, looks like the Monterey version will continue down the same odd-duck path as its predecessors where attachment-handling is concerned.

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I reread my comment and decided that it’s somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not I’m in agreement with you. Just for the sake of clarity, I very much am :slight_smile: (In some cases, the kind of arrangement you’re describing is actually in violation of the terms of service of the aggregated service(s).)

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This is a bit off-topic, but I’ve been wondering how many users sync their mail with iCloud?

From what I’ve been able to find it appears that Mail.app and Gmail.app are the most used IOS email clients with approximately 33% and 32% respectively of the market.

Could the lack of “advanced” email clients be due to the fact that most people are happy with whatever comes on their phone/computer and the rest use what their company requires them to use?

If so, maybe there’s not enough money to be made fighting for the scraps that are left?

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That’s certainly all true, but there is a market for more advanced apps, as is the very subject of this thread. My list of features was initially answering to this remark:

Don’t know what more to expect from it.

Now maybe this market isn’t big enough indeed. But it’s not zero. :slightly_smiling_face:

It certainly has to be bigger than the market for email apps that turn email into “chat” or the market for apps that simply organize all conversations by sender

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And if I’m reading the chart correctly, counting Mac and iPad in addition to the iPhone, 45% are using Apple Mail. Add Gmail for another 32%+ one has 77% on either Apple Mail or Gmail. Outlook at 9% we are at 86% using Apple Mail, Gmail, or Outlook (or some combination thereof). That doesn’t leave much market left.

I was working for a Fortune 50 company when I set up the first email server in our division in the early '90s. Since then I’ve seen email go from an exciting new tool to the biggest productivity killer in most companies.

Seems like the only thing that helps is for companies to reduce their dependence on email. Until that happens it’s likely the best email client in the world will only be a “lukewarm” glass of water to someone in hell (to paraphrase Steve Jobs). I wish you and @ryanjamurphy luck in your search.

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Thank you!
I 100% agree that email is an evil that paralyzes many corporations (and individuals). Still, it remains a necessary evil… so yeah, it’s exactly that, the lukewarm glass of water as the least worst solution.

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This is actually a practice I’ve tried a few times, but I keep failing at it. Too often I’ve checked something on my phone, and then I can’t find it later on the desktop. And it ends up being weird in search, too, because I can’t remember if I’ve deleted it altogether or just archived it, and “current” or “all” mailboxes tends to be a crapshoot.

But it might also be my problem because I keep my gmail and office365 mail both in mail.app, and I should probably do like @imyke is doing and silo them out by account.

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I used to use Canary and was thinking of trying them again to see if they’d fixed any of the issues I ran into.

What was the issue with Canary? Privacy is/was a big part of their pitch.

I guess the Read-Tracking feature. That feature embeds a small image that if displayed will tell the sender you have read that email.

I like Canary because of easy PGP integration, but not the pixel tracking feature.

You’ve always been able to turn that feature off, and it looks like you still can. I’m guessing he’s referring to something else in this situation. But if that’s it, as long as it truly does turn it off, I can live with that.

I went looking for the source about Canary around the usual forums, but it’s actually right under our noses.

The item that annoyed me was that they had people manually reading and reviewing emails. I left Edison for that reason (although they had other issues too).

The third-party server for Push email doesn’t affect my decision because every third party app needs to do that for Gmail (and others?).
I use Spark and my hope is that Readdle is profitable enough with their subscriptions and team offerings that they don’t need to do this advertising invasion themselves.

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Thanks for finding that. I could have sworn I searched these forums about Canary, but I guess not.

Not too thrilled with those practices. Maybe they’re standard practices now, or innocuous, but it doesn’t sit well with me.

Thanks again. Think I’ll stick with mail.app for awhile longer.

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