Is Mailbox (for Mac) the last email client you ever need?

Posted on August 20, 2014  •  2 minutes  • 362 words

tl;dr: No, hardly.

The much anticipated Mailbox app for Mac released its first public beta today. Too bad, it seems to me that Mailbox has failed to live up to the expectation.

Mailbox was originally released as an iOS app only. The design is very simple and elegant with an unique take on swiping/snoozes features. I’m a big fan of Mailbox for iOS and I’ve been waiting for Mailbox to release their Mac app companion ever since Sparrow abandoned.

I realize that this is just the first public beta release so there are obvious many kinks that need to work out. I just don’t like the direction Mailbox for Mac is going.

The iOS version is simple and I prefer it to be stay that way. When I check my emails in the morning on my phone, my workflow is like:

• act on it if i can finish it within 5 minutes.

• archive it there is nothing to do and no further action required.

• select Later if there’s action needed to be done but cannot be done rightaway.

• repeat the process.

On my computer, however, I expect many more features than just that. Being acquired by Dropbox earlier, I at least hope that feature like using Dropbox for attachment would be available on day 1. Ever since Sparrow introduces that feature, it’s been one of my must-have feature in an email client. You have complete control over the attachment even if the email is already sent. I can even delete it if I regret after clicking send. I can even update the file without resending the email.

The email composer is seriously lack of features. No markdown, no HTML, no quoting whatsoever. Just pure plaintext. Simplicity is good but it’s no excuse for the lack of features.

The UI looks modern but definitely not my thing. It’s way too bright and the contrast is too low for my taste. And there’s no preferences to customize the UI. You’re stucked with the default.

I will stick with Airmail for now. With some little tweaks, Airmail can look pretty decent and quite feature-complete for me. It’s the closest thing to Sparrow I can find.