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Posts tagged with "email"

Email to 2Do→

2Do is the task manager I’ve been using since August. I’m planning to write about it – the app is just so feature-rich, I’m still exploring all its possibilities. In the meantime, 2Do’s developer has announced today an optional $2.99 add-on that will soon enable 2Do users to capture emails directly from the app.

Email to 2Do is an optional one-time-only purchasable add-on that you’ll be able to buy ($2.99) and configure in zero time, starting v3.8. For those unconvinced, we’re so sure you’ll love it that it’ll come with a free trial period of 14 days (which other iOS app does that?). The possibilities are endless. You could create a special email address for 2Do and remotely forward or send emails to this address for 2Do to pick up behind the scenes and convert to tasks. You could even use this with IFTTT! Currently we plan on supporting all major IMAP service providers, including but not limited to: iCloud, Google, Outlook, Yahoo! and of course your very own custom IMAP server.

2Do has always remained true to its core goals – which has been to provide you with tools that work with services you choose for yourself, not the other way round. 2Do syncs with the service you’re comfortable with, and will now integrate seamlessly with an email address from your service provider of choice.

No todo app has ever really perfected the email capturing experience – the disconnect between email clients and apps on iOS is too big to overcome it with URL schemes or IFTTT workarounds. 2Do’s email feature sounds like an integrated approach – an actual email plugin into the app that checks for messages saved in a certain way, transforming them to tasks.

I’m curious to check this out. In the meantime, you can request access to the beta here.

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Dispatch 3.0 Brings iPad App, Improvements to Actions and Snippets

Dispatch has long been one of the most powerful email clients for iPhone. Originally released by Clean Shaven Apps in 2013, Dispatch took a unique approach at managing email by relying on integrations with third-party apps, online services, and text snippets. In a pre-extensibility world, Dispatch was the only email client for iOS that could work alongside your todo or calendar app of choice, turning messages into actionable items that could talk to other apps on your device.

As more and more “modern” email clients started using proprietary server-side features for smart processing and limited external integrations, Dispatch augmented email on iPhone with the power of third-party apps. Even after iOS 8 and extensions, the team at Clean Shaven Apps didn’t lose its focus: in addition to custom integrations, Dispatch was quickly updated to support the native share sheet so you’d have the best of both worlds.

Dispatch for iPhone had app integrations, advanced reply options, and little touches that made it a superior option for power users who wanted more than Apple Mail. With one major caveat: Dispatch didn’t have an iPad app.

This is changing today with version 3.0 of Dispatch, released on the App Store as a Universal update that adds a proper iPad counterpart designed to take advantage of the bigger screen for even faster email management and triaging.

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Spark Review: Smart Email

I’ve had a complicated relationship with email over the years. Part of the problem has been the Sisyphean effort of third-party apps that tried to modernize email: the more developers attempted to reinvent it, the more antiquated standards, platform limitations, and economic realities kept dragging them down. I’ve seen email clients for iOS rise and fall (and be abandoned); I’ve tried many apps that promised to bring email in the modern age of mobile and cloud services but that ultimately just replaced existing problems with new ones. Sparrow. Dispatch. Mailbox. CloudMagic. Outlook. Each one revolutionary and shortsighted in its own way, always far from the utopia of email reinvention on mobile.

Spark by Readdle, a new email app for iPhone released today, wants to enhance email with intelligence and flexibility. To achieve this, Readdle has built Spark over the past eighteen months on top of three principles: heuristics, integrations, and personalization. By combining smart features with thoughtful design, Readdle is hoping that Spark won’t make you dread your email inbox, knowing that an automated system and customizable integrations will help you process email faster and more enjoyably.

I’ve been using Spark for the past three weeks, and it’s the most versatile email client for iPhone I’ve ever tried. It’s also fundamentally limited and incomplete, with a vision that isn’t fully realized yet but promising potential for the future.

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Managing Team Tasks with IFTTT, Slack, and Todoist

I recently decided that I wanted to overhaul the way I deal with email pitches (new apps, hardware accessories, web services, etc.) and I set out to find a solution that would allow me to broadcast an email to my team without having to forward more emails.

The problem:

  • Most email pitches are sent to my personal email address, which teammates can’t access;
  • I can’t stop developers and PR people from sending messages to my personal address;
  • I go through email every day, and I carefully handpick what I would like to see covered on MacStories;
  • I used to forward every email to individual members of our team, duplicating attachments and using conversations as a tracking system to remember who’s interested in covering what;
  • Inboxes got overcrowded, I couldn’t easily keep track of pitches assigned to someone else, and everybody was unhappy.

For years, I envisioned a system that, with one tap, would allow me to put an email message in a folder and forget about it, while it would still be broadcasted to my team so that others could take it into consideration. After weeks of experiments, I chose to leverage web automation and two tools I already use for todo management and team communication: Todoist and Slack.

The solution I landed on is remarkably simple, but it took a while to get it just right and work around a few unexpected bugs.

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CloudMagic Adds Share Extension, Share Sheets in Email Messages

CloudMagic, an email client I mentioned in my article on Mail and extensions on iOS 8, has been updated today with a share extension and support for saving messages elsewhere with share sheets.

I use CloudMagic on the iPad because I need an email client capable of saving messages to Todoist. With the update, CloudMagic gains support for any app that provides an action/share extension, and, for the most part, everything works well. From the app, I can now save message text to Clips, the native Todoist extension, Drafts, and NoteBox. There are some inconsistencies (some apps insert data received by CloudMagic in the wrong field of their extension; subject lines aren’t always used to fill title fields), but it’s a solid start.

The share extension is also a nice addition. You can bring it up in Safari to send a webpage over email, use it in the Photos app to attach an image to a new message, and, in general, you can rely on it as a replacement for Mail system sharing (too bad it can’t save drafts).

CloudMagic is free on the App Store.

iOS 8, Email, and Extensions

One of my biggest frustrations with iOS 8 so far is the lack of extension support in Apple’s Mail app. As I wrote in iOS 8 Changed How I Work on My iPhone and iPad:

I’m disappointed to see a lack of extension support in Apple’s own apps, and particurlarly in Mail. It just makes sense, in my opinion, to be able to turn messages into tasks or archived documents, but Apple hasn’t integrated extensions with Mail yet.

My feelings haven’t changed since September and, in fact, Mail’s non-existent sharing capabilities have been exacerbated by my move towards a more iPad-centric workflow after upgrading to an iPad Air 2. I’ve been working from my iPad Air 2 on a daily basis for the past two weeks, and the friction in Apple’s Mail app has led me to use other email clients simply because they came up with their own implementation of action and share extensions for email messages.

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Mailbox Launches Public Beta for Mac→

Announced back in April, Mailbox for Mac is out today as a public beta for those who signed up to receive access. Ellis Hamburger has a preview for The Verge:

Mailbox still has plenty of work to do, even on the homefront. There are lots of bugs in the Mailbox for Mac beta, and there are still more email services to add like Exchange and Yahoo, which Underwood says his team is thinking about. But, much as Sparrow did before it, Mailbox is paving the way towards a future where email works faster, syncs instantly between all your devices, and just acts more like the other modern communication apps we use today.

From the preview, Mailbox for Mac already looks pretty great. The “snooze to device” feature sounds genius, and I like the fact that everything (including drafts) sync fast across devices.

Unfortunately, Mailbox is another app I can’t use on a daily basis. The app is still limited to iCloud and Gmail, whereas our email runs on IMAP and Exchange. It’s not clear whether Mailbox will support IMAP in the future, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Gmail.

Mailbox is also using a “betacoin” system to handle access to the beta: users who got an invitation today received three images of golden coins, which they can share with other users to let them use the beta.

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Dispatch 2.0 Adds Folder Access, Unsubscribe Shortcut, Refreshed UI

Dispatch, an email client with support for actions and snippets that I first reviewed in June 2013 and followed for the past year, has been updated today to version 2.0, which brings a refreshed interface and welcome improvements to navigation. I stopped using Dispatch (replacing it with Boxer) when I realized that I needed to be able to browse my folders and have fast search across my mailboxes, but I’m going to put version 2.0 back on my Home screen thanks to today’s changes.

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