Mailbox, the new iPhone email app, launched today. Like a few hundred thousand others, I’m still waiting my turn in line to sign in and start using it.
Gentry Underwood, founder and CEO of the company behind Mailbox, said in an interview with The Tech Block last month:
We started [our] company on the realization that people use email as a terrible to-do list. We thought that maybe if we created a to-do list with built-in communication we could side-step this problem. After launching and looking at what was working (and what wasn’t) we discovered that even our most hard-core users still had inboxes filled with tasks. We were trying to figure out how best to solve this problem when we realized the opportunity lied in swapping our ‘solution’ on its head: rather than build a to-do list with email-like communication, why not transform the inbox in which that communication already lived into something more organized and easily manageable?
For his review at The Verge, Ellis Hamburger titled his article: “Mailbox just fixed email on the iPhone —
How a startup outdid both Apple and Google in one fell swoop”. That is a massive statement right there. Got iPhone email troubles? Not any more.
I’m not pre-sold on Mailbox, just yet. In part because I check email on my iPhone the least of anywhere else (I keep Mail on my second Home screen). Also because the whole idea of deferring an email until later, doesn’t yet click with me, nor is it how I manage my email. But nevertheless, I’m certainly intrigued.