Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox' • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'

#151

Post by dewey » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

hayyyyydos wrote: post #125

dewey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has a bit of a "I can build Dropbox with a bunch of shell scripts over the weekend" vibe. I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that. How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client? Manually moving things to the IMAP Inbox and which then marks them as whitelisted somehow? You could probably build that with a bunch of hacks but you'll not get a polished consumer friendly feature out of that. They are…

> How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client? Manually moving things to the IMAP Inbox and which then marks them as whitelisted somehow? That's exactly how you'd do it, and the functionality definitely exists - all handled on the server side. See: learning spam from ham by dragging to/from the spam folder. https://wiki.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/IMAPSieve

I wasn't trying to say that this method would be hard or impossible to build, but it's hard to use for the average user. Moving mails around on mobile apps is already annoying enough (At least in the iOS Mail.app)

Re: Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'

#152

Post by rockwotj » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #113

agloeregrets wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s all super fair, but they also argue this direction allows them to innovate as well. Notably, their direction resembles a rails approach and lets the server do more work. (Because Hey is instead just a standard API client, whereas the client can tell the server things that you just can’t do with IMAP.) I imagine with the Apple situation they are working on adding support currently however, even if it’s reduced.…

> They need an iOS plan B. I hope they don't. Apple needs to feel the pain their evil and immoral behaviour is inflicting on the world. In a perfect world, the government would force them to behave ethically. Absent that, Hey's stance here is the next best thing. If folks like Basecamp don't start standing up to Apple, then nothing stops Apple from just outright killing the majority of mobile software development. An…

> In a perfect world, the government would force them to behave ethically. Absent that, Hey's stance here is the next best thing.

In a perfect world there is a good enough iPhone competitor that would force Apple to behave better because otherwise companies wouldn't build apps on their platform.

Re: Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'

#153

Post by zimpenfish » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

dewey wrote: post #117

zimpenfish wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their whole "filtering everything out until you whitelist the sender" approach Unless I'm missing something about what they're doing, this is a basic SIEVE script that filters anything not explicitly whitelisted into a folder.

This has a bit of a "I can build Dropbox with a bunch of shell scripts over the weekend" vibe. I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that. How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client? Manually moving things to the IMAP Inbox and which then marks them as whitelisted somehow? You could probably build that with a bunch of hacks but you'll not get a polished consumer friendly feature out of that. They are…

> How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client?

If I were building it for my parents, I'd say "anything in Pending/Held/StrangerDanger that you flag will be whitelisted and will be in the Inbox from then on".

Flagging a message on iOS Mail is pretty straightforward - swipe+tap or long-press+tap+tap and easy enough conceptually as a "this is good" action, I think?

Backend picks up the flag change, adds the address to the inbox, strips the flag, and moves that message to the inbox.

Add "move it to junk to undo the whitelisting" for completion (also easy on iOS Mail).

Perhaps not as polished as writing a custom app to do it, no, but it seems fairly consumer friendly to me?

Re: Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'

#154

Post by alecbenzer » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 3:42 AM UTC

pletsch wrote: post #143

alecbenzer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing on hey for a sec: I understand that some people might prefer a system where they can take various components and combine them how they like best, in the same way some people like to cook their own meals. But what's weird is this sense of anger at products that aren't as flexible. It's like being upset that a new restaurant opened up because they have a set menu and don't let you make your own food. If you li…

Counter point: Hey is asking you to commit for a year, if I was going to the same restaurant every day for a year, assuming the other ingredients are on the menu elsewhere, I would expect being able to make substitutions and change meals up a bit.

I think the metaphor starts to break down a bit here because variety is usually specifically desirable when it comes to food, but not really when it comes to email or any app's workflow.

Re: Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'

#155

Post by wdr1 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

knowledge-clay wrote: post #70

HEY looked interesting until I found out they don't support IMAP. When I think about the problems with email, I don't think primarily about the interface, but about the fact that the open standards on which it is based are increasingly being ignored.

Ironically, adding it would also fix their Apple store woes.