Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

swiftmail.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 104 posts

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#81

Post by knr2345 »

outcoldman wrote: post #35

It is very interesting, but there are plenty of stoppers for me: 1. Subscription model. I will be willing to pay even $250 for a good email client, that is superior to the native macOS client. If it really adds more features that I need. Meaning, I can use mostly all the email related features offered by Fastmail. But I am not willing to support subscription models. 2. No iOS client. I use email on macOS and iOS. Not…

Thanks for following up below to update some these points. Just want to touch on a few, if I may:

2. An iOS client is planned going forward. The first few iterations of Swift Mail were actually deployed to both iOS & macOS, so there's quite a bit of shared platform code in place already when the time is right. I have a visionOS build up and running already as well, which I think bodes well for that effort.

3. (Trials do exist, as you mentioned below)

4. Swift Mail does provide support for mailto link handling, and it can be set as the default macOS mail client as well. I'm not familiar with linking from Reminders or Notes directly to the Mail app, however, so can't speak to that workflow at the moment.

Any and all feedback is appreciated & encouraged though so please don't hesitate to reach out as needed.

Note - that roadmap is not valid and was meant to be deactivated long ago after I cancelled my subscription during the beta (great experience but couldn't automate release notes with Xcode Cloud). A replacement roadmap and feedback portal should be back online very soon at that same link, however.

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#82

Post by knr2345 »

outcoldman wrote: post #42
outcoldman wrote: post #35

It is very interesting, but there are plenty of stoppers for me: 1. Subscription model. I will be willing to pay even $250 for a good email client, that is superior to the native macOS client. If it really adds more features that I need. Meaning, I can use mostly all the email related features offered by Fastmail. But I am not willing to support subscription models. 2. No iOS client. I use email on macOS and iOS. Not…

Actually, spoke too soon. There is a trial. 7 days trial for annual subscription, 3 days trial for monthly. But I was right about that being MVP/Alpha product: 1. No reply button to email. You can only compose a new mail message. 2. I have received new mail, got notification, but don't see it in the list (inbox). You need to restart the mail client to do so. 3. No images are displayed in the message body. 4. The inte…

A few of these are not correct.

1. Reply button is below the sender's profile symbol in the thread message header.

2. Thank you for the feedback on activating the notification. This should work as anticipated but it's been quite some time since I received feedback related to notification behaviors so I'll certainly take a look.

3. Images and remote content are blocked by default (similar to Mail.app); clicking the 'photo' button (next to the Flag button) in the message header will reveal these images.

4. Expanding threads by clicking in thread message header white space would be a welcome addition and feature request. I'll add this to the planned feature list. Expansion via body content click will require a bit more investigation, however.

Appreciate the detailed feedback!

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#84

Post by knr2345 »

berkut wrote: post #29

Getting a Bandwidth Restricted error: Bandwidth Restricted The page you have tried to access is not available because the owner of the file you are trying to access has exceeded our short term bandwidth limits. Please try again shortly.

Thanks! This should be resolved soon.

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#86

Post by malshe »

mk89 wrote: post #48

So much criticism. People, have fun developing stuff for free or for little to no money while having to support a shitload of OS versions and possibly multi-device, multiple framework versions, bugs, people sinking your app on the App Store if you don't react or whatever. 3 dollars per month are nothing IF the app is useful. Email is literally the thing you use the most. Why 3 and not 1 or 5? Maybe 3 dollars are just…

And if paid annually it's just $25.

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#87

Post by knr2345 »

amluto wrote: post #19

Does this work offline? Fastmail’s first party iOS app has such an amazing lack of offline functionality that I’m seriously considering canceling my Fastmail subscription. (Also the lack of threading is getting old.)

Swift Mail currently offers partial offline support.

It doesn't provide full offline support by keeping a complete cached copy of all mail data on disk, as an IMAP client might. Any content received from the server will remain accessible offline and during subsequent app launches.

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#88

Post by outcoldman »

knr2345 wrote: post #82
outcoldman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, spoke too soon. There is a trial. 7 days trial for annual subscription, 3 days trial for monthly. But I was right about that being MVP/Alpha product: 1. No reply button to email. You can only compose a new mail message. 2. I have received new mail, got notification, but don't see it in the list (inbox). You need to restart the mail client to do so. 3. No images are displayed in the message body. 4. The inte…

A few of these are not correct. 1. Reply button is below the sender's profile symbol in the thread message header. 2. Thank you for the feedback on activating the notification. This should work as anticipated but it's been quite some time since I received feedback related to notification behaviors so I'll certainly take a look. 3. Images and remote content are blocked by default (similar to Mail.app); clicking the 'p…

These are just a few issues discovered opening the app for 5 minutes. I wish you and the product all the best. And I will be happy to try it again later.

But at this point, I just don't see myself paying a subscription for an MVP/alpha product, with so many visible bugs, and not working (or not intuitive) basic features.

- Clicking a button for every message to see images is a weird decision, to be honest. I understand some people are more paranoid. But both Mail.app and Fastmail web client provide features for privacy to hide your IP for loading images. There are I guess some WebKit context menus, which suggest that I can download the image or open the image in a new window, and when I click it - nothing happens.

- You are right, there is a reply button. Just not where I expected it, considering I was expecting the same behavior/view as Mail.app. But even that - another bug / unexpected behavior - the reply email (From) chosen first from the list, but not the same email account that received the email. Say I received an email on support@example.com, and when I click Reply - the From account is selected to myaccount@fastmail.fm.

- I don't see any ability to attach inline images to messages. Drag and drop of the image from Finder to the Compose does not work. I see that I can attach documents to the messages, but don't see the ability to create inline messages.

So at this point. I already wasted a trial period to see that the state of the app in a very early alpha/beta. I would call it alpha because I believe there are many basic features are still missing. And it is definitely beta because some basic features don't even work, like lists don't update when I receive new emails.

I am sorry. It is just too early. I can't try again later in a few months, assuming you will release some updates soon. Which is very disappointing. I will give it another try, when I see it again, maybe mentioned somewhere else.

Really wish you actually had a TestFlight first to build the app to v1 and collect feedback. I do feel like there is a good potential of the app. And despite even that I really hate the subscription models, I went ahead and gave your app a try.

Re: Show HN: Swift Mail. Fastmail's modern mail standard delivered natively on macOS

#89

Post by EspadaV9 »

szundi wrote: post #47
Longlius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription models are cancer. Sell me a license for a flat cost and stop wasting my time.

Quite simplistic view of the world. Of course when the company or guy selling the stuff has a rough sales period, he exits and your software that you love is over. Or you can pay subscription, stable revenues, everyone is happy.

Or, the company closes and you keep using the version of the software that you bought X years ago for $30 and were perfectly happy with. If you want to upgrade it's on the company to continue improving the product with new features that are worthwhile investing in, rather than adding stuff no one cares about, with forced upgrades, or worse, doesn't improve the product at all, and you're stuck paying everything month for the same thing.
Post reply on HN