Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

Post by grinich » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

adrianmacneil wrote: post #52

calgoo wrote: post #39

I wish they could open source Mailbox at least... That way it might survive. [1] "Will Mailbox be open-sourced? Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, but this is ultimately not something we will support." [1] https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/

I imagine Mailbox has a heavy server component, which would be non-trivial to get set up and running on your own.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

grinich wrote: post #76

jordigh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Nylas is headed towards this eventual doom too? I guess Mailpile isn't trying to be commercial, so perhaps it will keep soldiering on the power of donations for as long as that keeps up.

Hey there-- I work at Nylas. We've structured our business to... actually have a business. Our team spent the first year selling APIs to developers [1] which already power lots of paid apps. The N1 mail app we released two months ago[2] follows this and will have paid features next year. Plus both are open source free software, and quite popular on GitHub. [3] [1] https://nylas.com/features/ [2] https://nylas.com/n1…

Post by menacingly » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

nikolay wrote: post #47

TheBiv wrote: post #5

Here is more detail about Dropbox Paper: http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-paper-team-collab...

They will focus on Paper... until they decide to axe that, too , when they see they can't compete with Google. I think the axe-happy mentality sends the wrong signals when considering products. I'm not gonna use Paper, really, I'm gonna phase off Dropbox as well. I'm not happy they killed Carousel. It was a small simple product - maybe they need a couple of developers to keep it going. It doesn't have to be fancy. I…

Post by kirklove » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

racl101 wrote: post #61

bdotdub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there isn't enough money to be made to satisfy VC investors. Mailbox and the like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for apps with comfortable I'm not sure that's true (see: Sparrow). I just don't think there is enough demand for people to want to pay for an email client. I imagine for a huge majority of people, default mail client's work fine enough for personal use.

"I'm not sure that's true (see: Sparrow). I just don't think there is enough demand for people to want to pay for an email client." Yeah, this is definitely what I saw with Sparrow. For it to become popular it has to be adopted by a substantial number of people. However, I find that only really tech savvy people cared about Sparrow and its streamlined interface. When I showed it to other people, they were reluctant t…

Post by grinich » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

sethd wrote: post #42

schneidmaster wrote: post #3

Ugh. Yet another intriguing email startup being acquihired and killed off by a more-established tech company (see also: Sparrow). It's 2015 and I still bounce around email clients every couple months because all of the major options have substantial flaws.

Yeah, after Sparrow was killed off I switched to Airmail for OS X (currently using Airmail 2). It's not without flaws and I'm always keeping an eye on the options. On iOS I'm pretty happy with Microsoft Outlook (can't believe I just said that), I haven't found anything better yet. I do use multiple accounts extensively so that limits my choices to just those clients that support multiple accounts well (unified inbox,…