Exciting. Where's the source?
Please read the website a bit better! "SECURE EMAIL CLIENT FOR MAC AND IPHONE"
It's a secure e-mail client, so they can't release the source! /s
Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#22At this point, I'm just happy there is a new email client that isn't storing anything on the third party servers. Good for Canary and I'll give it a try.
Email client economics are tough, you need some sort of service-like revenue associated with it or you sell your customers data in order to have a sustainable business. I hope canary has something non-evil figured out, the client looks nice.
Considering the amount of the personal data still going through email, this is one of the few areas that no one should be giving up to any third party services, regardless of the benefits it may provide.
Encryption with you owning the key is a requirement if it is going to be stored on a third party service. You can provide a subscription model for the server costs if need be.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#23I regret to say it but I loathe their website. That sort of ultra-sparse modernist UI, where text and links are visually indistinguishable, informational text is spartan, and images are minimal and compressed is not helpful. Having to download and test a program or go read reviews to get a basic sense of UI is off putting. For software where UI is in fact a major part of the value offering, that's particularly concerning.
Having said that, sometimes this can be overcome by virtue of a killer app, and Canary Mail may have one in the form of PGP for iOS. For whatever reason despite iOS's strong overall security narrative and use by people concerned about security, and despite native S/MIME being available since IIRC iOS 5.0, there has been a curious lack of PGP availability in any alternate iOS mail client. I say curious because email clients are one of those areas where it is very hard to get people away from the overall functional native one, so uncovered features that a niche user base will find extremely compelling matter more then in other kinds of software. Lack of PGP with iOS has network effects in that these days email that can only be read via a PC OS and is unreadable on mobile is pretty hard to accept. If Canary has no utterly breaking flaws then PGP support would make me at least take a hard look, including buying a copy purely for evaluation purposes whether I ultimately use it or not.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#24I want this to be awesome... but I'm also terrified of applications that tell me they are secure with no proof. Can you provide some additional information to quell my fears? Perhaps information on a third party auditor?
I completely agree, design so often disguise missing security. I want this to be good but am lacking a security audit or open source.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#25At this point, I'm just happy there is a new email client that isn't storing anything on the third party servers. Good for Canary and I'll give it a try.
Email client economics are tough, you need some sort of service-like revenue associated with it or you sell your customers data in order to have a sustainable business. I hope canary has something non-evil figured out, the client looks nice.
They actually mention in the FAQ [1] that once they officially release their apps there will be a free and a paid version.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#26I keep trying these (Canary, Polymail, Spark, Airmail), and they all disappoint in some way, and I always end up going back to trusty old Apple Mail.
One big point for me: Except for Airmail, none of the new "minimalist" mail apps do plaintext. They all force you to send as HTML. I would love for "rich" email to work, but it's not nice the way current clients do it. In particular, I think it's incredibly presumptuous for the sender to specify which font the recipient should read the text in.
My favourite mail client ever was Sparrow, until Google killed it.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#27Does it work offline, like when I'm on the subway or a plane?
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#28How does read-tracking work (a feature I don't even want) with a client-only email solution like this?
Making an assumption from the FAQ.
When you send the email it generates a unique hash it places a tracking pixel (1x1 transparent gif image) served off a canary mail server into the email with that hash. For a period your client queries them for the a yes/no on if that tracking pixel with the hash has been downloaded.
That is typically how email marketing platforms do it, and it appears to be consistent with the FAQ.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#29My kingdom for an email client that works well with gmail, works offline, is fast, supports editing in an external editor and lets me quickly skim email.
Re: Canary Mail – Smart Email Client for Mac and iOS with PGP Support
#30I keep trying these (Canary, Polymail, Spark, Airmail), and they all disappoint in some way, and I always end up going back to trusty old Apple Mail. One big point for me: Except for Airmail, none of the new "minimalist" mail apps do plaintext. They all force you to send as HTML. I would love for "rich" email to work, but it's not nice the way current clients do it. In particular, I think it's incredibly presumptuous…
I feel like you're me. I've the exact same experiences and I keep trying something else but they fall flat and often miss some basic (important) features. Always going back to Apple mail.