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Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#191

Post by microtonal »

StrLght wrote: post #25
SingAlong wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking the same. Uninstalled it after reading the news. The "free up phone space" feature was too good on my phone (old and limited space)

If you want to migrate somewhere else - Google Photos for Android was updated recently with this feature and it was announced for iOS to come soon.

Well, if you are worried about cancelled apps and platforms, Google Photos is probably not a good bet. They went from Picasa to Google+ Photos to Google Photos. In every transition, features were lost that people relied on...

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#192

Post by snewman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #127
exelius wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VC is generally designed for big bets and big payoffs (invest in 10 risky bets in the hope that 1 pays off to cover your losses on the other 9). Less risky ventures with smaller payoffs take longer to grow, and don't satisfy the payoff requirements of the VC model. That doesn't mean they're bad companies, but there's definitely a funding gap for the type of company that will require $3M in investment up front and be…

VCs themselves aren't the problem. Big bets are fine. The problem is acquihiring. It's: - good for founders - they get a big fat paycheck and a chance for a job in a big company - good for VCs - a payoff, even if small, is better than no payoff at all, so they want their 9 not-so-good startups to be bought - good for the buying company - they can literally just kill the competition by throwing money at them, + they g…

This may be a contrarian view, but: I'm not convinced it's good for the buying company. Good engineers are hard to find, but this is an awfully expensive way to hire; you may not keep the good people for very long; and if you're the kind of company that has a really hard time hiring good people, you may not also be very good at getting engagement and productivity out of the people you acquihired.

My view on acquihires is that to some extent it's a trick the acquiring company plays on itself. Some manager is getting to hire a few good people using money (the acquisitions budget) they wouldn't otherwise have access to.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#193

Post by bdcravens »

mbesto wrote: post #157
untog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point. Silicon Valley rewards "go big or go bust", it doesn't reward "small, sustainable business". I don't for a second blame the founders of Mailbox for doing what they did. When the market creates a strong set of incentives like this you can't really expect anyone to do anything other than take the $100m. But this is the side-effect.

But this totally negates your point about "there isn't enough money in an email app". Clearly Dropbox thought there was at least a $100MM opportunity...either talent to produce $100MM+ in value, customers to convert into $100MM+ value, or staving off competition that would result in $100MM in potential loss.

By the same logic not shutting it down would result in greater than a $100M loss.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#194

Post by duaneb »

azinman2 wrote: post #152
cbhl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Webmail is way too ubiquitous for desktop email software to be worth the million dollars a year it costs to hire five bay-area software developers to build and maintain it. I imagine Dropbox would have kept it around if it saw more user traction, but it didn't. Inbox by GMail has some of the ideas from the Sparrow team incorporated in it, but it's only really usable on mobile. (The desktop Inbox web app is awfully sl…

I still love Apple Mail... and it's native. In fact I think it's the best email platform out there currently, although I haven't tried N1 yet. I'd like Inbox-like features theoretically, but the fundamental UX/UI is done better than anyone else IMHO.

The inbox-like features ARE the fundamenatal UX/UI. I don't want a mail client, I want a gmail client, and IMAP/POP3 are terrible replacements.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#196

Post by downtide »

Spooky23 wrote: post #139
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.

Everyone want to "fix" email, and replace it with some proprietary bullshit. Email isn't broken.

Like many things, clients could do with some usability enhancements. E.g. encrypted mail. Without which, I find it off-putting.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#197

Post by dirkdk »

untog wrote: post #15
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.

Probably because there simply isn't money to be made in being an e-mail startup. Or, more correctly, 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 but small levels of profit, but that isn't what Silicon Valley rewards. EDIT: also, IIRC Apple's restrictions on background processing meant that they needed to have ev…

And you are limited by a 30 year old standard (IMAP) with an insane message format. Building a truly new email experience would require a new protocol as well.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#198

Post by vu0tran »

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, it's frustrating. I was using Sparrow until it got acquired and then shut down. Then switched to Mailbox... which then got acquired... Whoops.

I ended up so frustrated I created my own email client in my spare time and half accidentally got into YC S14 haha. You can check it out here: http://www.slidemailapp.com

I'll admit, as a previous poster said, it's not without it's flaws but we try hard and we really do spend all our waking hours improving it since it's our baby and we love it to death. We've been beta testing the private current release with a lot of Hacker News users and I think we're fast approaching something really awesome!

Feel free to email me at vu0tran@gmail.com for a beta invite and would LOVE to hear your suggestions of what you'd like to see in an email client!!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313425

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#199

Post by mitchty »

ghaff wrote: post #172
azinman2 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@softawre: He's asking for it to delete on the receivers side too. I think certain enterprise-y email solutions have this, but there's no way to have that happen in the distributed email ecosystem unless all your messages were just links to a website that could delete the content centrally, or similarly, jpg's of rendered text that were somehow forced to be remotely fetched each time.

And, indeed, that sort of functionality runs counter to the idea that once something has been sent to me, it's "mine" to keep/delete/whatever without someone else having the ability to change or delete it without my permission.

You have no idea how much some managers love this idea.

I know I had a former boss that loved to try using the outlook "unsend the stupid thing i sent" feature.

Little did he know the cients could turn that bit of functionality off. He hated when we replied to the emails he had "purged".

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#200

Post by ents »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #73
nathan_f77 wrote: post #36

I only recently switched to Mailbox because I got tired of an annoying UI bug in Sparrow that was never going to be fixed. I was just starting to get used to Mailbox. What mail app should I be using now?

Check out Spark by Readdle. It replaces Mailbox fairly well.

Spark and Outlook seem to be the most delightful to use.
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