Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#51

Post by schneidmaster » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #8

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.

What do you not like about Outlook or Gmail (I think the market leaders)?

Gmail on mobile still doesn't have a unified inbox, and it also doesn't have features I've come to depend on such as snoozing messages. I usually use Inbox by Gmail on mobile, which also lacks a unified inbox and (bizarrely enough) support for HTML signatures but does have pretty good message snoozing, and I like how it handles bundling.

Outlook (incidentally, another example of my original complaint, as it's just former email startup Acompli with a fresh skin although obviously it's probably not getting shut down anytime too soon) doesn't have very good message searching for Gmail, which is a common complaint I have for non-Google mail apps. Obviously, I get that Google has a huge built-in advantage here; but if your email app is going to support the "Mailbox paradigm" of abandoning folders/traditional labels in favor of just marking things as done, it also needs to have search functionality that can back it up. Outlook was also really buggy for me when I last tried it, although that was a little while ago so it may have improved.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#52

Post by adrianmacneil » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

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.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#53

Post by reverend_gonzo » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

zyxley wrote: post #17

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #4

That is unfortunate. Mailbox was, and still is, (barring a few bugs) one of the better, Zero-inbox mail apps for IOS. Spark by Readdle has taken up slack there, and they look like they're building it in a way that will actually be monetizable.

> Spark Do you know if they're going to do a desktop version too? (Or, to be more pessimistic: "How long until that gets acquihired and killed off too?")

I don't know about desktop. I just use my phone/ipad for 90% of my email, so that works fine by me.

As for being hired, Readdle makes a ton of ios apps, and are profitable in their own right. Also, while Spark is free, some of the features they've hinted to as coming in the future will likely be in-app purchases / upgrades, that will allow it to be profitable as well.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#54

Post by ents » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

Such a shame. Only snoozing system that works for iOS and Mac without injecting additional emails into the thread to return them to the inbox. Ugh.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#55

Post by jordigh » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#56

Post by avitzurel » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

This is very sad news and I don't really get the decision.

The thing with Mailbox is that it was truly a great product before it switched hands to Dropbox. Once they bought it, that was the end of good functions and the product only went downhill from there.

There's a lot of potential with email clients that will help you work better, Mailbox was definitely one of those products that helped. With good clients for Mac and PC along with smartphones it would also be profitable IMHO.

The only thing I can think of is that Dropbox is headed for major firing rounds and they want to save up on resources.

I have switched to Airmail on my Mac and I am much happier now.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#57

Post by RyJones » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

nikolay wrote: post #37

colmvp wrote: post #11

Mailbox and Sunrise, two productivity apps that I liked, got acquired (Dropbox 2013, Microsoft 2015), and discontinued in 2015.

Startups beware: If you care about your products, not just about the exit, don't let yourself get acquired by Dropbox!

I think you can almost stop that at the word acquired. I loved pre-acquisition FolderShare. After Microsoft bought them, FolderShare was mashed into a bunch of aborted projects that sucked.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#58

Post by reverend_gonzo » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #31

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #4

That is unfortunate. Mailbox was, and still is, (barring a few bugs) one of the better, Zero-inbox mail apps for IOS. Spark by Readdle has taken up slack there, and they look like they're building it in a way that will actually be monetizable.

But can I sort my unread emails by ascending date? If I'm practicing inbox-zero, I don't want to fight my email client to review my oldest (unread) emails first.

It seems to sort with the newest at the top. The app is free so try it out. It took a little getting used to after having used Mailbox for so long, but it unquestionably better.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#59

Post by pkamb » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

I thought Carousel looked really cool, eagerly installed it on release.

Then I discovered that when Carousel is installed, the Dropbox app stops automatically uploading photos from your phone. You have to now open Carousel to do so. Broke my existing upload process, and due to iOS permissions for the new app or not launching it frequently or something the new Carousel upload process wasn't reliable.

Discovered this by noticing that weeks of pictures weren't backed up to Dropbox. Glad I didn't lose my phone.

Ended up just deleting the Carousel app rather than figuring it out. The Dropbox app started syncing reliably again.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#60

Post by dclowd9901 » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

Stepping off the pity train, what out there is a good replacement for Mailbox?