Inbox by Gmail: now in more places(gmailblog.blogspot.com) |
Inbox by Gmail: now in more places(gmailblog.blogspot.com) |
I love it because I can only look at my pinned items and focus on knocking a few out at a time, and only occasionally flipping back to the regular inbox view. (Which I find distracting when I need to focus.)
[0] - http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic-p...
I zip through my email in gmail using keybindings, se/e/! respectively with gmail set to go to next message automatically. Takes me a few seconds to go through about 20 emails, then I circle back to the ones I starred.
Inbox looks better, but feels a bit worse for me. Also, the no apps support as always is a downer, but us apps users are used to it.
It doesn't sync with their previous star system, so you're unable to move back and forth on services when Inbox is buggy or vice versa. Inbox doesn't store any mail locally on mobile, so you're unable to search without an internet connection -- I am on the subway frequently and this is very problematic. With GMail, you have a one click delete system; with Inbox, you have two steps to permanently delete a message. This is cumbersome when you receive "a good amount of email", and you want to delete rather than archive.
It's a cleaner design, and the other features are nice incremental improvements, but the new features do not outweigh the benefits that the existing GMail app and service offers.
I often use gmail to send emails to my family and I just have a "Family" contact group setup in Gmail to do that (so in Gmail I just type "F" "a" "m" <tab> in the To: box and it's all setup). Most annoying aspect for me to using Gmail on Android and using Inbox in general, honestly.
Inbox is amazing for consuming incoming mail, and I'm hoping it will soon be able to consume Exchange.
I thought maybe +circles replaced that, but I can't even figure out how to send an email to a +circle.
Either I'm really dumb, or something obvious is missing.
I receive somewhere between 75 - 200 emails a day. I need to quickly scan over the email titles + bodies and just remove emails that are not necessary to respond to. Inbox doesn't really provide data as clearly. Though, if I wasn't receiving an email every few minutes Inbox does seem like a really awesome choice.
Plus, there's the huge risk that Google will kill this off in a year or so. Based on that history alone, all users should be reluctant to get on board with it.
I truly don't get the delay on both Inbox and Now - are the backend Gmail systems completely different? If it's just a worry that "enterprise won't like it," why not allow it to be turned on/off from the Admin console like so many other things?
What I like about Priority Inbox is that it shows me important emails, regardless of the type ("type" meaning the different categories that Inbox has). I.e., I don't generally care about "Promos" or "Updates," but there are a select few within them that I do care about. Priority Inbox figures that out, and promotes those particular ones. Inbox just groups them all together, so to see the one "Update" that I care about, I'd have to sift through that whole category to see it.
Gmail occasionally tries to convince me to switch to Inbox. I hope it's not the case that we'll all eventually be forced to switch...
For me, Inbox solves my use-case for my personal email account. I never really put much time into organizing my gmail account to minimize noise, so Inbox was a good answer for me. Now, if Inbox was available for my work account I doubt I'd use it. I have carefully crafted lots of labels and filters to make Gmail an excellent solution for work, it just took more time to setup and maintain then what Inbox does for my personal email.
Inbox with a "Priority" bundle would be perfect.
I get a lot of email through the day and I need to get through it quickly. I also have 4 active email accounts. Having to constantly juggle the UI to switch between these accounts is a productivity killer and annoyance.
I get it, some people don't want and/or need the unified inbox and it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. I'm not that person.
Dropbox's Mailbox app is a nice alternative (it's what I currently use). I feel the Inbox app is better constructed, but Mailbox has the features I need today and it works.
Google said it was because it was "slow" under Firefox, but since I never noticed a bug or any slowness on my two year old Macbook Air, it looked more like they just wanted to push Chrome to me.
I guess it's only one extra click for the trash. Google apparently wants you to save everything.
Yes, I know I can bundle up mail and then delete the batch - but I want a one click way of deleting a message that I know I will never read again (promo emails for example)
I notice they haven't made these configurable yet - I was hard-wired to press d!
Once Google Inbox is used widely, people will find it that much harder to use other e-mail systems.
I can't seem to find it now, but I read a wonderful article about how Facebook messaging and all sorts of other silos are about these platforms controlling everything and Google wishes they could have that same sort of control and push everything into their own proprietary messaging, although this fragmentation is obviously destructive for the internet and society overall.
Wait.. then M$ re-branded outlook on iOS, simply outruns both Inbox and Mailbox.
They test new ideas and features on the luxury brands and then roll them out to the mass market brands later at lower prices.
I love the snooze and pin features. The Android app is awesome. Swip to archive is such a nice way to deal with email, which (in my case) is 90% scan and bin. The web app isn't so awesome, mainly because of the lack of gestures.
Reminders added in Google Now show up in Inbox as well so I can be walking down the road and remember I need to do something tomorrow, and just add it to Google Now just by talking into my phone. 9 times out of ten I don't even have to spell correct the narrated text.
Inbox was the one single reason for me not dumping Gmail for Fastmail, which I was planning to do for privacy reasons.
- I love the snooze and remind me later feature, but I absolutely hate their touchpad/scroll support, I don't understand how mails get automatically marked done when I am just trying to read them.
- The app is super heavy for my 2GB RAM Macbook Air(I have one for lightweight surfing at home), it slows down everything.
- The 3 clicks I have to do in order to read a single mail eventually got to me. Take for instance, imagine if I got a new mail, how many clicks do I have to do in order to read it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-... Inbox's answer is 2 clicks, one for expanding the 'finance' section and second to open that mail. Isn't my intent obvious when I click on a folder that I wanna read that lone mail when I click on it? After clicking twice for 30 something mails a day, it got annoying.
- Inbox doesn't scan my hangout messages whenever I use its search. I search my hangout messages a lot, that means I return back to gmail. I assume they will add this functionality in future.
- The reply mess. If you are responding to an email, it has a decent inline responding ability, but the moment you stop responding or move away, you can't come back to the inline reply, you HAVE to edit that response outside of that experience. I see no reason why that should be the case.
- My corporate gmail accounts don't support inbox, so it ends up me having a weird experience of constantly using gmail and inbox both
I get a lot of sensitive information in my work email; if I forwarded it all to a second account where my employer couldn't enforce things like two-factor auth I'd be in a lot of trouble.
I'd feel a lot better if they'd just explain what the hold up was, or if they don't plan on expanding to Apps customers. I'd be disappointed but at least I wouldn't be completely in the dark.
