Dropbox Acquires Mailbox, Will Accelerate Rollout

Wow. The Mailbox stunt paid off.

To elaborate on the "stunt" comment:

You signed up to a waiting list. Eventually this waiting list got you a code. You put the code in their app and it put in you a massive queue.

If you managed some how to actually get to use the app - you may have been disappointed.
In fact, the Mailbox app angered a lot of people because it requires full access to your Gmail account (which raises privacy concerns), and it requires you to mess with IMAP folder visibility (it needs "All Folder" access).
I've had access for quite a while - but I do not use it, as I refuse to change my IMAP settings to make it work. I already use Gmail (without issue) with other programs.

Apparently all the hype got the attention of the right people.

That was fast...hopefully it doesn't end up like sparrow as I really enjoy using mailbox.

Interesting. With someone like Dropbox behind it I might actually give it a shot now.

cool hopefully dropbox lifts the stupid 5 mailbox limitation

"We felt we could help mailbox",

when using the decoder ring, translates to:

"We think owning Mailbox will help our bottom line, at the very least by acquiring their user database and marketing to them as potential new users of Dropbox, and probably by eliminating a potential future competitor and acquiring their patent holdings (because technology is cheap compared to litigation over technology)."

I'd rather they just said it as it really is, rather than making some kind of euphemistic statement that makes them sound like they're just lending a helping hand. What a load of insincere crap.

Dropbox will become what iCloud should have been.

It needs to support exchange (maybe impossible with their delivery scheme), iPads and landscape.

If they don't quickly innovate, they'll be copied, improved on, and fade away.

They need a desktop app and exchange support, I would use it a lot more then.

fatespawn said:

It needs to support exchange (maybe impossible with their delivery scheme), iPads and landscape.

If they don't quickly innovate, they'll be copied, improved on, and fade away.

Click to expand...

I agree with you, but if you check out their Twitter account you can see they're working on all of those things. I only wish they'd have a bigger team so they could move faster. Regardless, Mailbox is great and I hope Dropbox doesn't mess with their success.

Looks like the Mailbox people got what they wanted. A buyout from a big company (although they probably wouldve preferred to be bought by Apple).

Anyway, I don't even use Mailbox anymore. Its just not very useful to me. Hopefully they add some decent features and I'll try it out again.

I expect dropbox will make this a really great app!

never got mailbox to work. told be to change something in my gmail settings which icould not find and cbf either

I'd sooner Dropbox was involved than Google.

Xenomorph said:

In fact, the Mailbox app angered a lot of people because it requires full access to your Gmail account (which raises privacy concerns), and it requires you to mess with IMAP folder visibility (it needs "All Folder" access).

Click to expand...

Yup. That was enough to turn me off. Not that Gmail is secure or anything, but why would I want another pair of eyes sifting though it. It's bad enough Google does. Also it just seems a bit redundant.

Good for them.

I really like Mailbox on my iPhone. If you manage your Gmail filters through the web interface the concept of Mailbox works great.

Dropbox will become what iCloud should have been.

Click to expand...

Hopefully! Give Apple some motivation to focus on their software/iCloud. Enough with new iPads every 9 months!

Maybe we will finally see an UPDATE to this app...........

Pretty happy with this actually, I was wondering if Mailbox was going to get any funding decent enough to keep their servers going with all these people waiting to get access to the app.

I've had Mailbox running for quite a while, and I seriously love using it, now I just wish there was a Mac and an iPad version available (of course, after they improve the featureset of the app).

I think they did a great job of slowly ramping up their infrastructure as they scaled for users. All of the push notifications come from their servers, which amount to millions+ of requests. The story could have easily been, "Mailbox app launches, crashes due to demand" which if you look at Sim City, is easily believable. The problem is, nobody is happy. They do things slowly, making sure they can meet demand, and everyone bitches, they do it fast and the servers crash, and everyone bitches. It was a queue, you got in line and waited, it wasn't like you had to stare at your phone during the queue, it just moved you along while you lived your life.

Now as far as the software, I think it works great. It has completely changed how I work with my Gmail and the app itself is polished and responds instantly. I was actually hoping Apple would purchase this app and incorporate the technology into the default mail app. I guess they can still copy it.

GIZBUG said:

Maybe we will finally see an UPDATE to this app...........

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The app just came out a few short weeks ago. What update do you think they "finally" need to do? Finally makes it sound like the app has been around for years without any updates.

I hope this improves the experience of sharing and such like within the Dropbox app (web/desktop/phone) at the moment sharing in Dropbox isn't the easiest thing to manage particularly with lots of people sharing the same folder. Could really do with an address book of some description.

Excited to see what happens here

I find it extremely difficult to believe their sign up list is accurate. Within 20 seconds of launching the app, it says there is 109 people behind me. That's like 6 people per second for an app that doesn't seem to do much except check email from gmail.

Looks like at the rate the line is decreasing, I should be good to go in 3.0807 days.

Chupa Chupa said:

Yup. That was enough to turn me off. Not that Gmail is secure or anything, but why would I want another pair of eyes sifting though it. It's bad enough Google does. Also it just seems a bit redundant.

Click to expand...

This hits on a point I always thought was funny. As of now, Mailbox only works with Gmail.

People crowing about privacy (not you specifically, Chupa Chupa, you qualified your point about not wanting it to be worse), but using Gmail. I think that's hilarious.

I mean, I use gmail too. That said, if I was overly concerned about privacy, I wouldn't (and I may move away from them in the future for that reason).

Time to give a decent update to Mailbox ...
more email providers and the option to change colors and backgrounds is appreciate!

I've been using it for quite some time. It's nice, but there are some issues. Sometimes the emails don't fully load so I have to go back to the inbox and then back to the email message again. Another issue I had was that if you delete a message it would go back to the inbox. I would much prefer it to go to the next unread email.