Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, iPod touch
iPhone mail all over the place
I love my iPhone, as much as the next guy (maybe more). I'm also hip to all the things people wish it had, like cut and paste, MMS -- you know the list.
I have to say, though, that the one thing I really miss is a unified mailbox. This doesn't mean much to people who have only one email account, but my guess is most people are juggling more than one. If that's the case, you're probably in a world (or a bag) of hurt. Unlike the Mac Mail client, or most others for that matter, you have to do an awful lot of finger tapping to navigate those distinct inboxes. If I saved those taps up, I could probably play a short piano sonata.
It must be especially painful for Blackberry users who have moved over to the iPhone ... but there is plenty of pain to go around, and getting email read on the iPhone is a needless hassle.
I'll bet the guys at Apple have multiple mail accounts too, so what were they thinking when they set things up this way? I could understand the early versions of iPhone software having these issues, but we're a year and 5 months out from the original iPhone release and this issue is still lurking.
What say our readers?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
chillin said 2:27PM on 12-08-2008
You assume too much. Not everyone with multiple accounts wants a unified inbox. I wouldn't mind if it was an option, but personally, I wouldn't use it. I get a lot of mail... I want it sorted in it's proper inbox. Next time pehaps preface your rant as a personal one and not write like everyone wants what you want... because it is very rare that this could happen.
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Raghu said 4:18PM on 12-08-2008
Exactly... and I sort through mails by which account they come in on... there is the check immediately, check daily and check whenever accounts. The blackberry actually had me super frustrated because my server side junk filters were worthless and everything new just showed in my inbox
robogobo said 11:25AM on 12-09-2008
you said the magic word- "options". Apple needs to consider this a lot more lately.
Ben said 2:35PM on 12-08-2008
Yes that would be very helpful. I used to use unified inbox on blackberry for many reasons: cluster on the home screen, less click and places to go to check once an email come in. You can always scroll up to see what email the mesage was sent to anyway. Please apple, next firmware, include unified mailbox.
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lawgraphix said 2:35PM on 12-08-2008
Actually, I like it the way it is now but in the preference pane, have an option to open email accounts to default to inbox. Because that's what we do 99% of the time, check the inbox. I don't want to have to tap 2 extra times just to read new mail for that account. And also a button to return to the accounts screen so i can check my other accounts quicker.
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Nate said 9:50AM on 12-09-2008
I think a really clever trick would be to just allow you to hold down the "back" button and it would take you to the accounts screen. Most of the complaints I here are the endless back button clicking just to switch accounts. Maybe another creative idea would be a quick list of accounts if you hold down back. That would satisfy everyone and wouldn't add any bloat or additional logic to app.
Think Different!
Paul said 2:35PM on 12-08-2008
Even better (at least for my purposes) would be if tapping the mailbox name would take you straight to the inbox, with another icon to get to the folders, (rather than going to the folders first, then tapping inbox). It would change switching mailboxes to two taps instead of four, and should be fairly easy to implement.
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tgp said 2:37PM on 12-08-2008
I'm more interested in a quick way to switch from one inbox to another. A unified mailbox gets messy, but it takes 4 taps to get from my work email to my personal.
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David said 2:55PM on 12-08-2008
I would agree. I would much rather have a way to quickly switch to a different accounts inbox than a unified mailbox.
John said 2:39PM on 12-08-2008
I would like to be able to swipe left and right to change the mailbox - The mailbox name is indicated at the top, so this should be fairly easy...
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Kevin said 2:39PM on 12-08-2008
chillin:
As with Mail.app, a unified inbox wouldn't preclude having the ability to view the inboxes individually. This is probably the most surprising omission on the iPhone.
Mail.app on the Mac has had this since day 1. The calendar app has the concept of unified calendar (the All) parent above the individual calendars. The unread mail count on the Mail icon shows a unified unread count.
I am completely at a loss why there isn't a single 'All' inbox available somewhere in the iPhone mail app.
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punkassjim said 4:22PM on 12-08-2008
With the advent of OS 2.1, they have implemented the Contacts app with Groups and All Contacts. So, I'm gonna guess that Mail.app isn't very far behind. The thing is, Mail is one of their flagship apps...so when they revise it, they have to NAIL IT, or they'll risk ridicule in the marketplace (kinda like the Blackberry Storm). And, aside from ridicule, they also risk putting tarnish on their already-polished, extremely-consumer-friendly UI. If gramma can't use it anymore, they ain't gonna publish it.
And, as any competent developer should be doing, they're likely scrutinizing every byte that they add to the package. The large majority of devices they've sold are of the 8GB variety, and it's imperative to limit bloat.
Chris said 2:39PM on 12-08-2008
I like the way it is now too. But that's probably because I'm already consolidating my personal email in Gmail. Then on my iPhone, I have my work email and personal email separated, which I like.
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don said 2:41PM on 12-08-2008
No! I don't want my work & personal email intermingled. My BlackBerry friends complain about the unified inbox, especially the inclusion of text messages in there.
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Elias said 2:41PM on 12-08-2008
I was just thinking about this over the weekend. I hate having to tap so much recurse back and forth to switch mailboxes. I wish there were some sort of way to just flip from one mailbox to the other, which would probably be easier to implement than Mail.app's unified style.
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+. said 2:42PM on 12-08-2008
while it might be nice to have the *option* for this, i'd prefer my inboxes separate. i have 3 mail accounts on my iPhone, & all of which i use for very different places/things. i don't particularly want to see work messages coming through with my personal email, because i treat & respond to these very differently.
however, i will second (third? fourth?) the "straight to inbox" idea. i have always thought that you should start from that view, & spend extra taps -- if necessary -- to get to the folder list. i can probably count on 1 hand the number of times i've actually used other folders on my mobile mail client; even though i sort things religiously, i don't need to be doing it when i'm on-the-go.
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dima said 2:44PM on 12-08-2008
coming from a blackberry, it's one of the few tough things to get used to. At least there should be an option to use individual mailboxes, or compile all into one.
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Shawn said 2:45PM on 12-08-2008
I would actually like the opposite... a way to de-unify the inbox in Mail. I use my email addresses for different purposes and I don't want them to end up in the same place. The unified inbox "feature" keeps me from using Mail full-time, instead relying on webmail interfaces for everything except my MobileMe address when I'm at the computer. Since I got my iPhone, I find myself usually checking my mail on it instead, because I can actually see distinct inboxes for each address.
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Alex said 2:53PM on 12-08-2008
Try clicking the arrow next to "Inbox". You can then filter your Inbox by account.
samu said 2:46PM on 12-08-2008
It would be a nice option. In the meantime, to avoid having three inboxes to skip between, I've set up my university's Gmail-based account to forward to my personal one. Rather than do the same for the third account, I decided that it simply wasn't necessary to have mobile access to it, though there's an account set up for it and disabled just in case.
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