TUAW's Daily App: Mailboxes for iPad

Mailboxes is a new app from Lilliput Labs that fills one simple need. While there are lots of ways to read email and specifically Gmail on your iPad already, nearly all of them are open to anyone using your device. If there are a lot of members in your household, or if you have roommates or co-workers who also use your iPad, you might not want them having access to your email all the time.

Thus, Mailboxes is a multi-user Gmail client for the iPad -- you can register it with your Gmail account (or multiple accounts), and then each account can be given a PIN, which will automatically lock you out when the iPad goes to sleep or the app is turned off. Unfortunately, the app's actual mail reader is the Gmail web interface (so no offline reading), but if you wanted to read your mail in Safari, you'd have to be online anyway.

At the very least, for US$2.99, it'll give you the security of knowing that you won't accidentally leave a Safari window open, or have someone go snooping around in your Mail app. Not everyone will need an app like this, but if it fits your situation, it could be a lifesaver.

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Source: http://lilliputlabs.com/products/mailboxes/

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Mailboxes is a new app from Lilliput Labs that fills one simple need. While there are lots of ways to read email and specifically Gmail on...

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Trane

I too would gladly pay for an app that allows me to password protect access to my corporate IMAP email server without having to passcode my whole device. $10 would be a no-brainer.

June 24 2010 at 6:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

frosty

I wish them luck, but from the description it sounds like the classic "dollar app" where a developer puts in the absolute minimum effort but would like to sell it nonetheless.

Without offline mail, you might as well use a web browser that just forgets its cookies, or for that matter use the excellent built-in Safari and remember to log out.

I really want Apple to accept the fact that people are going to share their iPads, and give us some way to lock down certain apps.

Until that time comes, and it may never come - it hasn't yet for iPhone - there's a wide-open niche market for real Mail and Safari substitutes that are reasonably usable and reasonably private.

I would happily pay $20 for a good private Mail app, even if it's not as good as the built-in Mail app. Of course the Holy Grail here, if Apple would even allow it, is a single password-protected productivity suite.

Imagine decent if imperfect versions of Mail, Safari, Contacts, Chat (with history!), and some sort of document reader, all with copious offline storage, implemented as a single app with a password.

Come to think of it, that might be something Google ends up doing as a web app, since the evidence to date is that Apple would consider such a thing too "system-like" for admission to the App Store.

June 24 2010 at 4:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply