Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox' | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'

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109 pointsMnlfrgr146 comments

HEY looked interesting until I found out they don't support IMAP. When I think about the problems with email, I don't think primarily about the interface, but about the fact that the open standards on which it is based are increasingly being ignored.

That’s all super fair, but they also argue this direction allows them to innovate as well. Notably, their direction resembles a rails approach and lets the server do more work. (Because Hey is instead just a standard API client, whereas the client can tell the server things that you just can’t do with IMAP.)

I imagine with the Apple situation they are working on adding support currently however, even if it’s reduced. They need an iOS plan B.

What do you think they can do with their custom API that IMAP can't? IMAP has server-side search and a file-based representation of things like configuration. It may not be as easy to write as a JSON API, but once you do, the interface is flexible enough to really accomplish anything.

Their whole "filtering everything out until you whitelist the sender" approach which is the one feature that sets HEY apart from the other providers wouldn't really work with normal IMAP.

As for IMAP with more JSON there would also be Fastmails https://jmap.io/

> Their whole "filtering everything out until you whitelist the sender" approach

Unless I'm missing something about what they're doing, this is a basic SIEVE script that filters anything not explicitly whitelisted into a folder.

This has a bit of a "I can build Dropbox with a bunch of shell scripts over the weekend" vibe. I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that. How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client? Manually moving things to the IMAP Inbox and which then marks them as whitelisted somehow?

You could probably build that with a bunch of hacks but you'll not get a polished consumer friendly feature out of that. They are not in competition with people running mutt and a bunch of custom scripts, it's more of an alternative for people using Gmail with Gmail apps currently and don't even know what's IMAP.

> How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client? Manually moving things to the IMAP Inbox and which then marks them as whitelisted somehow?

That's exactly how you'd do it, and the functionality definitely exists - all handled on the server side. See: learning spam from ham by dragging to/from the spam folder.

https://wiki.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/IMAPSieve

I wasn't trying to say that this method would be hard or impossible to build, but it's hard to use for the average user. Moving mails around on mobile apps is already annoying enough (At least in the iOS Mail.app)

> How would you whitelist things in your regular IMAP client?

If I were building it for my parents, I'd say "anything in Pending/Held/StrangerDanger that you flag will be whitelisted and will be in the Inbox from then on".

Flagging a message on iOS Mail is pretty straightforward - swipe+tap or long-press+tap+tap and easy enough conceptually as a "this is good" action, I think?

Backend picks up the flag change, adds the address to the inbox, strips the flag, and moves that message to the inbox.

Add "move it to junk to undo the whitelisting" for completion (also easy on iOS Mail).

Perhaps not as polished as writing a custom app to do it, no, but it seems fairly consumer friendly to me?

The server can put messages into whatever folders it wants. Different folders can even put the same message into multiple meta-folders. The whitelist can be stored as a message (as basically a file) in a config folder. This is pretty straightforward IMAP.

Again I'm not arguing that IMAP isn't creaky and clumsy but let's not pretend that lack of power is the reason they didn't use it.

Can IMAP snooze messages?

That'd be down to the IMAP server to support, I suspect, but you could certainly have one that understood the logic - "if there's a message in Snoozed and it's older than X, move it to Inbox". If you have access to your mail, you could do it yourself with a shell script and cron.

> That’s all super fair, but they also argue this direction allows them to innovate as well.

That's true, but I would argue, perhaps somewhat conservatively, that email is an area where we don't want or need much innovation. Email works fine and has for decades. In many cases, "innovation" (except at the protocol level) has made things worse.

I mean, good for you, but all that proves is that you're not their target audience.

I believe that there is such a thing as good, responsible engineering practices, such as supporting open standards, that companies ought to to irrespective of "target audience". I'm not saying using IMAP is a better user experience and that everyone should use it, but I believe that any email provider has a responsibility to support IMAP.

I would argue that their non-standard implementation will make transitioning away from their service impossibly difficult.

The fact they don't support the widely supported IMAP means no easy way to move away.

This is vendor lock-in to their walled-garden. This approach should be killed, dead, before it ever makes it to the end user.

Transitioning away sounds easy: https://hey.com/faqs/#if-i-don-t-like-hey-can-i-export-my-em...

Lifetime forwarding if someone has a paid account? This will change in time. I wouldn't rely on it.

> They need an iOS plan B.

I hope they don't. Apple needs to feel the pain their evil and immoral behaviour is inflicting on the world.

In a perfect world, the government would force them to behave ethically. Absent that, Hey's stance here is the next best thing.

If folks like Basecamp don't start standing up to Apple, then nothing stops Apple from just outright killing the majority of mobile software development. And while it's not directly their fault, at some point iPhone users need to recognize that their purchase of an iPhone is directly funding the destruction of the innovative / creative software they claim to want to have.

If you like Hey, maybe stop buying a phone that's trying to murder Hey. If you run a company like Hey, maybe stop giving in to the mafia's extortion demands.

I wonder if there's any single app company other than Google and Facebook that could take this stance and have Apple actually care. It's definitely not hey though.

> It's definitely not hey though.

For Hey alone, agreed. I don't think they have enough clout.

But Hey is a cool/popular new thing. If the next 20 coolest newest things also skip Apple as well (because Apple continues this grossly unethical behaviour) then Apple iPhones might lose their largely-unearned reputation as the place where the coolest/most-polished apps live.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a huge multinational corporate stance to make this painful. It just has to be enough of the trendiest new things people want.

> In a perfect world, the government would force them to behave ethically. Absent that, Hey's stance here is the next best thing.

In a perfect world there is a good enough iPhone competitor that would force Apple to behave better because otherwise companies wouldn't build apps on their platform.

Absolutely this.

I've seen a bunch of "new takes" on email over the years, but none of them have been interesting to me because I don't want to run my mail on something goofy and proprietary that I can't easily and (mostly) painlessly migrate somewhere else.

Also, I'm not sure email needs a "new take."

It would be nice if IMAP received some extensions that makes it more up to par with proprietary mail services

For example, a standardized method that allows you to tell your email server to send an email at a specific time.

That's not IMAP job that is a service on top.

The unusual client UI is their main selling point, so this does make at least some sense. The defining open standard for email, SMTP, isn't ever going away.

> The unusual client UI is their main selling point

Exactly. That's why I'd like to use their app as an IMAP client to retrieve emails from my gmail account. Not the other way around.

Ironically, adding it would also fix their Apple store woes.

I saw "Imbox" and thought, I will never use this product.

I think in their minds the choice was:

   Impbox and Imbox.

The least bad prevailed.

But that is an awful name that sounds like a toddler not getting their consonants right.

For me it was their marketing message. Empty, annoying, misleading and filled with pats on the back, Apple style. Except I can't find anything innovative

For me it was the ‘I want you to send us a cringey letter straight up begging for an invite’.

It’s a classic marketing strategy that has an extremely high success rate - making the prospect justify why they are a fit for you instead of the usual other way.

Or they drag it out so long that everyone loses interest because their friends aren't there (Google+)

Come on, nothing innovative? It really is innovative. Whitelist screening, batch replying, proper “reply later” etc

I think imbox is embarrassing, and I don’t like the graphic design, but it’s definitely innovative and good for them for doing something different.

I completely agree with you. The product itself is quite innovative. Sure, its an email client which itself isn't re-inventing the wheel. But the features they built for a better email experience are quite innovative. But I also don't like their UI and their "Imbox" marketing nonsense. It also bothers me that they don't allow third party clients.

I think there's a subset of tech folks that don't really value UX (which is like 90% of hey's value-add). It's the same people that don't understand Slack's value because "it's just over-hyped IRC"

A surprisingly large subset of those tech folks can and does improve the UX of their Mail and Chat life using basic scripting on top of a simple but flexible UI. Both Slack and Hey say F U to that and force you to do everything your way. No standards compliance, no tailoring of the UX to your actual needs.

Focusing on hey for a sec: I understand that some people might prefer a system where they can take various components and combine them how they like best, in the same way some people like to cook their own meals.

But what's weird is this sense of anger at products that aren't as flexible. It's like being upset that a new restaurant opened up because they have a set menu and don't let you make your own food. If you like cooking your own meals, great! Keep doing that. This restaurant is for people that want someone else to make a meal for them.

With slack I understand the frustration a little more, since it's something an entire company is going to be using and asking you to use.

Counter point: Hey is asking you to commit for a year, if I was going to the same restaurant every day for a year, assuming the other ingredients are on the menu elsewhere, I would expect being able to make substitutions and change meals up a bit.

I think the metaphor starts to break down a bit here because variety is usually specifically desirable when it comes to food, but not really when it comes to email or any app's workflow.

Do you go to a different email server 3 times a day plus snack bits of email service at gas stations every day all year? Ridiculous deaf comparison.

I don't see how that meaningfully changes the metaphor? Imagine, idk, someone who likes to very carefully design their apartment vs. someone who hires an interior designer to do it for them. People that love to tinker with their cars vs. people that don't.

Some people like to very carefully craft an experience on their own and some people are happy to have someone else do that.

A good UX is great for a single app, but standards compliance is great for the entire software ecosystem.

As far as the software ecosystem is concerned, it is compliant with SMTP, obviously. But if you are going to use an IMAP client, you could as well use any of the zillion email providers that support it, or set up your own mail server.

It's like operating systems. People who want to have it their very specific way use Linux. People who want it to just work out of the box use macOS (but not Catalina).

Mailbox did most of these features 5-7 years ago.

There are some innovative things here but they want $99/year for it and it doesn’t support IMAP. It’s also ugly as sin and looks straight out of 2007.

The biggest hurdle is that it just won’t play nice with all of my email accounts. I would have to maintain my “normal” mail application and also maintain Hey. The benefits Hey might offer are ruined by not being able to have a consistent workflow across all of my accounts.

You can already whitelist by using a filter to send everything other than contacts to a folder you choose. I don't think I've ever had a need for batch replying. I do like the renaming subjects though, just not for $100/yr.

I saw Imbox and thought, well, it can't be a typo; must be a pun I am not getting.

They want you to think that you are a box, maybe.

Their marketing stops at around 2010, including ways to get bad press before WWDC.

Quite the opposite. They’ve managed to be at the center of attention for days just before WWDC.

It's ok, it means you are not the target.

Things like that are good filters to find you user base and focus your resources.

Or it means they got this decision wrong.

Sadly, same.

It’s like that old saying, “Always judge a book by it’s cover.”

A lot of books are barely readable. Often the cover art and the hook on the back are the best parts of the book.

I rather like it. Probably because it strikes me as something my kids would find funny, and a bit of that affection wears off on it. Can't see myself using Hey for other reasons, but that one at least is ok with me.

We discussed this at work. It's smug in a way that I can't articulate. Our first thought was that it was a typo, then we found the actual part of their website that tells us "no, it's not a typo". Thanks for that guys, I appreciate you changing my expectation to meet your contrived brand of UX design.

edit: typo :D

I didn't mind most of the marketing, but FWIW I saw Jason Fried talk the first time in the hey walkthrough and I did find something insufferably smug about the way he spoke.

But I still think it's a cool product and luckily I won't have to hear Jason Fried talk while using it.

They committed the cardinal sin of design - not keeping it simple. People will think IT IS A TYPO, because it looks like one, especially in the age of zero attention spans. Very few will go on a quest to figure it out.

With new products, humans need an anchor to familiar features in order to feel comfortable.

What Makes Things Cool https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-ma...

It isn't supposed to be instant message box? Is everyone just that dry and I'm the slow guy not getting that everyone gets it?

Not being able to use my own domain name with Hey is a non starter for me. It’s like not being able to transfer your cell phone number when you switch carriers. Horrible.

That is a coming feature.

Wait, I can't use my own domain name? I was thinking of checking Hey out, thanks for saving me the bother.

Yeah, that sucks big time. I can accept the closed ecosystem, not being able to use open protocols. If you wan't to do something far away from known standards, then this might be a requirement. But locking users into the service like this gets into the way of their general stance.

Perhaps they plan to introduce custom domains in future? Maybe this just didn't fit into the initial release?

> Perhaps they plan to introduce custom domains in future? Maybe this just didn't fit into the initial release?

Most probably.

This is how basecamp always did thing, even back when it was called 37signals: they release a MVP, they generate money as early as they can, then they start agile feedback loop, improving the product throught many iterations.

They were one of the teams that made agile popular after all.

They also promote the philosophy of rejecting features and not noting the requests for them down.

Only a feature that has been requested and rejected enough times pass their "filter" of something that should be added to the product.

I'm betting a custom domain name will pass such filter and end up being implemented in one year or two.

It seems it's already on their roadmap, see DHH's tweet: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1232840836733292545

For sure. Their thinking is probably let's see how popular it is before offering custom domains which are typically for businesses (or techies). The problem with that is, that the techies are the ones they really need to target first, since if they get hooked and loved it, then consumers will follow. I started writing a tweet when I first saw this about the typo then realized they intentionally misspelled it, and sighed. Reminded me of the days of working for a company where they felt ever employee needed a special crazy title. Often clarity is best. Sometimes plays on words work, but in this case I feel it certainly doesn't.

Everyone should have a custom domain. Switching email providers is horrific without it.

They already announced that custom domains are coming.

They already support custom domains for businesses. For personal accounts it's coming end of the year according to DHH's on Twitter.

Yep, this is why I didn't bother to buy either. It's $5 for something that you use daily, but I'm not going to change everything to @hey.com.

No feature is worth the hassle of getting everyone to update my email address.

Oops. Thanks for answering that for me. I'm shopping for a new provider and with that interface (and Apple controversy) Hey looked promising. If it had own domain support with infinitely many addresses (I use them for categorization) and supported a standard protocol I'd have considered it despite it's painfully high price. Like this, though, it looks like a bit of a joke.

I amazed how much people get annoyed by such a small and insignificant detail.

I also noticed the "Imbox" but i dont believe i thought about it for more than 1 second.

It's a minor distraction that isn't necessary and doesn't add anything.

When I see a typo, I instinctively go back and re-read the word or sentence to make sure I didn't misread something.

The last thing I want in my e-mail client is additional mental overhead. It's a minor detail, but it's also unnecessary, subtracts more than it adds, and it's easy to fix.

It's bad, but it's such a minor flaw. If you won't use hey because of that, either you don't care at all about any of the actual features (in which case, sure, don't use it) or you're being dramatic.

> doesnt add anything

This entire discussion thread exists because of that one little thing. In other words, it adds marketing value. Getting people to discuss your product, even if negative, is still free marketing.

Doesn't add anything for users, then.

You don't think analysis of exactly that sort of behavior is a valid discussion or a valid component in evaluation their character? And you don't think the character & culture of a company is a valid ingredient in deciding whether to use them and pay them?

I do.

Genuinely need to block Hey in keywords now. The marketing is too much.

Are you suggesting the drama with Apple was part of their marketing?

Because I dont see lots of Hey from marketing side, I do see lots of hey on the argument against Apple App Store.

Of course it is. They've weaponised it to their advantage. The actual solution to getting their app approved is obvious. But they've decided there's a greater gain in PR by 'taking Apple on'.

> The actual solution to getting their app approved is obvious.

It's not obvious to me. Mind elaborating on what the obvious solution is? Giving up 30% of your revenue on what's likely to be your largest platform when your competitors don't have to isn't obvious, so there must be another option I'm missing.

Yes, the obvious solution is to implement IAP. This is what Apple says they need to do. That said, they don't have to give up 30% of their revenue, they could make it more expensive to sign up via IAP if they wanted to offset the loss. Not great for the consumer, but at least it would work.

No you cannot do this. Apple does not allow you to put a higher price on iOS than other places. Also the issue is Apple's inconsistency. Netflix and Spotify do the exact same thing HEY is trying to do but Apple has done nothing for them because of this bullshit distinction between consumer and business apps??? Why do consumers apps not need IAP but business apps do?

What they're doing is exactly what mafias do. Look for the weak, force them to need your help or else, then extract as much money as you can.

I love Apple and all their products but this services growth strategy is putting a bad taste in a bunch of people's mouths.

They removed the price restriction in 2011. https://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/09/apple-reverses-course-o...

Thank you for the correction, but my point still stands.

There’s literally a section in their book about leveraging enemies as marketing.

Mind sharing the title of the book?

They have a couple, but this chapter is in Rework - https://basecamp.com/books/rework

The drama with Apple is absolutely, unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, marketing. It’s literally in their book. Making an enemy as a marketing ploy.

Hey is a mailbox app that costs $99/year, doesn’t support IMAP (edit: or POP), and with a UI straight out of 2007. This app would never be getting this kind of attention otherwise. It’s brilliant marketing and is exactly the type of thing they talk about in their book.

>This app would never be getting this kind of attention otherwise.

Hey was extremely hyped up before the whole drama. That is why they had tens of thousands on waiting list before the whole thing. This isn't Free Web Mail, people are paying to use it. And if there wasn't any demand, invite code wouldn't have cost $500 dollars on eBay before Apple rejected their App.

>The drama with Apple is absolutely,.......

I cant see how they could have orchestra the whole thing when they have went out to make sure everything in their App was complying with the rules. And hence that was how 1.0 got put on App Store in the first place.

Yeah as much as the Apple thing got their name in the headlines...it’s likely going to end up basically banning their app on the store and force them to have a non-competitive product. I don’t think they are dumb enough to think of that as marketing.

dhh should create a marketing framework next, could be named `active_marketing` or smth.

Hey, I can't tell if this is irony or not. Then again, you probably won't read this if it isn't.

Yeah, I'm still not sure whether this is a hidden marketing or a serious attempt from an innocent user. I dind't knew this service before, but now I knew. so marketing worked here at least to me.

I wonder how much of the annoyance with the term "Imbox" has to do with the dichotomy between System 1 and System 2 thinking. When I see "Inbox", I put almost no thought into what it means admittedly because I've been exposed to the term so many times much less so with "Imbox".

Has anyone used this service, and why should someone ditch their current provider to use it? All I've seen is the founder kicking off about Apple murdering kittens, which put me off looking any further.

I've got my own domain hosted on google apps, and it just works. Rarely get spam, I'm used to the UI, I don't want to change my email address because I don't need to.

Having said the above, I guess I am not the target audience for this.

Apple's behavior here is actually pretty horrible and definitely illegal but yeah DHH has been hilariously loud in his war here. Granted he probably has to be to fight the largest company in the world with 50 people.

I’ve been using it for about 3 days so far.

The product is pretty great regardless of the funny spelling, they are launching a business version in a few months to allow you to bring your own custom domains. The notable twists I’ve seen so far is the inbox filtering logic that allows you to blatantly say “I don’t want emails from this address ever.” Gmail’s “mark spam” stuff doesn’t quite work for this and stuff eventually gets unmarked. It’s like the worlds easiest unsubscribe with no run around with unsubscribe dark patterns. The privacy stuff looks pretty good too. It seems to me that the iOS app is unbelievably fast (ironic considering...) like time to go from closed app to “see new emails” is easily A few seconds faster than both Gmail and Outlook. I’m tempted to pay to be honest. I’ve been really happy. But then there’s the whole “will I ever get an updated iOS app?” Thing that puts water on that.

Edit: why am I being downvoted? The Head of the House Antitrust Commission directly called Apple’s behavior out and the EU announced Investigations of Apple’s behavior. The rest is just my option of a product. Lol

I believe you're downvoted for saying "Apple's behavior here is actually pretty horrible and definitely illegal" without any substance.

Apple is not doing anything illegal (future regulations might change that), nor anything horrible.

There might be conflicts of interest between App Store and likes of Apple Music and Spotify having to pay IAP fees, but there's nothing wrong with 15-30% distributor fee to access a unified market of 155 countries where all the headache of payments, local sales taxes, APIs, etc are taken care of.

People forget the 2000s with Windows Mobile, CAB files and xda-developers, and the 50% shops take to get your software/game distributed and on a shelf in front of customers.

The only features that look unique (I'm really only comparing Gmail vs Hey) is the Focus and Reply, the File navigator and the Feed. The rest are all easily done with filters/labels or already exist in Gmail. The others could be easily replicated by Gmail developers as well. At this point I wouldn't be willing to pay $99/yr for Hey.

We went the other way...

https://twitter.com/BronGondwana/status/1273790422947487744

More seriously though, I think the internal comment on Fastmail's slack that I saw straight afterwards nailed it:

"If you have to set up a domain to point to your help pages to explain why something isn't a typo, you're doing it wrong".

> "If you have to set up a domain to point to your help pages to explain why something isn't a typo, you're doing it wrong".

It gets people talking, just normal marketing. It's not like people can't use it without understanding why it says Imbox.

looool, love this!

Users of every startups: You have a typo

Founders: Thanks

Users of Hey/Basecamp: You have a typo

Founders: No, this isn't a typo. And we built a website to show you're wrong: http://itsnotatypo.com

And, perhaps ironically, that domain name cannot contain the necessary apostrophe to be spelled correctly, so it itself also has a typo.

I am loving HEY so far, but this is one thing I hope they walk back. I get it, it's not the same as a traditional "inbox," but why does that matter? "Imbox" is annoying to look at.

It matters because they need to make it very explicit to newcomers that this is not your normal inbox.

I think they should create a way to rename the Imbox though, so that when people get it, they don't have to look at the weird "typo" anymore.

Reading the comments and is no one missing out on the irony that simply choosing "Imbox" over "Inbox" got all of the people on this thread talking about their product, and onto the front page of HN? Yeah it's goofy. Yeah it's controversial. That's absolutely the point and that's what gets people talking.

I think it's genius.

Just shows how gullible and hubristic HN really is. "I don't like it so I am going to complain about it." Good one. I guess every community needs to have it's own Slashdot moment, at least once.

Anyone remember when gmail came out and Google was certain their searching/filtering/archiving capabilities were so good that they declared you would never need to delete email again...so much so that they didn't include delete functionality at first? With enough feedback they thankfully backed down.

The Basecamp folks are opinionated and strong-willed, so I'm not sure that they will back down on the unfortunately named "imbox," but I hope they do. Fortunately this isn't as colossal of a mistake as the no-delete-gmail mistake, and in the end, it's not a huge deal (q.v., the name of the iPad was a big deal to some when it came out) but they clearly were too clever for their own good here.

Wow, I find it amazing how some innocent founders find their posts/tweets/etc blocked, ignored or shadowbanned and somehow, if you're someone, you get attention everywhere for free.

Doesn't seem very fair. I thought at this point hacker news' spam detectors would flare up and stop bumping everything 'Hey' to the top.

Not trying to put on a tinfoil hat but, there is simply no way in hell to get this level of PR and attention unless a significant portion of all Hey activities have been carefully and methodically planned for weeks and months.

I deal with the same difficulties myself and the App store mafia cut is a real problem but I just don't think I'll ever be able to trust them again with such aggressive PR tactics.

When Dad jokes turn into UI labels.

I've been watching DHH grandstand about this on twitter for the last 8 months or so. His commentary coupled with the overall marketing message for this service has made it appear slightly elitist and self-congratulatory but I dont really mind that since a lot of tech people are that way.

I love rails so I was hoping this would be awesome but between the invite-only sign up and seeing some of the impractical design decisions they have implemented, I don't think I will be using it, at least not any time soon.

I really want someone to develop a "better email" for the general populace that would be intuitive and offer chat-app-inspired improvements that could really supplant email but seeing what I have this service really seems like something geared toward techies.

It sounds like it's invite-only just until July.

Changing my cool and fancy "Imbox" to "Inbox" because I didn't care to test with users in 3...2...1..

Is email actually an urgent problem for people? Most of my personal communication is outside of email these days. In fact, I have gmail up for texting more than sending emails. Unsubscribing from commercial email generally works fine. My inbox feels very much under control. Maybe I am just not important enough for an Imbox.

Yeah almost all my notifications come through apps. I get about five To twenty emails a day and just action them when they come in. I don’t need to ‘manage’ an inbox.

~~I'm surprised no one here has mentioned (or possibly not noticed) that the developer is an employee of Hey. This is definitely some sort of bad press marketing thing.~~

Edit: actually, it turns out I'm just an idiot and shouldn't comment on things before I fully wake up. That's my b.

Because he's not an employee of Basecamp / Hey. What makes you say that?

https://twitter.com/manuel_frigerio/status/12739352538879098...

jedimastert probably thought that because the developer's e-mail is @hey.com

Which would be a reasonably line of thought, were hey not an e-mail service.

Is that because he has a @hey address? It doesn't look like he's an employee of Basecamp/Hey after browsing his site for a bit (https://manuel.friger.io/)

Hey, I'm definitely not an Hey employee :)

itsnotatypo.com

This is truly amusing!

Hey that was slick

On the one hand, I hate Hey's aggressive marketing, but on the other - any serious competition to Gmail is a very good thing.

You should charge $9.90 per year for this.

I love the name Imbox because it reminds me of Cheems, my favorite character from Doge lore.

I endorse this project. Finally, something the world needs (though does not deserve)

Email is an exceedingly hard thing to change.

Nothing much succeeds in actually changing the way it works.

What does work is developing communication systems unrelated to email ie slack.

My prediction is that Hey will fail but will pivot into something else which the developers will take as a victory.

This is the extension I was looking for.

my pleasure :)

I love the presentation text.

I saw Imbox and other fancy UI trends and deleted my account the same day.

There is no way that Hey is going to tolerate this 30% tax on their Imbox

My problem is I associate DHH and the Basecamp folks with the "Web2.0" of yesterday, and slow, hard-to-scale Ruby and Rails stuff. (Remember the year when everything looked like the RoR "To Do list" demo app?).

All their branding, personal and professional, is a decade old.

> slow, hard-to-scale Ruby and Rails

I'm sure the tech teams at Shopify and Sephora, both of which regularly do 50k+ requests per second, or maybe Airbnb, Github or Hulu will be super eager to hear your opinions about how Rails is slow and can't scale.

Edit: Missed a word in the quote.

Wha? The quote literally says you can export your email and contacts.

That sounds like you can export your emails when you’re done.

Doesn't it say that you can export your emails right there in your quote?

Lol this is good

Hahahaha love this!

> But it's not clever. It's just annoying.

To each their own, sure, but yikes there are so many more things in the world to be annoyed by right now.

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