Y Combinator’s ReMail Finally Brings Full-Text Email Search To The iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator’s ReMail Finally Brings Full-Text Email Search To The iPhone

techcrunch.com

55 pointsvaksel35 comments

Doesn't gmail already allow me to do much of this without having to trust another company with all my email content. Plus nothing to download as its a iphone optimized web app and nothing to pay in the future(unlike the proposed $3.99 monthly fee).

Thanks, yish. Gmail has an offline store of the last 50-100 emails on your phone - reMail has hundreds to thousands. Also, keep in mind that, unfortunately, not everyone has Gmail - reMail works with non-Gmail accounts as well. Also, we think that people will prefer a fast, native client to a web client that takes some time to load in Safari.

That being said, I'm a big fan of Gmail (and worked on it myself way back in the day ...)

But Gmail does support non-gmail accounts as well. You could argue that it's easier to get a Gmail account than to install yet another application on your iPhone, not to mention that Gmail will continue to be free for the foreseeable future.

At first glance it seems like you have a product that could be interesting only to Apple, if they can't easily add the functionality themlselves and the build vs. buy math works out.

Just to clarify, is reMail a standalone app also meant to replace Apple's Mail on the iPhone?

No, it is only meant to search email from IMAP/Gmail accounts (at the moment).

Cool, cool. You should also add features to auto-track the UPS packages parsed out of the messages, etc. These are things that GMail is missing. I love how they parse out the package # from the email, but they need a comprehensive dashboard of how all the information in my account is doing. That could be a product you'd end up selling to GMail, besides being a great iphone App!

I switched to Gmail (forwarded emails to my gmail account & used their web interface on my iPhone) to get full search.

Doesn't gmail already allow me to do much of this without having to trust another company with all my email content.

because you already gave up all your privacy to google and have none left to spare?

am I the only one who avoids little $4/mo charges like the plague? They seem to easy to forget, and of course they never remind you - that your paying them ....

- Just my opinion -

Don't get me wrong, the subscription model is amazing; and a great way to build a business; good luck.

I wish there was a way that I'd get some credits from my ISP on my monthly bill, that I would then spend online super-easily, with whomever I wanted.

This is why the Minitel in France worked so well. Services collected usage fees directly from the carrier. It was painless for the end-user (except for having to pay the monthly phone bill). And service providers could make a lot of money if they provided useful online services. This was in the 80s...

That's hilarious... I've never heard of the Minitel used in the contest of a success -- for the most part, it was an absolute and catastrophic failure.

Minitel was supposed to be what the Internet is today -- but we're not all using Minitels...

Define failure.

In terms of user adoption, it was a huge success. Probably even higher than the Internet today. Really computer-illiterate people managed to use it.

The number of services available was crazy. Most ads in the street would have a "URL", just like now with the web.

It also was an early example of how free can serve as the basis for a very profitable business model.

It succeeded in countries where the entire ecosystem was well thought out (and controlled, kind of like the iPhone app store). Just the terminal by itself, without the ecosystem, probably failed miserably in other countries, if they tried to export it.

It was a failure outside of France, a huge success inside. Half the country was using these dumb terminals (that were given away for free). I think framing it as 'the open and free internet won the fight against the state-controlled, for-pay, closed minitel', as sometimes happens, is one of those things that make a lot of sense in retrospect, but in its day the minitel was clearly a winner.

Hi alain, Gabor from reMail here - yeah, I remember BTX in Germany which worked the same way. In 3.0, Apple will add in-app subscriptions which reMail might also use - they're simple and painless, and you can just click "no" if you want to use the service. Gabor

Shouldn't you be making this a premium app then? I thought you could only do in-app subscriptions if it was paid to begin with.

This product seems to me fatally flawed in many ways. First of all, there is very little new about it. It's email searching - nice, but searching email is something I do once in a while, and when I need to do it I can usually wait till I can log into gmail or put on my outlook client.

Secondly, what's with the price? This is offered for free everwhere, and it's not a constant problem I always have. Actually, I cannot ever remember a time when I really needed this, and I'm not going to shell out $4 EVERY month for something that I may require twice a year. If it were an app you pay $1,99 for and forget about it till you need it, I would probably buy it, but not a $4 subscription every month.

And furthermore, the platform already comes with an email client - they could add the search thing anytime, effectively ending the business. I don't like the product as a consumer, and it seems poor to me as a business too.

Actually this for me is an issue, I use email search all the time, primarily for when I travel and have to look up various confirmations codes, reservations, etc. I also email myself all the time with notes, links, etc. The only issue I am having is that 1) Gmail works quite well for me right now 2) I don't want to pay $4 a month for this 3) Another company with access to my email However, while the app is free I will definitely test it out especially appreciating Gabor's replies and comments here and elsewhere. If it's truly faster and also provides me effective offline access to the info I really need, well I would still have an issue paying $50 a year for it, but at least it would be a consideration.

What technology is the server-side 'guts' built on (search etc)?

Isn't this one of the announced features in the 3.0 firmware?

Edit: nope, just headers apparently

Yeah, here's a good description: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/live-from-apples-iphone-o...

They have an "All" button in their UI, but don't be fooled: It stands for "all headers" :-)

For posterity the quote:

You can search from, to, subject, and all headers. If the message isn't on your iPhone, you can continue that search on the server.

I have no idea what they mean by "continue that search on the server".

They may be referring to IMAP's server-side search support. If the message isn't cached locally, the IMAP server can search the message headers, body, etc on the phone's behalf.

See RFC 3501, section 6.4.4:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html

Yup, I believe that's what they're doing. The trouble with this approach is that IMAP servers are painfully slow for server searches. Very few of them build an index. Interestingly, doing searches against Gmail's IMAP is also dog-slow :-(

isn't this rather risky? eg: couldn't Apple simply decide to do this and they could? is this a 3rd party app, eg: exit mail, enter remail, search, re-enter mail?

Or Apple could choose to buy them.

Apple hasn't had the best track record of acquisition over internal innovation thought. There was coverflow and a few others sure, but lots weren't acquired...

remember Konfabulator?

iTunes itself was built around technology acquired from another company, IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP

An entertaining anecdote about iTunes from a competitor's point of view:

http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

Entertaining anecdote? Panic's Audion story is incredible. Read it!

Wasn't Konfabulator acquired by Yahoo, not Apple? Also, I thought it was a Windows app ...

they were acquired by Yahoo way after the OS X Dashboard stuff. And it was cross platform.

That was his point. Apple could have bought them for their widgets, but they developed their own new system.

Apple already has quite a bit of experience with full-text e-mail search, not to mention running Mobile Me's mail servers.

What would be the upside?

This would be one problem that they could throw money at and it might have a positive effect. :) If they operate it as a mostly separate company then they could have a branch that could innovate rapidly and also not disrupt any existing teams/culture inside the organization.

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