Philipp Seibel of eightloops let us know that his company was working on a fresh new take on the OS X email client. There has been a bit of a resurgence in the interest of alternative Mail clients since the launch and acquisition of Sparrow, which has left some customers abandoned.

unibox
Eightloops' new client is called Unibox and borrows a lot of organization and interface cues from chat clients like Messages. Like Messages, the interface consists of two panes: contacts on the left and messages on the right. The contact list is ordered by last received message and all emails from that contact are consolidated into that one entry:

Due to the fact that contacts only appear once in the list, many short back-and-forth emails don't clutter your inbox, they just result in moving the respective contact to the top. Another nice side effect is that notification emails from twitter, facebook, amazon etc don't spam your inbox but are limited to one entry in your contact list.

On the right side, incoming messages are displayed in a chat-like interface with incoming on the left and outgoing on the right. Outgoing messages are also written in the right hand column with support for editing, formatting, and attachments.

Meanwhile, attachments from a single contact can be viewed in a Finder-like interface. Seibel notes that this creates an interesting side effect:

Displaying attachments this way creates some interesting new views on your emails and contacts. Attachment grids of a family member or friend mostly look like shared photo albums while attachment lists of co-workers and business partners are like a shared dropbox that contains all the relevant business documents like design assets, word documents, excel sheets, etc.

Seibel wasn't willing to release full interface screenshots quite yet, but expects the app to be released this winter. They have set up a teaser page at UniboxApp.com that will notify you when the app is released. Seibel's company has been a longtime Mac developer, but has focused on contractual work in the past. This is their major independent Mac project that they've been working on for over a year.

Top Rated Comments

kolax Avatar
163 months ago
Support Hotmail (properly, not through POP3) and I will buy it..... even if it cost $49

Hotmail? People still use that?
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Andy-V Avatar
163 months ago
It sounds interesting but email for me is mostly not a back-and-forward conversation. I'm sure I'm not alone in that most of my email is stuff like newsletters and order confirmations etc not social. This sounds great for those who mostly communicate back and forth but as a general email client I'm not sure. The vast majority of my emails can't be classed as 'conversations'.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
brichardson Avatar
163 months ago
One of the issues I have with all of the new email apps being designed is this idea of adding social networking to the email client. Why? I don't consider email to be "social" in the context of social networking. While I am active on Facebook, Twitter, 4Square, and others - those conversations are typically much more "on the fly", whereas email tends to be more scripted, more goal oriented. For example - I don't typically get emails from my friends telling me what they are making for dinner.

If you want to win over the hearts of many mac users (make that many COMPUTER users) - make an email app that is fully compliant with the latest specs for SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols. That includes all extensions, such as encrypted email, MIME compliant, etc. Give me a client that allows me to design beautiful HTML5 emails and store them as templates. Let me pull in content from various places, (yes, even from Social Networking sites). Make sure it works with web based email as well as possible. Add the proper handling of RSS feeds. Add the ability to script the client, and integrate it with the rest of the OS as much as possible. Support calendaring, note taking, and tasks.

In short, make it an EMAIL app... once you do that, if you still want to add social networking to it, then knock yourselves out.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cvaldes Avatar
163 months ago
I'm interested to know why, for people who use email clients, why you like using clients rather than the web-based front ends or services.

Again, NOT wanting to start arguments or a "this is better than that" thing - just very interested in how or why people use actual mail clients.
Well, security for one. Standalone mail clients have fewer exploits than web browsers.

Speed is another. Having my iPhone check one IMAP account is pretty quick. The Mail app is pretty lightweight compared to a web browser; the interface is very fast and doesn't include junky ads, unlike webmail.

At home, my Mac has four accounts configured. Yes, I could have the other three accounts forward to my primary account, but I don't want to do that. Two of the other accounts are used for junk mail. I don't want these accounts forwarding messages. The third is a legacy account that rarely has any traffic. Sadly, that service provider's junk mail filters aren't very good, so I tend to get more spam in that inbox, again something I don't want forwarded along.

Yes, I could fire up four webmail instances in a tabbed browser, but it would be slower than just firing up the Mail app on my Mac. And using the standalone mail application, how many news items, photos, ads, do I need to look at before I open my first e-mail message? None. Nada. Zilch. Plus, I'm not waiting for UI elements or "rich media" to download.

Also, with more mail providers, you get more webmail interfaces. It's pretty tiresome going from one webmail to another, the buttons are never in the same place, etc., especially if a banner ad squeaks by, etc.

With a standalone mail client, the user interface remains constant, regardless of the e-mail hosting provider: Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, GMX, whatever. I don't have to hunt around for constantly changing UI buttons. Heck, even different web browsers render the same webmail site differently. And some browsers aren't even supported. You can't use iCab on AOL Phoenix, you're forced to use a legacy webmail interface.

And worse, the same webmail provider may have multiple GUIs. Yahoo Mail can be accessed via a variety of My Yahoo! widgets. Worse, the full-blown webmail has at least three interfaces: Classic Yahoo! Mail, new Yahoo! Mail (was Beta), and there's a tablet-oriented Yahoo! webmail that's totally different from the previous two.

And let's not even bother to discuss the topic of webmail keyboard shortcuts...

Note that the iOS Mail app will run in the background, using pretty minimal resources. At home, if I am not actively reading e-mail, I will often have the Mail.app off. That's right: nothing to bother me. No notifications, no dock badge, etc. Yeah, I can hear incoming message notifications on my phone, but often I'll ignore them.

One thing for sure, the iOS Mail app makes it easy to quickly scan through your e-mail with one hand, usually with just my thumb.

Another idiosyncrasy of the iOS Mail app that I love is the fact that I don't know how many junk messages I have unless I deliberately go inside the folder. One less distraction. On my iPhone, it's even better as I typically am just looking at the Inbox. Unread messages in other folders? I won't see them, unless I back out and look at the Mailboxes view.

Another issue is integration with Contacts and Calendar. If I get an e-mail from a new address for an existing contact, it's pretty easy for me to associate it with that contact, particularly on my iPhone. It's far clunkier trying to do this on webmail. Contact management is atrocious if you are using more than one webmail interface. Webmail address book UIs vary a lot more than the webmail UIs.

For me, life is far easier thinking of webmail providers as dumb pipes. I don't really care about Gmail/Yahoo! Mail/AOL/whoever's interface. I just need your IMAP server for incoming mail/message storage (and spam filtering) and your SMTP server for outgoing mail.

The main benefit I can see from my webmail providers is filtering. You set it up, then get on with your life. Incoming messages get routed to certain folders.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Apple Key Avatar
163 months ago
What happens when a conversation includes multiple people? How does it differentiate between CC'd and people it was sent to directly?

It looks promising, but it still leaves a lot of questions as to how certain things will function.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kristoffer4 Avatar
163 months ago
There is also http://dotmailapp.com/ which also looks very interesting!
I hope the search is just as good as Sparrow. That is one of the best in Sparrow.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Coming Next Week With These New Features for Your iPhone

Friday February 14, 2025 6:18 am PST by
The first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner, and the update is expected to include many new features and changes. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman expects the iOS 18.4 beta to be released by next week. Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far. Apple Intelligence for Siri Siri is expected to get several enhancements powered by Apple Intelligence on iOS...
iPhone 17 Roundup Feature 2

iPhone Design to Change 'Significantly' This Year

Monday February 17, 2025 7:09 am PST by
Apple is set to "significantly change" the iPhone's design language later this year, according to a Weibo leaker. In a new post, the user known "Digital Chat Station" said that the iPhone's design is "starting to change significantly" this year. The "iPhone 17 Air" reportedly features a "horizontal, bar-shaped" design on the rear, likely referring to an elongated camera bump. On the other...
apple launch feb 2025 alt

What to Expect From the 'Apple Launch' Next Week

Thursday February 13, 2025 11:48 am PST by
Apple has yet to announce any new devices this year, but that could change starting next week. Apple CEO Tim Cook today said to "get ready" for a "launch" on Wednesday, February 19. "Get ready to meet the newest member of the family," said Cook, in a social media post. The post includes an #AppleLaunch hashtag, along with a short video featuring an animated Apple logo inside of a circle....
Apple Maps 2024

Apple Maps Might Start Showing Ads

Sunday February 16, 2025 7:22 am PST by
Apple is "exploring" the idea of showing search ads in the Apple Maps app, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Back in 2022, Gurman said software engineering was "already underway" to display ads in the Apple Maps app, but Apple did not move forward with the idea at the time. Today, he said Apple is "giving this notion more thought" again. This time around, he said Apple has yet to...
Tim Cook Apple Park

10+ Announcements Apple Could Have Rolled Into a February Event

Saturday February 15, 2025 8:00 am PST by
Apple appears to have enough upcoming product announcements to justify a full event this month, yet all signs indicate these reveals will be handled through a series of press releases instead. There are a multitude of rumors from reliable sources about specific announcements in the coming weeks, so here's everything that Apple could have feasibly included in a hypothetical February event: ...
iPhone 17 Pro Render Front Page Tech

iPhone 17 Pro With All-New Camera Bar Design Allegedly Revealed

Thursday February 13, 2025 5:49 pm PST by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro will feature three rear cameras arranged in a familiar triangular layout, but the cameras will be housed in an all-new rectangular camera bar with rounded corners, according to YouTube channel Front Page Tech. iPhone 17 Pro camera design render created by Asher for Front Page Tech In a video uploaded today, Front Page Tech host Jon Prosser said the camera ...
m2 pro mac mini

Apple is Now Selling a Refurbished Mac Mini for Just $319 (!)

Saturday February 15, 2025 9:58 am PST by
A few days ago, we reported that Apple's refurbished Mac mini pricing had a problem, and it appears that Apple has taken note. Apple was offering a refurbished Mac mini with the M2 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage for $559, which was $50 more than a refurbished Mac mini with the M4 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. All other key specifications were equal. That's no longer...
iPhone SE 4 Thumb 1

Apple's Next iPhone SE Launching on Wednesday - Here's What We Know

Friday February 14, 2025 4:04 pm PST by
Apple CEO Tim Cook teased an Apple announcement that's coming on Wednesday, February 19, and it's looking like that mystery announcement will be the next-generation iPhone SE. We've been hearing about the iPhone SE 4 for quite some time now, and we essentially know everything to expect. If you want a sneak peek at what's coming, read on. Naming Apple first introduced the iPhone SE in...