Mailbox: Living Up to the Hype

“Mailbox,” the highly anticipated Google app set to rival Apple’s mail app, released on February 7th. Since then, reservation emails have been sent out by groups to ease people onto the application.

More than 700,000 people are in line to download Mailbox, even though they have not tried it yet. But why are people so worked up about an app they haven’t even used? Will it exceed expectations people have set up?

Sophomore Anays Navarro says she will never wait for an app that she won’t get to use immediately after downloading it. “Even if it is hyped up,” she said, “it is better to wait until all the kinks are worked out and the line dies down.”

The goal of Mailbox is to help facilitate the use of gmail on iPhones and other Apple products. One of the main selling points of the app is how quickly it opens any email without having to wait until it loads. Mailbox checks email using a Cloud software and delivers mail safely to any Apple mobile device.

The app is also designed to save users time by providing a “snooze” type option, which allows people to schedule when they want to see an email in case they are too overwhelmed with the emails currently in their inbox. Creators also introduced the idea of Inbox Zero, which is a revolutionary new way of managing email so that your inbox stays empty.

Creator Gentry Underwood explains that the reason for a line was not just for hype but also to help present servers from crashing. Underwood says, “The reason we didn’t just ‘switch it on,’ though, is because we don’t know what we don’t know. Even the most advanced services run into problems when they initially scale.”

The wait list is creating the most buzz for Mailbox, but Underwood does not see it all positively, saying, “It’s like a party or a nightclub that a lot of people want to get into. You want to wait in line, but if people are walking out and saying it sucked, it’s over.”

Regardless if Orchestra is denying that the line is to create higher interest in the app, it has worked to their advantage and so far reviews have been positive despite some negative feedback on glitches. Mailbox looks like a solid alternative for the default Apple mail application.

Available for almost three weeks, thousands are still waiting for the chance to try a cleaner and smoother inbox.