Jon Lavallee

Mailbox’s Negative Reviews

This is going to be a bit of a rant.

People always say never read comments or reviews of things you create, which can be upsetting thanks to the metric ton of Internet trolls lurking on the web. I’d take it a step further, though, and avoid even reading the variety of opinionated posts regarding content and content creators that you follow, respect, understand, utilize and admire. Something I failed to avoid today.

This all spawns from reading the App Store reviews regarding Mailbox, a new iOS Gmail-based (for now) email client, by Orchestra, Inc, that has been in development for some time, by a group of hard working veterans in the industry. You may have used their award winning task organizer that shares the startup’s name, Orchestra. Due to the large demand, the app is being rolled out on a first-come-first-serve basis via a virtual queue. There are a slew of one and two star reviews complaining that they have to wait to use Mailbox, noting the fact that they are thousands away in line from being able to start benefitting from the features and criticizing the developers by saying it’s ridiculous to have to wait. The app is free, mind you. No one had to shell out for it. Sacrificed nothing, yet the world owes them.

Clearly, as the majority of negative app reviews go, they failed to read the description or seek any information from the developer regarding the app they were downloading.

Due to the app’s nature of reinventing how you use email, they pull your incoming emails into their own servers in order to process notifications and their inbox productivity features. Because of this, they can’t open the flood gates simply because the load would debilitate the servers. Most of the services you use today, such as Gmail, launched the same exact way. More recently, look at Google+ and Ev Williams’s Medium, for example. They need to govern the flow, make appropriate tweaks and fixes as the user base grows, while also learning what they need to do and want to do for the future of the service.

Personally, I’m still in line as well. I started around the 60,000s and I’m now waiting about just over 24,000th. Patiently. I say patiently because I appreciate that Orchestra, Inc is ensuring that all users have a great first experience using the app. That’s a big hint that the developers are truly passionate and believe in the app, and want you to feel the same. They want it to work as intended. It’s evidence that they put you, the user, first. After all, without the user an app is just a lonely, neglected icon.

I did have a fairly lucky starting place, but in just a few days I’ve made strides in line. On the Mailbox blog, they say they plan on picking up speed with rolling it out as time goes as well - so install the app, secure your spot in line and stick the app out of sight on the last page until you’re up. I have a feeling it’ll be worth the wait, and may even win a spot on your Home screen.

My recommendation is to not read commentary about the things you follow, as the negative words from those who neglected to take the time to inform themselves will just strike a nerve within you - a glorious feature nerds like myself are wired with. If you do have comments, I ask that you ensure you’ve covered all your bases, read all the information, and even reached out for anything you aren’t clear on so you can provide constructive criticism. Uninformed opinions only make those who shared them the foolish ones.

Yes, this will always be an issue, but instead of retaliating while driven by our passions, it’s something we need to try and avoid and ignore instead of adding fuel to the fire. Advice of my own I need to take, since this post would have not existed had I done so.

App Store Link: Mailbox