I use Mailbox. It’s amazing. It keeps my inbox free and clear, and it rewards me with a pretty picture every time I get to inbox zero. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s clean. I swipeswipeswipe all day long, resting easy knowing that those important emails will come back to me when I have time to answer them, and the rest disappear into my archive. There’s really only one problem with it: it’s not the native Gmail app.
I really want to love the native Gmail iOS app, but I just can’t. It’s missing some features that Mailbox has in spades, most notably a unified inbox and the ability to snooze emails to return to the inbox later for action.
But let’s be very clear about this, those features truly are the only good reason to use Mailbox over Gmail.
Which is to say that there are entire swaths of software companies out there that would literally go out of business if the major players – the Apples and Googles and Microsofts of the world – were to add a single feature to their own software. Hell, Gmail is probably going to put Sanebox out of business this week.
I’m not the first to say this, of course. Since Mailbox came out, it’s been criticized as not being an app, but only a feature (and let’s not forget the debacle over Mailbox’s launch strategy). But it got me to thinking about all kinds of other apps – and non-software examples too – that I use and love, but that I would probably stop using tomorrow if their major counterparts were to only add that single key feature.
Haikudeck
A beautiful alternative to Keynote and Powerpoint, albeit limited in its functionality, I love the ability to search for images and auto-insert into my deck. Apple or Microsoft could add this in a heartbeat, and Haikudeck would be gone.
Uber
You never knew how good a taxi ride could be until you got into an Ubercab. Only one problem: most taxi companies, especially in big cities, could put them out of business by making one kickass app for dispatching and frictionless payments.
Fantastical
It’s my go-to calendar on my Mac for its mouse-free natural language appointment entry. Google Calendar got halfway there – the quick add feature is decent – but they’d only have to take it a step further to make Fantastical obsolete.
Google Hangouts
Admittedly this is a stretch, but the one killer feature I use here is cross-platform, multi-user video conferencing, especially mobile to computer. Skype already does this too, though multi-user requires a pro account. But Apple’s FaceTime comes up seriously short, especially if I want to talk to my Android-using parents. Building a FaceTime Android app isn’t as easy as flipping a switch, but it also isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Most of these are David and Goliath stories, the little disruptor taking on the big established companies, and putting up a damn good fight because they’re packing a sling. But if Goliath had a sling (and let’s face it, it’s not that hard to make a sling), he’d crush David into a million little pieces.
