"we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details." Jeff Bezos
Since Steve Jobs left this world many of us on this planet have been missing him so much as a great entrepreneur, mentor, visionary, and whatever he was for you. But here is one guy who also has been delivering tons of disrupting innovation and changing this world a big time. Jeff Bezos, a founder and CEO of Amazon, changed the way we shop. the way we start new web companies and services, the way we read books. And now he's changing the way we consume all kinds of media contents. Like Steve Jobs, he has built a company that lasts and delivers countless disruptive innovations again and again.
"And industry observers see Amazon’s entry into the tablet sweepstakes as further evidence that Bezos may well be the premier technologist in America, a figure who casts as big a shadow as legends like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs."
Here is a very interesting interview conducted by Steven Levy for Wired magazine.
How much does Amazon powers the web ?
"People are slowly beginning to realize just how much of the Web is powered by Amazon’s cloud services."
Yep, this is so true. Even though you don't hear their name often many exciting companies with a lot of buzz are using Amazon as their platform. Here is just a few examples.
Low margin with Big customer base
As a tech company their approach is very different in the money making. Unlike other tech companies that enjoy their hefty big profit margin Amazon is known for the low margin. And that's their strength. They establish a great services, like their e-commerce site (Amazon.com) and their cloud web hosting service (Amazon Web Service), then lower the price a lot to the level it's very hard for other companies to keep up with. And they keep reducing the price.
"We really obsess over small defects. That’s what drives up costs. Because the most expensive thing you can do is make a mistake. We can afford to focus on smaller and smaller defects and eliminate them at their root. That reduces cost, because things just work."
"There are two ways to build a successful company. One is to work very, very hard to convince customers to pay high margins. The other is to work very, very hard to be able to afford to offer customers low margins. They both work. We’re firmly in the second camp. It’s difficult—you have to eliminate defects and be very efficient. But it’s also a point of view. We’d rather have a very large customer base and low margins than a smaller customer base and higher margins."
Their goal is to expand their customer base for their media consumption even with very low margin. That's the reason they let the Amazon Prime customers stream some of the contents with no additional cost.
What’s Amazon’s role in the social arena?
"It’s an open question. I think what we’re wondering is, if we have a list of 500 of your friends, how can we use that to improve ecommerce? We have some ideas. We’ve actually already done some experiments but haven’t found anything that we think is exciting yet."
There are a lot going on in the Social web service scene, and as you imagine Amazon has also been experimenting and see what Social can bring. But their goal is not just to have the integration with Facebook or Twitter. Their goad is obviously how they can use the power of the social to make their customers' purchase experience better hence people will buy more from Amazon. It's interesting how they will transform our purchase or consuming experience in the next 3-5 years.
Short Term vs. Long Term
It's easy to come up with a start-up idea based on what you see now or for the next few months. But then there will be a lot of competitors and they're very competitive. But if you focus on the long-term like 7 years then it would be easier from competition perspective, but it would take a lot of patience and hard to finance it.
“It’s all about the long term.” If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. "
TV Shows/Movie Streaming
Interestingly, they are also aware that it would make more sense to have an 'all-you-can-eat' type of subscription with which you can consume any media on Amazon because they believe that would be the most simple user experience. But looks they need to have the content providers a say. It really depends, but there is a possibility in future we'll have such option.
Oink is the latest Kevin's (he founded Digg) startup, which allows you to rate and comment anything you care about, like food and drinks at restaurants, or media contents like TV shows, movie, music, or even gadgets like iPhone 4S, Kindle Fire. It's really up to you what you want to rate or comment on. This is very interesting especially when it comes to restaurants or cafes because you can rate or comment for each item instead of just the restaurant itself. So if you like a Latte at Ritual coffee you can either take a picture of it and rate, or find a picture that's already taken by somebody else and rate it.
First you select a location (you don't have to though), which you can select from a list of the locations near you like the cafe you're just drinking your coffee at. It uses the location sencer so it finds a list of the places and names automatically. Then take a picture and give your rate like 'Like', 'Love', etc, and comment. When I've been playing around with this app in SF, of course many of the things have already been rated by somebody else, that means I can just pick from the ones that somebody already had rated and took picture of, then I can add my rate, or what they call 'Oink', comments, and pictures if I want.
You can follow your friends or interesting people and see what they're recommending. There are already hot people who have thousands of followers. So you can start following these people to start with and see what people are talking and like about.
You can discover things that are hot, like the best sushi, in your current neighborhood.
Since it allows us to rate anything this can be used for so many different things. Oink then can accumulate all these people's taste and trend information. That itself would be a great valuable information for marketers. There are many other review apps, but this is one of the best apps in this category so far that it's practically easy to use and useful. That's amazing especially given that it just came out very recently. It has a great potential and opportunities to become next Yelp! if not least.
Feedback
The sequence of rating it is a bit awkward at first. It would be nice to start from taking a picture, then rate and comment. Currently, I need to pick a location, pick an item to rate, then either take a picture or use the existing ones. This way it would be much easier and simple, and that encourages us more to add our rate or comment on top of existing stuff and enhance their catalog. Just a thought….
I've got this Kindle Fire a week or so ago and have been playing around since then. And here is what I think about the device. Let's start with the positive.
Read and Watch Right Away!
If you buy this from Amazon, once it arrives at your door you can immediately start reading books and watching movies and shows with your Amazon account. And if you are Amazon Prime customer by paying the annual fee of $79 you can start watching the free movie/tv contents right away. This is pretty cool. The collection of free contents is not that great, but, hey it's free!
Fast!
Performance is pretty good. Each window flips very fast. Opening the books, playing videos, it just works quickly. And when I go to the Amazon store for the movie and hit play it almost immediately start playing. It's not that Kindle Fire is better than iPad or anything, but it's great that this can deliver this seamless and quick performance.
Cheap!
Again, it's $199. It's way cheap compared to other tablet devices.
Now, here is the negative.
User Experience
1. Touch Display is not really responsive
When I tap on some menus like book, movie, or other stuff, sometimes it doesn't do anything. When I try to slide to unlock when it's sleep mode it doesn't open sometimes. Yes, the touch screen is not so responsive. Obviously it needs more than a tap. Don't get me wrong, it works fast and quick once it recognizes my touch. It's just that it needs more understanding and love...
2. Animation/Transition
The transitional animation is not so great. When I open a page, flip through book pages, switch between apps, every movement is kind of slow motion, it reminds me of Pre-iPhone era. And it is disappointing that Amazon couldn't make the book reading experience more joyful like reading a real book by making the page transition more smooth and using better fonts, given that they had Kindle for long time. Reading books on Kindle is kind of like reading PDF documents on PC.
After getting used to iPad, experiencing of tapping or swiping on Kindle Fire is just not delightful. But hey, again, it's just $200, what do you expect, right?
3. Unlock
Unlocking the device is the first thing you do. That's the beginning of the user experience. And I got a bit of bump there. It's not that it's confusing, it's just not intuitive. Once I turn on the device there is nothing on the screen that tells me intuitively how to unlock. Instead there is this orange triangular shape that I'm supposed to hold and swipe from left to right to unlock. It's not hard, but It just took me a few seconds or so to figure that out. Then, I realize why Apple had that slide bar on iPhone and iPad, which says 'Slide to unlock' and has this fancy animated graduation on the text going from left to right with a a button with a clear arrow pointing right. These signals are the reasons why my 2 years old niece can open the iPad without anyone telling her how to.
This is one of the examples of how Apple and Amazon are fundamentally different when it comes to the user experience design on the devices. Amazon is known for the great user experience on their web page, but not so much on the hardware and software.
4. Buttons
I get this feeling of getting lost sometimes while I'm doing something like shopping, browsing books, etc. Maybe this is because I'm still not use to this Kindle way of the navigation. But one of the reasons I get confused is the lack of the home button on the device. There is a home button but I need to hold on the page and get the home menu shown up on the screen, then finally I can push this to get back to the home window. This makes me realize why Apple kept the home button on the device at the bottom instead of making that on the UI screen. The same goes for the volume control too, which I need to find somewhere in the UI screen to turn up or down. And another disappointment is the turn on/off button, which is located at the bottom because I can tell this is made this way not for the user experience but for their reasons like it's just easier to have it there to make the device. I keep hitting the button while I'm browsing or reading, which is of course annoying. And this is why Apple's model of integrating everything from hardware, software, and service as a complete product is the best way to provide an amazing user experience.
UI Design
1. Menu
Basic menus are all at the top. That's where your eyes and fingers are when you are browsing or selecting something on the device. But when you want to go back to the previous page or home window you got to move your focus to the bottom left. And this causes a bit of confusion sometimes, and it reminds me of the PC desktop applications with bad user interface.
2. Selected Color
Confusing. Buttons are everywhere and the message of each color is not so obvious. When you open one of the menus, let's say Books. You would find so many menu buttons everywhere. Home button is at the bottom left, context menu and back button at the bottom center, and all other menus are at the top.
Display Size
9 inch display is too big for palm size yet too small for movie watching. And once getting used to reading magazines and books on iPad's 11 inch display it's hard to go back to 9 inch. Now I know why Apple had chosen 11 inch.
Features
No camera, no microphone, no GPS, no Bluetooth, no calendar, no note. Yep, it focuses on only those that you can consume like books, movies, music, etc. Amazon wants us to consume such media from them as easy and simple as possible, and that's how they make money. They don't make money from the device itself. Having said that it is not positioned as a 'Tablet', it is a 'media player'. Now the question is, you want to carry a separate media player on top of other devices? To me, when I travel, commute, or just go to somewhere, I'd like to have as less devices as possible. If I bring iPad for a weekend trip I know I can do pretty much everything hence I don't need to bring my laptop. And that's big for me.
Conclusion
Amazon Kindle Fire reminds me of 'Pre-iPhone' era, like when I had my first generation of 'smart phone' of Windows Mobile or Black Berry or Palm before the first iPhone came out. Those first phone did the job it was supposed to do. But I remember the first time I used my first iPhone I was delighted and emotionally excited even without calling to my friends and family as a phone. And my expectation to the phone had changed ever since. It is a valid argument that Kindle Fire is much cheaper and can be positioned for those who can't afford expensive iPad. But then, not only does it lack of the great user experience, design, performance, but it also lacks some main features of iPad such as Skype, Face Time, SMS, Map, location, calendar, text entry based applications, etc. So I need to ask 'Is that really cheap?' If you're looking for a simple media player with which you want to consume mainly books and movies/TV shows then this is a great device. It's already setup with your Amazon account so you can start reading books and watching videos from Amazon right away. But if you are expecting something beyond that then Kindle Fire is not for you.
And that's my very personal take. Will people buy Kindle Fire? I think so, and probably a lot. Again, it's a good entertainment device for consuming media, and that's the new market Amazon created. But it’s not for the tablet market that Apple created with iPad.
Evernote has just released their new apps 'Clearly', which is a Chrome browser apps, that converts those online articles with a bunch of display ads and distracting menus to super clean and elegant looking blog posts.
By using Clearly, one article from the New York Time below would become much cleaner.
After cleaned:
And, this article on RollingStones online magazine becomes,
like this...
Beautiful, isn't it ?
And you can choose the formatting style among the default 3 options or you can create your own custom style. So the same article can be displayed like the below.
On top of this, when you clean the article that spreads across multiple pages, Cleaner load all the pages and consolidate them into a single page article so that you don't have to click 'Next Page' link while you read.
Of course, you can click 'Clip' button at the right hand side to save the clean version into your Evernote.
They've really done a great job. My online reading experience especially for the long articles that I need to read them later has become so peaceful and easy. I need to read a lot of articles these days for my work and class, and this is a must-have apps.
Evernote knows how to make apps so simple and easy to use, and to make our life so productive and pleasure.
Usually there were volunteers from 30 to 100 people depends on the day. There were volunteers who joined as groups. They joined some volunteer tours, their local organizations, or their companies' efforts. Most of these folks come for one day by busses and stayed at some hotels, which were 20 to 30 minutes away from the town. Yes, this Minami-Sanriku lost everything including places to stay. They built temporary buildings for the city offices, police, fire departments, etc, on top of the hill and temporary houses for the local people. But there was still no place to stay for the people from outside.
Other volunteers were individuals. Most of them stayed with their own tents and sleeping bags, and some of them slept in their cars. But one thing these individual volunteers shared was the freezing and sleepless nights. The week I was there was the first week of the winter. The first night it was massive wind blowing out our tents with cold air all night. The rest of the nights didn't really have the blowing wind but the temperature went further down to around 30F (0C). I was not really prepared with my cheap summer sleeping bag I picked up right before I came here and didn't bring much warm clothes since it was pretty warm when I was traveling around Japan for the last two weeks. But just thinking that the local victims who escaped the Tsunami on 3/11 had to sleep outside with fire in snowing made our experience nothing to complain about… Well, still I complained though… ha! But seriously, this kind of experience really bonded us among volunteers. Every morning we came out from our tents to find each other's survival and joked about how each of us had to do to get through the nights.
One thing I noticed was there were relatively many more volunteers from Kobe, which is a city 600 miles west from Minami-Sanriku, than any other places. It is the city that was hit by a massive earthquake 17 years ago. There were about 6500 people who lost their lives. I remember watching TVs and newspapers at the time that all the infrastructures like highways, brides, and roads were demolished and fires were everywhere. People in Kobe appreciated the help they got from outside at the time, and many of them felt that this was their time to give it back, and here they were. I thought this was so beautiful. These folks I met were not necessary the direct victims of the earthquake, they lived outside of where the earthquake left the scars. But still they felt they wanted to give something back because of the help Kobe as a city had received. I love this connection between people through the communities. People are not necessary be connected directly but can be connected through communities. We are social animal at the end of the day, and connection between people matters. When I find this kind of sense of belonging, sense of connection, and sense of giving back, it makes me optimistic about the world we live.
Not only these amazing people from Kobe, but also I met many other interesting and inspiring people. I was so fortunate to hear many interesting stories from them and learn and be inspired from them. Many people came from many different areas that were far from Minami-Sanriku and had different backgrounds. But they all shared one thing, they wanted to do something for the victims in these areas and they came. It is so beautiful to see this small town was not left alone, many young and old, woman and man, all the Japanese with a help of foreigners came to this place, got their hands dirty, went through the freezing nights, to support the folks in Minami-Sanriku and of course many other towns.
Folks in Minami-Sanriku and other towns and areas who were suffering their loss, we won't leave you guys alone...
Everyday I started my day getting out of my tent after freezing and sleepless night. I went for an hour running to warm up my body and took a quick shower. After a quick break fast, which I bought the night before at a local temporary convenience store, it was time to join the volunteer force. The registration started at 8:30am and I was assigned to a work in a specified area for the day. The works started at 9am and ended at 3pm. There were some break times between, but this was Japan, it was very precisely. When we started a little beak at 10:42am for 10 minutes the leader role guy called us exactly at 10:52am to start. I was appalled with this precise schedule and everybody's ability to cooperate along with it.
One day, I was helping this group of fishery folks who used to farm seaweed, oysters, and scallops. The Tsunami hit this bay so hard and crashed and destroyed everything they had for their farming. Now they have started rebuilding what they used to have. So we were helping them to create a bunch of sand bags that were filled with bunch of small rocks. Later, they were going to use them to buoy their wooden structure things where they plants seaweed, oysters, etc. Working with these local folks was just so amazing. They not only shared their stories of the day and after, but also shared their great energy and smiles with me. Given what they had and what they lost, I can't imagine their devastation enough. But they didn't want to stop their life. At the end of the day, only thing they could do was to move forward.
Other days, I was working with a group of volunteers clearing some parts of the town where there were still tons of broken pieces of glasses, clay roof tiles, kitchen and dining wares, water pipes, wires, woods, walls, just to name a few. I felt it was endless; all I could see in the area was a mass of such trashes everywhere. There was ocean water coming up to the area at the high tides times because the earthquake sank the area under the sea level. It was already 7 months since the day the Tsunami swept this town away, there were weeds growing everywhere. We had to clear the weeds and get our feet in the muds or some time in the water, and pick up or sometimes dig up those broken pieces. But amazingly at the end of the day the sections we worked on were much cleaner. I'm sure there will be some construction folks with bulldozers will eventually dig the whole thing up and rebuild something. But for now, until they will come with their recovery plans, it was nice to have the area cleaned up. It is just so hard to see such mess especially with those personal things like pictures, notebooks, shoes, etc, for the local folks.
Another day, I was working with another group of people and was getting this massive amount of mud that was blocking water drains that was supposed to carry raining water from the hills down to lower area. After digging the mud that exudes stinky smell and finally getting them out from the drain a stream of brown water started going through. This was a small thing, but it was very important to get the water going through the downstream, otherwise the water that doesn't have a place to go eventually will cause a land slide or flood when the next big raining or snow.
Every day many volunteers were assigned to many different works. Some of the works might look small compared to what needs to be done to recover this city. But each of the works really counts and has a huge impact as a whole. Even with one day of the work we are making it moving forward and having a great impact for the towns and victims.
While I was in the city I met many local who had been going through hard and tough days since the day the earthquake and Tsunami hit. Most of them were basically the people who quickly escaped and run up to the hills or higher part of the mountains and looked what was coming and how their towns and houses were completely swallowed and smashed by the Tsunami. They were all kind and generous to share their stories with me and they were so helpful to educate myself and understand what happened better.
Personal Stories
I met this guy who used to work at a local newspaper company, which had gone with the Tsunami, and now working at this temporary FM station, where I met a couple of great people who graciously invited me and shared their stories, and organizing local music festivals. On that day, he was outside when the earthquake hit the town. He never experienced the amount of shock and the length of shaking he started thinking this was something different. He went back to his office by driving his car only to find empty office with nobody. He got outside and started driving, this time escaping, towards to a hill.
This area was hit by a tsunami in 1960's when Chile was hit by an earthquake. At that time the tsunami water reached up to 6 meter and caused about 150 people died in one of the towns in Minami-Sanriku. Many of the people in this town knew this, so did him. He drove up to somewhere he thought high enough based on what he knew. A few minutes after he reached to the top he started seeing some grim scenery that he had never seen in his life. Dark grey colored unbelievable amount of water was coming into town with massive and loud sound of crashing everything the town had. And the Tsunami was bringing much more water than the last time in '60's into town. This time it eventually reached up to 30 meters high.
It swallowed the entire town with massive amount of water and massive speed of the waves. Then a few hours later the same water now were sucked back to the ocean dragging everything it just smashed and crashed. By the time the water went back to the ocean it was already evening. Now it was dark outside and getting even colder, it was March, still winter in this region, and it was snowing on the day. They started collecting tree branches to make fire so that they could be warm around the fire. They were still confused by what just happened but started accepting the reality that they had just lost everything they had including their houses, work, schools, shops, and the towns they grew up and loved. They were hoping other members of their family were ok at somewhere else. It was still snowing outside was too cold for sleeping outside but they knew this is what they needed to do for the next few nights.
Real FisherMan/Woman in Sanriku
One day when I was helping the local fishery folks to create sand bags for their new oyster and seaweed farms I was talking to this old woman, who was in her 70s and lost her husband and some of her kids and their families including her grand children. She introduced me another fishery man who was sitting in front of us at one of the break times. He was probably in his 50s or 60s and he lost all his kids and their families, he lost his parents, and he lost his wife. He was left alone. According to the woman this man was going through a tough time, which was totally understandable, but he didn't act like it during the time we were working together. He was working hard and talking and laughing with others. Not only him, many other folks who also shared the similar experiences. They lost their love ones, their homes, their farms for oyster, sea weed, scallops, etc, were completely gone. Now they live in the temporary houses which were built for temporary use and living day by day.
The magnitude of their loss was indescribable and heart breaking. When I heard their stories I didn't know what to say, I was just shocked and devastated. But these people, many of who were in 50s and 60s, were all out there, working everyday, talking with their friends and new neighbors in their temporary houses and trying to get by without exposing their sadness.
They all think about others in the same town or other towns who might have had worse experiences. Therefore, theirs are still better situations. Even though, this whole area is known for one of the hardest Tsunami hit areas. But these old fishery folks all looked happy when they were working, at the end of the day this is only thing they knew and this is what makes them who they are. These are strong and real fisherman and fisherwoman.
Missing Bodies...
One thing hit me was that there were still many bodies missing. (still more than 600 bodies were still missing in Minami-Sanriku today.) The woman I was talking to told me that she just found her father's body, which was missing until recently. It was originally found at a very far island close to Okinawa. At first she couldn't identify the body. After floating in the ocean for 5 or 6 months it was impossible to recognize who it was. But later a tiny hole in the neck was found, which was used to put a pipe into to help him breath when he was living, and finally she came to accept this was her husband's body. It was hard for her but she was relieved at the end because now she could send him out to heaven with a funeral and she finally could move on with the recognition of the death of someone she spent most of her time with and loved…
(this is based on my volunteer days in October 2011.)
Since the day the Earthquake and Tsunami hit Tohoku region in Japan on March 11th I've been always thinking of going there and doing something to support the victims there. I couldn't get some time off to get there earlier but finally the chance had come when my girl friend and me had decided to visit Japan in October. The trip was originally planned as we would take the first two weeks to travel around Japan and I would take another week to go up to Tohoku for volunteering.
At the beginning I couldn't find right organizations that were asking for individual volunteers until I almost decided to go back to SF. I heard from many people that those areas already got settled down and didn't need volunteers anymore once I was in Japan. And it was not so easy to understand what exactly each volunteer organization was doing for what, and some organizations required volunteers to register a way before.
But at the last minutes, really in the morning I was almost leaving for SF with my girl friend, finally I found one organization located in this city called Minami-Sanriku. I'd heard of the name of the city, and indeed I had seen some videos of the city being wiped out completely by the Tsunami. It was very shocking and devastating, once I recalled the image I felt strongly to do whatever I could do to support the victims in the city.
After coming back from Narita airport where I said good bye to my girl friend who left for SF, I quickly went to a local home center in where my brother's family lived, (I was staying at their place in Tokyo.) and bought these cheap sleeping bag, tent, other stuff I needed, like working boots, groves, rain jacket, etc, to do the volunteer work.
In Japan, in order to participate such volunteer works in the areas damaged by natural disasters you need to have this volunteer insurance. It's a little bit tedious process that you need to physically present yourself at some offices. So the next morning, I got that one sorted out and quickly jumped on a Tohoku-Shinkansen, which is another bullet train that goes from Tokyo to the northern region of Japan. After another few train changes, I was at this station called 'Yanaizu', which was closest from Minami-Sanriku whose 5 of the train stations were closed due to the earth quake and Tsunami.
It was a beautiful and calm town with a small village town feeling. Now I needed to figure out how to get the Minami-Sanriku. There was a local bus going to the city but I had to wait for another 3 hrs for the next bus, so I took a cab, which took me to the city by 30 minutes. As we started driving, I started seeing beautiful mountains filled with many bamboo and cedar trees with their green leaves. Between the mountains there was this stream like river going through. There was no many residents on the road and it looked very quiet and calm, until I started seeing some purple trees and occasionally crashed houses at the side road. The cab driver was sharing with me his experience of the day the disaster hit and explaining that the purple trees were dead trees that were killed by the sea water that reached up to this area with the Tsunami. It was way before we reached the coastal side, which amazed me to think how far and deep the Tsunami brought water up to.
I started feeling blue and imagining about the disastrous day. But once the cab started getting into the Shizugawa-cho, which is the main area of Minami-Sanriku, I was completely shocked by what I was looking out from the window, which was a completely smashed out and blown off town with left over buildings and cars that were smashed completely. It looked as if it just ended a war after an atomic bomb dropped.
I went to junior and high schools in Hiroshima, so I have seen many pictures of how it was like in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped, but the scenery spreading out in front of me was something similar to what I had seen in those pictures. It was already 7 months passed, but still it was far from the recovery. And that explained me how deeply damaged the towns were.
I was not sure what and how I could do to help the victims or contribute to the recovery works, but here I was in a middle of the city with more than 500 people died and about 700 people still missing. It still needed a lot of works to be done for their recovery. I was so determined to do whatever it took to help.
I've been using Thunderbird for long time as my mail application. It worked stable, did what I expected, and had improved down the road. But recently I noticed that it was taking incredible amount of memory space, sometimes it took up to almost 50% of the memory!
In the past I tried Apple's Mail apps and Sparrow but I was not satisfied and soon went back to Thunderbird again. I didn't like font formatting inconsistency of Mail apps and didn't like Sparrow didn't download the data before I opened emails, which I don't know how it is today...
Anyway, after getting frustrated by the Thurnderbird's heavy usage of the memory I started using the Mail apps again. And this time I really like it, and here is a list of what I like about.
1. Font Setting
It's much easier to control the font for reading and writing. I love big font size for both reading and writing so this is a big win!
2. Email Thread
When there are so many replies it's hard to track the conversation, sometimes don't know where to start or which is the latest. So the emaiil threading is a big deal. If you use iPhone, Gmail, or Sparrow email client this is given, nothitng special about. But Mail apps got this write. I still like displaying the email subjects at the upper area and their message body at the bottom, classic style, and Mail apps display the messages in a consolidated way with numbers that tell you which one is older or newer.
3. Notes
I take notes on my iPhone all the time, though I started seeing myself using Evernote apps more these days. But now I can access to those notes, which is syncronized over the air, inside the Mail apps at the same time I view my emails. And this is another big win.
4. Performance
It takes certain amount of memory because I have a lot of messgaes in Inbox and I don't clean. But still compared to Thunderbird it's nothing. Now I have more memory space that I can comfortably run a virtual machine on Prallels.
5. Voice/Audit attachment
My company's phone system takes a voice message if I didn't answer the phone at my office, and sends it to my email. I used to need to open it in a different window or application to play the recording, but now I can play it within the message box. It's a small thing but makes my email reading so seamless.
Now, here's what I would like to see in future enhancements.
1. Integration with iMessage
It would be nice to send text messages if I'm writing the mail to someone who has an iPhone. That way we don't need to check the emails everytime especially for urgent messages.
2. Integration with Phone
And of course, it would be nice to call the person from who I just received an email, then I can avoid many back-and-forth replies to get things done.
3. Integration with FaceTime
And if I'm calling to someone who has iPhone, iPad, or Macbook, why not FactTime ? Then have a quick call with video. If FaceTime allows me to share my desktop then both of us on the phone can see the same document, drawing, etc. But I don't think the desktop sharing is there yet...
Facebook and Google
Probably Facebook and Google will get these things done first, and part of that has already been done like Google+ hangout, Facebook Messenger. But since I use Mac, iPhone, iPad, and still need to access to my work emails, Mac Mail apps is in the best position to make the communication much easier and more productive for my work and private life. Will see!
