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Did they get rid of the extra middle server yet or integrate it at least? Seems really annoying when IMAP satisfies basically everything already... makes me thi

Did they get rid of the extra middle server yet or integrate it at least? Seems really annoying when IMAP satisfies basically everything already... makes me think the whole thing is just a ploy to collect as many people's email as possible to be honest.

vorotato 11y ago
Additionally what does this have that thunderbird doesn't?
- ultramancool 11y ago
  Just a pretty UI - although it's node-webkit or electron based I think.
- r3bl 11y ago
  - Support - Nice design - Chance to make an impact because it's fresh - Pretty much everything stated in this blog post (including, but not limited to, swipe, snooze, emoji support, opportunity to schedule a reply) Don't get me wrong, I am using Thunderbird currently, but this thing really shines in some of the areas where Thunderbird does not. But, I'm going to have to wait until the PGP support is finished before I even consider moving to it.
grinich 11y ago
It's not a ploy-- just a design choice. The cloud sync engine does a lot of heavy lifting so N1 is faster and efficient. It's also open source free software so you can run it yourself! https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine (I work at Nylas.)
- ultramancool 11y ago
  What sort of "heavy lifting" does this do that Thunderbird or Outlook don't? Certainly they're both performant enough. And more importantly, is there any compelling reason to introduce a 3rd party server to do this instead of doing it locally for better user privacy? I understand I can run it myself, however I have to question the design and motivations of the developers.
  - grinich 11y ago
    Probably the biggest thing is that it translates a traditional document-based data structure (mailboxes via IMAP) into a stateless, streaming transactional data structure. This allows N1 to be way more efficient and faster, and only load about 2% of the total data in your mailbox. The sync engine is essentially an abstraction layer for IMAP/SMTP/MIME/etc. This architecture has become pretty common in the past few years: Mailbox, Outlook Mobile (Acompli), Spark, Cloud Magic, Gmailify, and many more run similar systems. Although as far as I know, we're the only one who has open sourced our backend.:https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine We actually released the API layer before N1, and lots of developers use it for their own apps and pay us to run the infrastructure. If you're curious, the full docs here: nylas.com/docs/platform You can pretty easily set up the sync engine and run it yourself, either locally or on a VPC, and connect N1 to that instance. We do this ourselves when developing, and it's the best way to have 100% control over the entire stack. More info here: https://github.com/nylas/N1/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#running-against-open-source-sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/N1/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#runn... There's a bunch of community developers than hang out in our chat room and can also give you some tips for getting started. You can join that here: http://slack-invite.nylas.com/ http://slack-invite.nylas.com/
    - ultramancool 11y ago
      > Probably the biggest thing is that it translates a traditional document-based data structure (mailboxes via IMAP) into a stateless, streaming transactional data structure. So why can't this be done on the client side? Are you telling me that to avoid storing more data on the clients, they should give up their privacy to whoever operates the server? Not like Outlook or Thunderbird take a substantial amount of time to do most operations. Is this a good tradeoff for them? I understand, yes, technically adept users can run the server, but there's still many who won't, who will use your server or someone else's server and be required to make this tradeoff. Of the products you mention - yes, yours is the only one I'd consider and for this very reason, I can run the middle server myself. I just have to think about those people who won't do it though.
      - 11y ago

vorotato 11y ago

Additionally what does this have that thunderbird doesn't?

ultramancool 11y ago
Just a pretty UI - although it's node-webkit or electron based I think.
r3bl 11y ago
- Support - Nice design - Chance to make an impact because it's fresh - Pretty much everything stated in this blog post (including, but not limited to, swipe, snooze, emoji support, opportunity to schedule a reply) Don't get me wrong, I am using Thunderbird currently, but this thing really shines in some of the areas where Thunderbird does not. But, I'm going to have to wait until the PGP support is finished before I even consider moving to it.

grinich 11y ago

It's not a ploy-- just a design choice. The cloud sync engine does a lot of heavy lifting so N1 is faster and efficient. It's also open source free software so you can run it yourself! https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine (I work at Nylas.)

ultramancool 11y ago
What sort of "heavy lifting" does this do that Thunderbird or Outlook don't? Certainly they're both performant enough. And more importantly, is there any compelling reason to introduce a 3rd party server to do this instead of doing it locally for better user privacy? I understand I can run it myself, however I have to question the design and motivations of the developers.
- grinich 11y ago
  Probably the biggest thing is that it translates a traditional document-based data structure (mailboxes via IMAP) into a stateless, streaming transactional data structure. This allows N1 to be way more efficient and faster, and only load about 2% of the total data in your mailbox. The sync engine is essentially an abstraction layer for IMAP/SMTP/MIME/etc. This architecture has become pretty common in the past few years: Mailbox, Outlook Mobile (Acompli), Spark, Cloud Magic, Gmailify, and many more run similar systems. Although as far as I know, we're the only one who has open sourced our backend.:https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine We actually released the API layer before N1, and lots of developers use it for their own apps and pay us to run the infrastructure. If you're curious, the full docs here: nylas.com/docs/platform You can pretty easily set up the sync engine and run it yourself, either locally or on a VPC, and connect N1 to that instance. We do this ourselves when developing, and it's the best way to have 100% control over the entire stack. More info here: https://github.com/nylas/N1/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#running-against-open-source-sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/N1/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#runn... There's a bunch of community developers than hang out in our chat room and can also give you some tips for getting started. You can join that here: http://slack-invite.nylas.com/ http://slack-invite.nylas.com/
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    > Probably the biggest thing is that it translates a traditional document-based data structure (mailboxes via IMAP) into a stateless, streaming transactional data structure. So why can't this be done on the client side? Are you telling me that to avoid storing more data on the clients, they should give up their privacy to whoever operates the server? Not like Outlook or Thunderbird take a substantial amount of time to do most operations. Is this a good tradeoff for them? I understand, yes, technically adept users can run the server, but there's still many who won't, who will use your server or someone else's server and be required to make this tradeoff. Of the products you mention - yes, yours is the only one I'd consider and for this very reason, I can run the middle server myself. I just have to think about those people who won't do it though.
    - 11y ago