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I didn't know Zulip was acquired by Dropbox! Thanks for the info. It's interesting to imagine a timeline where Dropbox becomes a leading business/collaboration

by rocmcd 3y ago

I didn't know Zulip was acquired by Dropbox! Thanks for the info. It's interesting to imagine a timeline where Dropbox becomes a leading business/collaboration tool, similar to GSuite or MS Office. It seems like they had many of the right pieces, between storage, paper, zulip... If they had added email and calendar plus potentially their own presentation and spreadsheet tools they could be have been a contender instead of relegated to pretty just storage at this point.

price 3y ago
That was in fact Dropbox's plan circa 2013-2014. (I worked there 2014-2017.) In fact they had email too: Mailbox, a mobile mail client with some brilliant product ideas, which marked the start of the acquisitions spree that included Zulip as well as Hackpad (which became Paper) and many small others. It didn't work out. Some of the reasons are in this Casey Newton article: https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailbox-shutdown https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailb...
- aidenn0 3y ago
  That article claims that swiping to delete/archive messages debuted in Mailbox, but I recall doing that in 2009 with the Palm Pre's builtin mail app.
  - price 3y ago
    Interesting. My perception in 2014 was right in line with the way it's told in that 2015 article: that this was a new and clever UI twist, one that I hadn't seen before and that many people in the industry were copying after seeing it in Mailbox. That was as an engineer in San Francisco, talking with designers and product folks and people much more plugged in to industry gossip than me - so I think that means it truly had not previously existed in the mobile apps (really, the iPhone apps) that people here who were connected were paying attention to. It sounds like Palm had the feature years earlier. Maybe the Mailbox folks got the idea from there! In any case I think they did succeed in bringing the feature to a lot more users, by making it something that people in the industry widely knew about and copied.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      It's also possible I'm misremembering, but I'm about 90% certain since I remember I would do a pass through my inbox on my phone because of how quick and easy it was to sort this way.
      - aidenn0 3y ago
        Aha, found it[1]. This jogs my memory enough. I changed my "trash" folder to be my archive folder and could just swipe (or as the manual says "Throw the message off the side of the screen"). 1: https://manualsdump.com/en/manuals/palm-pre/221591/213 https://manualsdump.com/en/manuals/palm-pre/221591/213
        price 3y ago
        Interesting! Thanks for tracking down that bit of history.

by rocmcd 3y ago

price 3y ago

That was in fact Dropbox's plan circa 2013-2014. (I worked there 2014-2017.) In fact they had email too: Mailbox, a mobile mail client with some brilliant product ideas, which marked the start of the acquisitions spree that included Zulip as well as Hackpad (which became Paper) and many small others. It didn't work out. Some of the reasons are in this Casey Newton article: https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailbox-shutdown https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailb...

aidenn0 3y ago
That article claims that swiping to delete/archive messages debuted in Mailbox, but I recall doing that in 2009 with the Palm Pre's builtin mail app.
- price 3y ago
  Interesting. My perception in 2014 was right in line with the way it's told in that 2015 article: that this was a new and clever UI twist, one that I hadn't seen before and that many people in the industry were copying after seeing it in Mailbox. That was as an engineer in San Francisco, talking with designers and product folks and people much more plugged in to industry gossip than me - so I think that means it truly had not previously existed in the mobile apps (really, the iPhone apps) that people here who were connected were paying attention to. It sounds like Palm had the feature years earlier. Maybe the Mailbox folks got the idea from there! In any case I think they did succeed in bringing the feature to a lot more users, by making it something that people in the industry widely knew about and copied.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    It's also possible I'm misremembering, but I'm about 90% certain since I remember I would do a pass through my inbox on my phone because of how quick and easy it was to sort this way.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      Aha, found it[1]. This jogs my memory enough. I changed my "trash" folder to be my archive folder and could just swipe (or as the manual says "Throw the message off the side of the screen"). 1: https://manualsdump.com/en/manuals/palm-pre/221591/213 https://manualsdump.com/en/manuals/palm-pre/221591/213
      - price 3y ago
        Interesting! Thanks for tracking down that bit of history.