In this Airmail review I will just cover the basics. The fact that I am not very keen on switching email clients or software in general, can certainly tell you a lot about this app. I used to be very happy with Postbox for a very long time, but there was this hum of my CPU and fans, that was pushing me away from it. If I had an iMac or Mac Mini, I’d stay with it. Despite Postbox having awesome integration with Evernote, my computer resources and battery being unnecessarily heated, I had to take some precautions in preserving the battery of my MacBook Air.
Mike Vardy initially hooked me to Postbox, and once I saw him make a switch to Air Mail, I wanted to give it a shot too. I believe that Mike is also using MacBook Air, so I knew that his choice, would be a wise decision for me as well.
First impression
The design of the app was a big eye candy for me, and once I’ve removed all the clutter, the end result, where it’s only my emails and me, I was sold on it. Than when I realized that there are no more cooler hums in the background I was happy on both fronts.
As I started writing out a lot of emails, I found one very neat and specific function of Air Mail, that is leaving this app consistently turned on in the background (with notifications turned off, of course). This function is the ability to compose a new email at the stroke of a global keyboard shortcut. Which means that I will be able to create a new email at the matter of seconds.
Considering that lately my work is consistently changing towards emailing a lot of people, I was begging to wonder, how this would integrate into my workflow.
These are just first impressions, but the overall feel tells me that this might be a little bit longer term solution for me, as well as for Air Mail.
Under The Hood
The next thing you will notice is the integration with Dropbox, Droplr, Google Drive and Cloud App. I am not sure to which extent does this integration go, and what is its purpose, but I am willing to play around with it.
The important piece of the Air Mail puzzle is markdown support. As you already know that I am a huge fan of markdown, and the way it transformed my online productivity. Having it in email is even better, as I can send out carefully structured emails in the matter of seconds.
Overall Impression
Overall impression is quite neat, and after some longer usage, I might shoot a review for All Things Apple about it. But if you have some free time, and you want to check out something new, AirMail is definitively worth your money and time. It’s only 2 $ on the App Store. In case your current email clients are clunky and are killing the resources of your laptop, you definitively need to check this app out.
