2016: the first leg of a very long journey (to fix email)

2016 fix email

2015 wrapped up very nicely for us at Timyo. We got our app in the app store just before the annual iTunes Connect “Holiday Shutdown” — a sort of dead zone where no new apps can be launched into the App Store around Christmas time — and we got a couple days to relax, enjoy our families, and mentally prepare for the next phase of our journey.

So here we are, just getting 2016 under way and moving ahead with new and exciting challenges for our team and the Timyo app. Getting an app into the App Store is a huge relief, but it’s just the first leg of a very long journey. Now is the time that we really need to get the word out, get the app into people’s hands, keep an eye on the usage data, and pay very close attention to user feedback — after all, we made this app for people, so we want to make sure people can get the most out of it!

XVP stands for eXtra Viable Product

When we created this “release” version of Timyo, we knew that we were going to have to launch it with a minimal set of features. In a previous blog post, I referred to our launch version of the app as an XVP (the X is for eXtra!), because in our case, we had to build an entire email client first and then add our “extra” features. Of course, we could not launch with all of the features that we have planned for the app, so we carefully chose a core set that would represent the complete idea to a smaller subset of our entire possible audience.

For instance, we chose to launch our app initially only with Gmail support. A lot of people and a lot of businesses use Gmail and Google Apps, so we thought this was a very good cross-section of our potential users. Of course we have received numerous comments from users that they use Exchange for work and therefore can not use our app right now.

We also chose to launch with support for only one email at a time, not multiple emails. This one was a very tough decision to make, but ultimately, the time it would have taken to do this right would have been way too long. We decided that enough people will be okay with one account for now and that even using Timyo with just one account is better than not using Timyo at all.

“More” is coming soon

We have had multiple requests for saving and attaching images and documents from popular cloud services such as OneDrive, Box, and Dropbox. Those are coming! People have requested more email providers be supported, such as Outlook, Office 365, iCloud, and more. Yep, those are on the way! Here’s one that caught us off guard: landscape mode! None of us at Timyo use our phones in landscape mode when dealing with email, but a lot of our users do, so it’s a good thing we asked! And guess what? That’s been bumped way up the roadmap list and is coming very soon!

Of course it would be remiss of me not to mention the speed of the app. In developing the app we wanted to be on par with the speed of the iOS native email app for a start and this is a good starting point. But we feel we can squeeze out even more speed by constantly optimizing the code we have and trying new methods of pre-fetching and predictive downloading of emails. We want to save people even more time, one email at a time.

Let’s fix email together

The point is, (and this is the thing that makes us all very happy at Timyo,) is that not a single person has said, “I don’t get the point of sending my email with clear expectations, so Timyo is no good for me.” (Okay, so there’s that one guy, but cut me some slack with him, I’m not really sure what would make him happy.) So, we know that we are on to something. Something potentially world changing and revolutionary in the way that people deal with email and further respect each other’s one precious commodity: time.

We know that the individual features mentioned above are very important. These features are what will ultimately make Timyo an incredible productivity tool for everyone. But for now, we are happy to see that people agree with our vision and direction, so we are all looking forward to a very productive new year with many new features introduced into Timyo along the way. Will you be joining us?

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