When I started MacStories in 2009, I chose to go with an IMAP server that I could use with Apple Mail on my iPhone and Mac. I should also provide some context about the email services I’ve tried, left, and embraced again. 1 In other words: why can’t email apps be smarter and work on any platform for any email service? To truly reimagine email – for many, still an essential component of a daily workflow – a mobile client would have to bring the intelligence and versatility of a mobile-first world to the stale nature of email protocols. Our smartphones and tablets have a much deeper understanding of our schedule, files, location, contacts, and most used apps than they did eight years ago – a knowledge certainly superior to any desktop computer. Today, being “desktop-class” is almost a liability for apps. When Apple introduced Mail for iPhone in 2007, they bragged about its desktop-class approach to email on a portable device. It’s also fundamentally limited and incomplete, with a vision that isn’t fully realized yet but promising potential for the future. I’ve been using Spark for the past three weeks, and it’s the most versatile email client for iPhone I’ve ever tried. By combining smart features with thoughtful design, Readdle is hoping that Spark won’t make you dread your email inbox, knowing that an automated system and customizable integrations will help you process email faster and more enjoyably. To achieve this, Readdle has built Spark over the past eighteen months on top of three principles: heuristics, integrations, and personalization. Spark by Readdle, a new email app for iPhone released today, wants to enhance email with intelligence and flexibility.

Each one revolutionary and shortsighted in its own way, always far from the utopia of email reinvention on mobile. I’ve seen email clients for iOS rise and fall (and be abandoned) I’ve tried many apps that promised to bring email in the modern age of mobile and cloud services but that ultimately just replaced existing problems with new ones. Part of the problem has been the Sisyphean effort of third-party apps that tried to modernize email: the more developers attempted to reinvent it, the more antiquated standards, platform limitations, and economic realities kept dragging them down.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with email over the years.

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