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We’ve heard you! This release adds the compact, scrolling list view of messages you’ve been asking for combined with new, speedy swipe gestures for faster triage – and keeps what you love: one inbox for mail and social, focused on the people that matter most.
NEW on the iPhone and iPad:
- Swipe a message to reply, save for later or archive.
- Swipe a person to archive all messages from them.
- Pinch a page to archive an entire list of messages.
- Automatically archive messages on reply.
- Toggle like and favorite with a single touch.
- Change app badge count (Key People or All Mail).
NEW on iPad:
- Show Cloze’s newspaper-like view in portrait mode.
- Change between newspaper or list views in settings.
Richard Spatz
The latest update to Cloze is a huge improvement. I downloaded the app for both iPad and iPhone when it first came out. I primarily use my iPad for Email correspondence. While I liked the fact that the app enabled me to integrate Facebook with email, and more importantly to selectively view Facebook updates only for the people that I’m actually interested in, I found the newspaper style interface too inefficient. The new list style interface with swipe to archive has changed that.
I may start using the app on a regular basis now, but it still has some issues which will require me to use functions in ways that they were not intended to get the output that I want. Usually that’s a deal breaker for me.
This app has the potential to be better than the popular “mailbox” app, and most of the functionality is already there. Now that it uses swiping gestures for archive, delay, or respond, it is as quick to use as mailbox. Where Cloze has the potential to overtake mailbox is with the customization that it allows and also integration with social networking services.
I think the following changes would get Cloze where it needs to be:
1. In these programs, the quickness and ergonomics of the user interface is the main selling point. The user should be given the option to have the app always open directly into the list of their choice. Right now, the app always launches into “Key People,” and when it is reopened from the background, it opens into whatever was previously open. For many people I am sure thats fine, but more business orientated people like myself would rather have the app open into the “All Mail” list.
Mail is something that I need to stay on top of and act on, while social media updates are of interest, but not of importance. As it currently stands, I’d rather just open up the mailbox app since that’ll take me directly to my mail with no extra steps. I know that I could make the key people tab only display mail and messages, but I frequently receive mail from company’s and people who aren’t contacts that is equally important.
This would be less of a problem if the left side menu did not immediately close when I select a new list. Having my mail split up into “key people,” “other mail,” and “bulk mail” would be less of an issue for me if I could quickly switch between them to see the list of messages in each one. As it stands when I select one of these lists, the side menu immediately closes. Before responding to anything, I want to quickly scroll through each list to see what’s in it. It is annoying to have to reopen the side menu and the select the next list. I also can’t see the number of messages in the other lists when I am scrolling through one of them.
It should be changed so that you can open the different lists of messages without the sidebar closing. The sidebar should close when a message is selected to be opened. Then the sidebar can remain closed until it is manually reopened. This would allow users to flip through the current list of messages while having a message from that list open (as they can with the current design). The only difference here is that it is easier flip through the lists and see what’s in each before opening a message.
2. Remove the “Mail” and “Social” filters at the top of the sidebar. These filters should be within each list. People don’t like it when a list of buttons that was in the same place changes, since you no longer know where everything is. People also don’t like it when the same button shows different things in different circumstances. I think this filter is a good idea, but I would put it either in the settings menu for each list or at the top of each list (on applicable lists). This way the sidebar won’t change and the confusion is eliminated.
3. Allow users to respond to Facebook messages with a Facebook message. Currently the only option for responding is by email. If I have to open the Facebook app to respond to a message, that defeats the purpose of this app. I personally use Facebook messages much more than public Facebook posts, and I think many other people do as well. Facebook messages are quicker than email, easier to attach media to, and easier to have a group conversation with. So, it’s pretty important that the ability to respond by Facebook message is added.
4. Allow messages to be sorted by sender (not necessarily a contact or a person) and content, rather than just by known people. It would be amazing if this app could create Gmail labels and filters. I have yet to see a mobile app that can do this and these are very popular Gmail features. Users should have the option to create a filter based on any open email that will apply certain labels to it based on the sender email. They should also be able to have emails skip the inbox. It would also be great if lists could be created based on gmail labels. Cloze could devise its own system for this, but it would make the product a lot more attractive to people if they could bring over their existing gmail labels.
5. Allow lists to be manually reordered, and allow preloaded lists to be deleted.
6. It might make sense to divide the side bar into two sections, one section for message lists and the other for social media lists. I understand that the purpose of Cloze is integration, but I think people want to integrate messages from the different services and feeds from the different services, but not integrate the two. I can’t see anyone wanting their email integrated with their Facebook feed. That would just make it difficult to find the more important messages in a sea of less important social media posts.
Sincerely,
Richard Spatz