If you want to be among the first to experience Mailbox for iPhone, stop reading for a moment and make a reservation for early access to the app. We'll wait.
Mailbox is an upcoming app from Orchestra for managing one or more Gmail accounts. The company's promotional video for the app will more than whet your technological appetite: The gesture-based app doesn't just make quick work of composing, reading, archiving, and deleting email; it also includes clever options for "snoozing" messages that you want to be reminded about later.
But that snoozing option--which hides messages from your inbox, only to bring them back to the forefront late at the time you specify--and Mailbox's push notifications will require significant server-side resources. To better weather the onslaught of app users it expects, Orchestra initiated the reservation system so that it can carefully roll out access to Mailbox while monitoring server needs.
The app, which the developers say won't be out for "a few weeks," will be free. Orchestra says that it hopes to add premium features over time, in the vein of offerings from Dropbox or Evernote. And in my own experience using a beta version of the app for the past week, it's also clear that like Google Maps and Fantastical before it, Mailbox is worthy of unseating another default Apple app from your homescreen.
When you make your reservation for Mailbox access, you'll receive an SMS message with you reservation number and a private code. Once the app is available in the App Store in a few weeks, you can download it free at any time, but you will only be able to start actually using Mailbox to check your email when Orchestra gives your reservation the go-ahead. The developers also promise that, once the app is out, you'll be able to see just how many users remain ahead of you in line for access.
Mailbox will require iOS 6.
