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Seems kind of harsh doesn’t it? To say there are some apps that won’t survive 2016.
But it’s true.
Technology doesn’t stand still. Ever. It iterates, changes, modifies.
In the end, yesterday’s go-to-apps become the ash-heap of (digital) humanity (HT to Dr. Garland).
As we stand at the precipice of a new year,lets have a quick prognostication about 3 apps that won’t survive 2016.
Apps That Won’t Survive 2016: Mailbox
Mailbox used to be my go to app on iPhone to manage email. I loved it.
But, alas, all good things must come to an end, and with regard to Mailbox, the end came when Dropbox bought them.
The email app made email manageable, attempting to modify behaviors associate not simply with reading or writing emails, but with the actions required by the content of those emails.
In other words, Mailbox, the app, let you focus on prioritizing what needed to occur with those emails. Read them now, delete them now, read them later to day, tonight, tomorrow, this weekend, someday, or archive them. Oh, and you could sort them by importance, so that you could actually take action on the content (the “why” of the email).
Mailbox worked very very well. It let you get control of your inbox and manage it instead of being managed by it.
As I said, the end of Mailbox came, in truth, when Dropbox bought them. Dropbox saw mailbox as a means toward an end: namely their survival, whereas the original engineering team had a real passion for the app and its purpose.
Dropbox itself is a company and service in search of survival. They’ll likely survive 2016, but their long term survivability is not assured. If they don’t improve their core product for small business, they won’t survive 2018.
Mailbox is sunsetted and will cease operations in February.
Sunrise, Sunset
I literally just discovered this app within the past month, and just wrote about it here.
But alas, Sunrise has seen the sunset on the wall.
Turns out Microsoft bought them to gut them.
Well, not really, but the app that was Sunset will begin to live in Microsoft’s Outlook, at least for iOS and Android.
Which is a shame. I really like the simple focus of Sunrise—a great calendar easily used, intuitive, and full of ‘aha’ kind of moments.
But as this blog post from the original makers of Sunrise says, it is coming to an end.
While they say their core functionality will live on in Outlook, my expectation is it won’t be the same. It never is with an app like Outlook who can’t decide if it is an email client, a calendar app, or a todo list.
Evernote or Nevermore?
I have loved Evernote since I first heard about it from a friend in 2009.
But it is an app that will not survive 2016.
Oh, it might have semblance of life a year from now, but Evernote is not what it once was, and certainly not what it promised to be in 2011.
The problem with Evernote is they had a long term vision built on no real vision at all.
The core product was always (is still pretty) great: remember everything from every possible means. Never have to worry about your digital memory.
But the former CEO created a company that lurched from a great core, to, well, an Evernote branded market place.
He didn’t have a clue, or so it would seem.
Now, former Evernote created and related apps like Skitch, Clearly and Evernote for Pebble (really???) Image may be NSFW.
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have been sunsetted. At this rate, I can only hope Scannable survives.
Evernote the company says it is wanting to focus on the core functionality, but my prognostication is Evernote as an app is not going to last through the end of 2016.
And it is a shame: Evernote used to do what it did beautifully, and easily. But it lost its way trying to become all things to all people. The competition from OneNote, and now from Apple Notes will make it too hard for Evernote to survive. And as you can see from the title bar at the top of Conquer.tech, Evernote has figured pretty prominently in my blog.
They tried to bolt on every possible idea to a beautiful core, and in the end, they lost their fan base, and any hope of surviving.
Three apps that won’t survive 2016? More apps on the way out? Leave your prognistications in the comments below.
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