Microsoft Launches ‘Send’ A Lightweight Email App for iPhone

If you haven’t heard yet, Microsoft has just debuted a new (crazy simple) email app called Send. The company is describing Send as an “in-and-out” email solution that focuses on brevity and simplicity. In truth, it looks more like another messaging app than your typical email app. “Send gives you the simple, quick text message-like experience while allowing you to reach all co-workers and have all of your communications in Outlook for reference later,” wrote the Outlook team in a blog post on July 22nd.

Where’s the excitement factor? Send has some serious ties with the Office 365, so only people using the Office 365 business or school account can use the app. Hate to break it to you, but Outlook.com email and Gmail users don’t really have much to look forward to. The email app uses the link to Office 365 to gather the contacts you communicate with most often. However, you won’t see your full inbox in Send; only conversations that you’ve started in-app. To see your full inbox you still have to venture over to Outlook or whatever your preferred email app is.

“With Send, there are no signatures, subject lines, or salutations required. Our design principle for the app was to make conversations fast and fluid while keeping the people who are important to you at its core,” said Microsoft. You can even see when someone is typing a reply, which is pretty standard for messaging apps, but it’s definitely new to the email app world.

The Windows Garage team has promised that this app will be available on Windows Phone and Android but do you think there’s really going to be some mass migration to Office 365 just to be able to use the Send email app? It’s in an interesting concept but group texting has already been invented and there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the two. Not yet anyway.