View web versionImportant SmallCubed News
There are changes coming that may have a significant impact on your use of our software. PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE EMAIL CAREFULLY.
We have been working hard on getting our MailSuite ready for Mac OS 10.14 Mojave. Apple has not announced the release date for Mojave, and we think it is important to set more definitive expectations for ourselves and users. Regardless of Apple’s release date of Mojave, we are targeting Monday, Oct 1, 2018, to release the Mojave compatible versions of our products.
If you depend on our products, we recommend that you hold off updating to Mojave until after MailSuite is released. We do expect to have a beta version available in the next few weeks. For beta information check our site at https://smallcubed.com/support/mojave/.
Significant MailTags Changes
We are working on more than compatibility in the forthcoming release. The MailTags component of our MailSuite is being overhauled to move the storage of tag data from the internals of a message to separate, associated records that are encrypted and stored on a SmallCubed managed server.
We are making this change to:
- provide full compatibility with different email servers. Past versions of MailTags could not sync all tag data for Gmail messages and some other servers. Now full tag data will synchronise for all messages regardless of the type of mail server.
- dramatically increase the speed that tags are saved and synchronised between computers. Past versions of MailTags required each message to rewrite its full contents to the IMAP server when saving tags. For larger messages, this required significant time and bandwidth. Now, only the tag information is synced.
- improve reliability. Because tag data was stored inside each message, MailTags had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure that tags remain intact between different actions (such as rules application, moving messages, rebuilding accounts) Now tag data are separate records which are associated with each message, it is much simpler and more reliable to store and sync data and the original messages are not altered.
- build future products. Changing the tagging mechanism is essential for our future directions including being able to work with tag data on other platforms such as iOS. We plan to communicate more about this soon.
There are a few implications of this change in tag format:
- to sync tag data, we need to employ a separate server managed by SmallCubed. Privacy and security are very important to us, and we strongly feel that no service should have access to email accounts or content. We have designed our service with this in mind and no content from original emails is stored on our servers. For each message we store two pieces of information: a unique key for the message generated from a "one-way hash” of specific message header information, and the encrypted tag data for the message. We will provide details about our security model prior to release.
- the new tag format is incompatible with older versions of MailTags. If you work with tag data in SmallCubed MailSuite, computers with MailTags versions 2-5 will not work with this new format. We are planning to make SmallCubed MailSuite compatible with OS versions going back to 10.11 to accommodate mixed OS environments. We will steer you through importing tag data from the older format.
- sharing tag data between users who share an IMAP account is forthcoming. If data sharing is essential to your workflow, we recommend that you do not upgrade to macOS 10.14 Mojave at this time. We expect tag sharing to be ready before the end of the year.
- messages within the same account cannot have distinct tags. Each instance of a specific message in an email account shares the same identifier, and so share the same tag data. This may affect those who tag the same message differently for different mailboxes on the same account.
As previously in the lat plugins update this update:
- migrates our 4 core products to a single plugin: SmallCubed MailSuite. With the release of 10.14, MailTags, Mail Act-On, Mail Perspectives, and SigPro merge into a single product. Combining the products makes installation easier, tighten integration between components and facilitate the development and release of future updates.
- is a paid upgrade. The SmallCubed MailSuite is a paid upgrade — the first we have done in a couple of years.
Customers who purchased or upgraded any of the 4 core products on or after Sept 25, 2017 (the release date of High Sierra) receive a free upgrade to the SmallCubed MailSuite once it is released this fall.
Customers who last purchased any of our products before Sept 25, 2017, are invited to upgrade to the full SmallCubed MailSuite for $30USD.
Thank you for reading this carefully. We value your continued patronage and patience during this significant update. We are working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible and keeping you informed is essential to us.
If you have any questions, please contact us by creating a support
The Smallcubed Team