For decades, software followed a familiar model.

There was an operating system. There were apps. You learned to use both.

The operating system gave apps a place to run. It could open them, give them access to files, connect them to the internet and put their windows on a screen.

But it had very little idea what happened inside them.

Your OS didn’t know how your accounting software worked. It couldn’t help you reconcile an account. And it certainly couldn’t tell you which obscure Excel function would solve your problem.

The user had to learn all of it.

You learned the operating system. Then you learned every app. You remembered where things lived, which menu to open and which combination of settings produced the result you wanted.

And most of us probably use a fraction of what our software can actually do.

I think AI changes this relationship in a much more fundamental way than adding a chatbot to every app.

The OS can finally understand the apps

Imagine an operating system that knows you, has your context, has access to your apps and understands how to use them.

If you can’t find something, you don’t have to Google it, read a help article or hunt through settings. You ask the OS.

If you don’t want to do it yourself, you ask the OS to do it.

If the job requires three different apps, there is no particular reason you should have to move information between them yourself. The OS can coordinate them.

The user no longer needs to understand the software nearly as well as the software understands the user.

OpenAI’s recently introduced MCP Extensions feels like an early model for this. An app sitting in the ChatGPT sidebar starts to feel less like an integration and more like an app installed in an AI operating system.

Today there is still a lot of plumbing involved in making an app work with AI. APIs, MCP servers, authentication, tools, schemas.

Some of that will remain important, especially for apps that are completely headless. But I’m not sure every app should have to build a special interface for AI.

If a human can use an app, an intelligent enough AI OS should be able to use it too.

Apps shouldn’t have to learn how to work with AI. AI should learn how to work with apps.

The OS could find the app too

It gets more interesting when the app isn’t already installed.

Today, if I need to do something new, I first have to figure out which software can do it.

Search Google. Search an app store. Ask people. Compare a few products. Sign up for one. Learn how it works. Then finally do the thing I wanted to do.

An AI OS already knows what I’m trying to accomplish.

If it doesn’t have the capability, it can find an app that does. Maybe it asks me to install or connect it. Maybe it loads the capability just for that task.

If I keep using it, perhaps it becomes a permanent part of my setup.

“Installed” may stop being such a binary concept.

Some software could live permanently in my AI OS. Some could appear when needed and disappear when the job is done.

I shouldn’t have to maintain a collection of software in anticipation of things I might want to do.

The OS can acquire the capability when I need it.

Not every app needs a UI

This also changes what an app needs to look like.

Today we assume software needs a user interface.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true in an AI OS.

Take flight booking.

I rarely want to hang out in a flight booking app. I have a job to get done.

“Find me the best flight to San Francisco next Thursday. Business class. Prefer Qantas. No more than one stop.”

There is no particular reason that requires a traditional flight booking interface.

The airline could simply provide the inventory, pricing and booking capability. The AI OS is the interface.

Other products are completely different.

Sometimes using the UI is the point.

I want to move around a map, look at hotels, see photographs, compare rooms and explore a neighbourhood. I want to browse YouTube.

Those products need UI because exploration is part of the experience.

And then there is probably the largest category: products that need both.

The hybrid app

Figma is a good example.

As a designer, I still want Figma. I want the canvas. I want to move things around, look at the work, try things and change my mind.

But I don’t necessarily want to perform every operation myself.

Rename these layers. Make these cards the same width. Create variants for these states. Clean up this component. Make this complex shape for me because, after all these years, I still struggle with the pen tool.

Some things I want to do. Some things I just want done.

That’s a hybrid app.

It has an interface, but it no longer needs a UI for everything the product can do.

The UI can focus on what is better seen, explored and manipulated. The AI can handle the long tail.

Until now, every capability eventually needed somewhere to live.

Another button. Another menu item. Another settings screen. Another filter. Another workflow. Another help article explaining how to find all of it.

Products got more capable and their interfaces got more complicated.

An AI OS breaks that relationship.

A product might be capable of doing 100 things while having a human user interface for only the things that actually benefit from one.

The rest don’t disappear. You just ask for them.

Some things belong to the OS

Some things we currently think of as app experiences might not need to belong to an app at all.

Shopping is a good example.

I might want to browse Zara and Amazon very differently. Their products are different. Their brands are different. Their interfaces should be different.

But why should I learn a different cart and checkout flow for every store?

The shopping cart could belong to the AI OS.

I browse wherever I want. Products from different stores can end up in the same cart. The OS already knows my delivery address and payment preferences. I check out once.

The branded experience is where I discover and decide. The OS handles the transaction.

The same idea applies elsewhere.

“Book a flight” could be an OS intent. Singapore Airlines provides the inventory, pricing and fulfilment.

“Book me a cab” could be an OS intent. Uber provides the cars, drivers and prices.

The user doesn’t start by deciding which app to open.

They start with what they want to do.

Apps become providers behind that intent.

The branded experience is still there when it matters. But it no longer has to carry every part of the job.

The pieces are already here

We are already seeing glimpses of this, just in a fragmented way. AI is showing up inside apps, browsers and operating systems across Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. Some can see what’s on your screen. Some can use apps. Some can call services on your behalf.

But they still feel like separate pieces.

It doesn’t seem like a big leap from here to devices built around this idea from the start. They could come in different sizes and shapes, with big displays, small displays or no display at all.

The interesting part isn’t what the device looks like. It’s that the AI sits across the whole thing, knows you, understands the software available to it and orchestrates it on your behalf.

That would feel less like AI added to a computer and more like a computer built around AI.

A different relationship with software

The operating system used to abstract the hardware.

You didn’t need to know how memory worked, how the disk stored your files or how the graphics card drew a window. The OS handled that.

An AI OS could abstract another layer.

Software itself.

You don’t necessarily need to know which app can do something, whether you already have it, where the feature lives or which sequence of screens gets you there.

You tell the OS what you want.

Sometimes it does the work for you. Sometimes it takes you into the app user interface. Sometimes the app doesn’t have a human user interface at all.

And some things we do through apps today may eventually belong to the OS itself.

Apps don’t disappear. User interfaces don’t disappear.

We just stop expecting every user to learn every piece of software they use.

We spent decades learning how to use computers. Maybe computers can finally learn how to work for us.

(This article was written with the help of AI. Which seems appropriate.)

Last November we travelled to Sydney and we stayed at a nice hip place called Newtown. We had previously visited Sydney for just 2 days and had done all the touristy things but this time we wanted to stay in the city and live like a local. We were there for a week. We mostly travelled by trains and walked around, thanks to Google Maps. Really loved the experience. These are some of the things I noted.

Double Decker trains

All Sydney trains are double decker which means more people get to sit.

Reversible Seats

Seats on the newer fleet of Sydney trains can change direction by pulling the yellow handle. It means the passenger can always face the direction of travel. This is particularly great for passengers who suffer motion sickness, like my wife. For them travelling backwards is just not an option.

Clear signages

Displays on the platform clearly show the next train and the stops and then the following services. Very convenient for visitors like me.

Buses replace trains during maintenance on weekends, and it’s free.

On a Sunday, at around 12pm, when we went to the station, the shutters were rolled down. There was a sign saying the station was closed for maintenance till 12:30 and to take the replacement buses. We were disappointed and chose to wait till 12:30pm. But then we noticed more sign boards pointing to the replacement buses. We followed the signs and reached the bus stop. A bus came clearly marked ‘Train replacement’. We got in and went to tap the Opal card only to know that it was a free ride as it was an “inconvenience caused to the public”. I almost cried.

I found Sydney to be a very pedestrian friendly city. I think there’s absolutely no need to have a car to commute within the city as the the public transport is so efficient and convenient. We took Uber/Ola only for the airport rides.

More Sydney Train pictures

I had previously written about Indian Railways.

We designed Newton to take the stress out of emailing. We made it distraction-free so that you can scan, find, read and write better. We made it a breeze to use the app; with intuitive UI, simple one-way navigations and familiar keyboard shortcuts. We baked in features like Read Receipts, Sender Profile, Snooze, Connected Apps, Tidy Inbox and recently True Inbox to help you with your workflows and make email management delightful.

The dreaded email workflows

Every day most of us do our best to achieve Inbox Zero or some type of GTD workflow. Some of us apply star, mark important mails as unread, archive to clean up, snooze for later, move into folders based on some logic, try new workflows and what not, only to be on top of email and to get things done on time. Even though modern email apps eased our way a lot through these workflows by way of better design, newer features and automation, they still expect us to be extremely disciplined with email. The onus is still on the user to make sure nothing is missed. We are still stressed about our workflows and live in the fear of missing out.

We at Newton have been thinking about this problem and have been working on a potential solution over a year now.

Introducing Recap

Recap automatically brings back conversations that are waiting for your reply or that need following up, in case you missed them. It also covers other mails with due dates, reminders etc., so that nothing slips through the cracks.

How does it work?

Every morning, the new Recap section in the app will show a blue dot whenever there is something that needs your attention. You can swipe to dismiss the mails if you are on top of them already, or push them aside to come back later. Recap will only show the most relevant conversations that you need to look at on a given day. They go away automatically when you deal with them, or after a few days so that you don’t have another list of clutter to manage. You can also choose to get notified if you have mails to recap.

Recap doesn’t meddle with your workflow, instead complements it in a subtle yet effective manner. It’s not a task list. It gives you enough time to take care of the mails yourself and reminds you only if it looks like you have missed to reply or follow up (unless the mail has dates mentioned that you shouldn't miss).

Never had a workflow? Have you been sloppy with email? Fret not, Recap has your back. It’s designed to make you diligent at emailing without expecting you to follow any strict manual workflows. We have been using it and fine tuning it internally for some time. It works for us and we can assure you that it will work for you too.

And that’s one more step towards making email even more space age.

Recap is available only in English at the moment — i.e. if the app’s language is set to English and for mails in English.

Recap is not available for iPad yet. There’s some moving around to be done in iPad app before we introduce it.

Newton is a beautiful and reliable email app supercharged with features like Read Receipts, Tidy Inbox, Send Later, Snooze and more for modern-day business communication. Available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows.

Stressed about missing out on email? Newton has your back. was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A tale of 2 videos

Rohit and Francesco are our in-house video makers. While Rohit makes product videos like this and this, Francesco makes instructional videos like this and this.

During the iOS calendar launch, I wanted Francesco to make a light hearted video to show how it’s better to place the cal app icon on the right side of the email app icon. I wanted it to be a chaplinesque short movie (No dialogues, only background music, exaggerated expressions, fast running etc). Francesco was travelling, so instead of shooting a video he quickly put together something using Giphy and sent me this…

I loved it. Super duper indeed.

For True Inbox I wanted something similar and I gave Francesco the brief and he quickly sent me this…

Equally nice.

If you’re talented, the gear doesn’t matter.

Gear doesn’t matter was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Whoa. Déjà vu.

Last week at Google IO, CEO Sunder Pichai announced a new feature coming to Gmail called Smart Compose. Powered by AI, Smart Compose helps you draft emails faster by suggesting phrases as you type. When you see a suggestion that you like, hit the tab key to complete your sentence.

OMG! this reminded me of Newton X and the Lean-back Compose feature. We actually saw the future 😀. This is what we then said how it would work…

Imagine a compose interface that actually gives you a lean-back experience. It promises to make composing an email more distraction-free, smarter and much faster. This is by far our favorite feature. Not only can you use Newton to compose without a keyboard, but it can also help you to actually compose the email itself- Think word suggestions to sentence suggestions to even paragraph suggestions! What’s even better is that, it can be set to auto-reply to emails while you’re busy with more important tasks at hand.

If there is anyone who can pull it off, that’s Google. No doubt. Respect.

🙌🏼

Smart Compose in Gmail was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

People retire from work at the age of 60. Why not politicians? And there is nothing I can do about it?

I pay income tax on my hard earned salary. Why should I again pay tax when I spend my money post tax?

Instead why not abolish income tax and I only pay tax whenever I spend my money?

The 2 main election candidates in my area — one has 5 criminal cases on his name and the other has 13. Who should I vote for?

Corruption is a given. So I can’t use that a deciding factor. Maybe I’ll vote for the one who will just let me live?

All the Ministers, MP’s and MLA’s have been chosen by me in order to represent me in the government and get things done for me. But how come they are more powerful than me? How come they are more important than me? Why are we scared of them? Actually, why are we voting for them?

As a child I lived in the gulf for a couple of years. The good things I saw there then are not there in my country yet. The area I live in today has no proper drainage system. No proper garbage disposal system. No good roads. No footpaths. Power goes off every now and then. After collecting all that tax from me, what are you doing for me?

We have so gotten used to mediocracy.

There’s no hope.

Last week we introduced True Inbox on Newton. Now on, when you start a new email conversation in Newton, you’ll see it right in Inbox. Thus making the Inbox the only list you have to deal with for managing your conversations.

OMG, this means more mails in Inbox for me to clear to reach Inbox Zero?

Well, what is Inbox Zero?

If your definition of Inbox Zero is simply about how you can quickly clear all mails in your Inbox, then True Inbox isn’t good for you.

Inbox Zero is a GTD workflow where my inbox becomes my task list. It has all my actionable conversations. The ones I want to deal with later are snoozed, and the ones I’m done with are archived. When I’m done with all the conversations in inbox, I achieve Inbox Zero. Sounds good so far?

Before True Inbox, this task list didn’t have the new conversations I started. They were hidden in the Sent folder till I get a reply. To follow up on them, I had to either a) remember to set ‘remind if not replied’ before sending the mail or b) had to later search for that mail or find it in Sent folder, and Snooze it to put it in Inbox. If I forget to do any one of the above, I lose track of those mails. With True Inbox, you don’t have to remember to do any of the above. It’s just right in front of you in your task list. You can archive them if you don’t want to track them, snooze for later or just keep them in the list till you are done.

Yes, previously I could just ignore them if they didn’t require following up. I agree, this has resulted in more clicks in Inbox now. But I think it’s still better than the clicks you would otherwise make if you had to follow up on them. Added to that is the risk of forgetting about them. With True Inbox, they are not out of sight, out of mind.

By the way, this is all assuming that you are using only Newton for emailing on all platforms. If not, it won’t work well and it’s better turned off. E.g. if you archive a conversation on another client it may not reflect in Newton.

Also, this is not to say that True Inbox will work for everyone. We were just attempting to free your mind 😎. If it doesn’t work well with your current workflow, it’s life as usual if you turn it off and continue using Newton the way you are used to — Newton Settings > General > True Inbox. ✌🏼

True Inbox and Inbox Zero was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

All Platforms

1. True Inbox — When you start a new conversation, you’ll see it in Inbox. There’s no need to go to Sent folder anymore. Learn More.
2. Open in Newton — When you add mails to Connected Apps, it will also pass a link to open the conversation back in Newton, on any device.
   E.g. when you save an email to Evernote, a link will be added as a part of the note. Clicking on that link will open the email conversation in Newton.

Mac and Windows

1. New keyboard shortcut — When you read a mail, press I to see message details. If the last mail was sent by you, pressing I again will toggle between the tabs on the message details screen.

iOS

1. Notifications will be cleared for mails that are read in the app.

Windows

1. New keyboard shortcut — Alt + Shift + S to Show/Hide signature in Compose.

New in Newton — May 2018 was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It was a remnant of the past.

Long ago, email clients worked by periodically checking a mail-box on the server and downloading email using a protocol called POP. Once the mail was downloaded, it was deleted from the server and was shown in a folder called Inbox in the client. The client also had folders like Drafts, Sent, Outbox etc. so that it could save mails you wrote and sent using the client in an appropriate location. Then there were custom folders to which these mails could be moved and stored. All these folders and their contents remained in the client computer and the server had no idea about them. As the technology improved, things became better, but the email user experience more or less remained the same.

Enter Gmail and the Conversation view

As we all know, Gmail was the first real attempt to reinvent the email experience. They broke some conventions by its Non Taxonomic mailbox architecture, which helped them build the, now taken for granted, Conversation view. It made consuming an email conversation so much easier than before—messages structured as a real conversation thread in one place, like chat, without having to jump between Inbox and Sent folders. Gmail also helped us become pilers (who don’t organize mails into folders) instead of filers. It was faster to do a simple search in Gmail to find mails instead of painstakingly filing them into folders for future reference purposes. Basically Gmail removed the very need to have folders anymore.

But there was just one time, Gmail forced me to go to a folder. When I start a new conversation, the mail I sent, remained in the Sent folder, till I received a reply. Which meant, I had to still jump between Inbox and Sent folders to follow up on mails. I always wondered why Gmail never thought of it. People found work-arounds for this problem by Auto BCCing mails to themselves to bring sent mails to inbox. Another recent way was to snooze the sent mails. Needless to say, we found all these hacks ugly, non intuitive and cumbersome.

When we designed Read Receipts in Newton to show 2 ticks on a conversation, like a chat app, we felt that the only time it took one step backwards was when I started a new conversation and then had to go to Sent folder to see the ticks. We really wanted to fix this problem. We wanted to truly make email modern.

Newton has True Inbox. It’s truly modern.

Going forward, when you start a new conversation in Newton, you’ll see it right on top in Inbox. Conversations in inbox will be sorted by activity. Like your chat app. You can now track all your conversations in one list, see the double ticks, archive them, snooze them, star them, achieve inbox zero - everything will work as usual, but better. There’s absolutely no need to go to Sent folder any more. Don’t even worry about the sidebar. It’s a remnant of the past. A true inbox is all that you need.

And that’s one more step towards making email space age.

True Inbox will start working for you automatically, but we are rolling it out in phases. If you are the impatient kinds, you can turn it on from Settings > General > Conversation View > True Inbox. Of course it will work only if Conversation View is turned on. And you will see changes only after you start a new conversation.

Also read: True Inbox and Inbox Zero

Newton is a beautiful and reliable email app supercharged with features like Read Receipts, Tidy Inbox, Send Later, Snooze & more for modern-day business communication. Available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows.

We just killed the Sent folder! was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently hit 40,000 subscribers.

It took 18 months; it was not easy.

Just wanted to tell our users that you are not alone in paying for an email app. Just like any other product you use that comes for a price. The recent FB fiasco only confirms that when you’re not paying, you’re the product.

In a sea of free email apps, we were the first to take the bold step. So, thank you for voting with your wallet. We think that is the ultimate form of approval.

Thank you for enabling us to have the creative space to work on something cool and useful, rather than breaking our heads over how to make money out of your data.

A big thank you to everyone who gave us a chance, and to everyone who made us stronger.

Looks like we are here to stay.

Onwards and Upwards was originally published in Paper Planes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.