[famousactress]

That's a bummer. I use Slack on Mac+iOS with the "native" app (which really just frames the web app but helps integrate notifications, etc.)

For the most part I experience none of the issues you mention. I get pinged when my name is @'d or on some emergency channels where I have it set to ping me on any message. I find it massively more useful and less distracting than IM+Email.

The one notification challenge I do have with it is that channels can move quickly enough that if I get @'d more than once while I'm afk for a bit it's easy for me to to respond to the latest ping I got but not catch earlier ones. I'd really like it to have a separate view that summarizes your mentions.

As for the features you don't understand:

- Email doesn't give you search for conversations you weren't a part of to begin with. That's the huge upside of a transparent-by-default tool like Slack when it comes to search. I can search for "Solr latency" and find conversations I wasn't a part of, from a time I may not have even been an employee. That's huge.

- File transfers - same, see above for email. Corp Lan shares rarely get search/indexing right.

Oh and FWIW I'm at least 70% curmudgeonly neckbeard too :)

[cpr]

Under the upper-right menu there's a "@ Recent Mentions" item which might solve your para. 3 problem.

[B5geek]

Yes this helped a lot too. Thanks.

[famousactress]

Woah! That's pretty much exactly what I want. Thanks!