Mailbox, The Email App Everyone's Panting Over, Has A Fascinating Link To Apple

What will happen with Mailbox, the new app that has everyone in Silicon Valley mega excited?

Email is one of the great unsolved problems of our day.

It's also one of the critical mobile apps that ought to be done well and built right into the core platform.

The last great mobile email app, Sparrow, got swallowed up by Google. (Insiders have whispered to us about some tragic disagreement that led to Sparrow's sale, but we've never been able to pin down the details.)

We imagine that Orchestra, the company behind Mailbox, is already getting lots of buyout and investment offers.

Here's one fact no one's mentioned about Orchestra, though, that we find really fascinating.

There's a college student named Adam Cue who works as a software engineer at Orchestra, according to his LinkedIn profile. Cue is also currently a senior at Duke University due to graduate in May.

On his Facebook profile, he lists his father as Eddy Cue, an Apple senior vice president who oversees Apple's iCloud Internet services, including email.

Now, we're not saying that Orchestra has an inside track to get bought by Apple because an employee's father is a senior executive at the company.

Wait, sorry—that is what we're saying.

On a practical level, the relationship will probably complicate any talks between the companies, with Cue having to recuse himself from any formal discussions. But we have to think Mailbox has been on top Apple executives' radar long before most Valley insiders had decided it was the next big thing.