The new iOS6 Mail app gets a great new feature that isn’t obvious just reading the spec-sheet: Per-person and per-account alerts. Now you can let mail stay silent, and ping you only when a certain person sends you an email.
The feature uses the new VIP mailbox. This is a smart mailbox that lets you mark certain contacts as VIPs, and all their mail will show up there in one place. This is ideal if you are the kind of person who checks your mail late at night only to find a message from your boss, ensuring a sleepless night. Now you just leave the VIP box active and ignore everything else.
But it goes further. From the VIP settings you can enter a new section of the Notification settings, which lets you set custom alerts for any of your VIP contacts, and configure just how they’ll show up in Notification Center. You can also configure these settings on a per-account basis, excluding your work e-mail account from the lock-screen, for example.
Speaking of alerts, the new “Do Not Disturb” feature also has settings, so you can let certain address book groups punch through the silent setting, and schedule a quiet time to kick in automatically.
It’s all pretty neat, and does away entirely with any third-party e-mail push notification services.
