Its a potentially compelling interfaceif you might remember to use it.

punch in email Frank Lessig Hey buddy!

and youre sent to your chosen email app with thetoandsubjectlines filled out.

(I couldnt get Cardhop to start my texts the same way.)

Adding and updating contacts much easier in Cardhop than in Contacts.

Its useful if you work with teams, or D&D groups, or secret cabals.

Cardhop relies on all your existing accounts, and it only accesses them through your Macs Contacts app.

To start an email from Cardhop, you better enable your preferred email client tohandle all email links.

If youre scoffing at me for not having these things already synced up, then Cardhop is for you.

This limitation will only grow as messaging apps continue to proliferate, unless Apple catches up with integration support.

Like Fantastical, Cardhop will seem pointless to some people, and life-changing to others.

I didnt get Fantastical until I needed to juggle multiple shared calendars in a customized interface.

Apps like this, that venture to entirely rethink a common workflow, face a challenge.

To really take advantage of them, you have to unlearn your old approach.

Siri lives or dies by whether you think to use it before crawling into an app.

Even then, Cardhop is just an efficient launcher.

You still have to finish the job inside the other app.

For some, this will still be compelling enough.

There are certainly features left to flesh out.

Cardhop is just powerful enough to make me think of a dozen other things I wish it could do.

I frequently made up commands that felt like theyshouldwork.

I kept meeting the limits of its context recognition.

I couldnt start the actual content of my texts in the command line.

And while the app can identify identical contacts from multiple accounts, it doesnt merge the merely similar ones.

And as far as I can see, theres no Fantastical integration.

In the end, this app would be much more useful if it were part of OS X.

But so would most menu bar apps.

If it intrigues you, you should definitely grab the 21-day free trial.

Ill keep testing it and check back.

This one will take a while to prove its worth.