Big fan talking here, it's how I primarily read long form content (iphone and kindle)
This sentence worried me though:
>With these great new additions, many customers won’t even >need the bookmarklet anymore.
Without the bookmarklet Instapaper stops being useful to me - I have no interest in another source of information, however 'social' or curated that may be.
I feel that instapaper is trying to move into the 'sharing cool stuff' space, which is already over saturated, instead of concentrating on it's original stronghold of providing a great consumption experience.
Marco has mentioned before that the bookmarklet is his biggest support headache. If the current bookmarklet is working for you, there's little reason to take that away; but having some other way for people to get a good experience from Instapaper -- something easier that anyone could use without knowing what a bookmarklet is -- makes tons of sense.
He does kill features from time to time, but he always seems to mention that those features were very lightly used. Presumably that's not the case here (since otherwise it has been hard to make the app valuable, before this new feature).
I love Instapaper, partially because its a fantastic product and partially because of the guy that's developing it. What Marco has done represents my goals as a 'hacker', I cant wait to have my own Instapaper some day.
Out of curiosity: Instapaper has had a decent amount of success by making stellar apps for iOS (Marco's only source of revenue outside of the "subscriptions", from what I understand). Is this a good strategy? Like, pick a single platform and make the integration as polished as possible? Or is it better to get cross-platform apps that aren't as polished (in a situation like Instapaper)?
What's interesting about Instapaper is that Marco is in a way moving towards embracing both models. With his "3rd-party access only for subscribers" model (see http://blog.instapaper.com/post/3208433429), he can focus on keeping the iOS app polished while letting third-party developers handle writing apps for other platforms. Assuming this actually happens (a big assumption, to be fair), non-iOS platforms will serve as a revenue source by driving subscriptions.
It's better to gain traction on one platform than to languish on multiple platforms.
Android and iOS have two very different userbases; I hear that iOS seems to include more people willing to pay for software than Android. On the other hand, Android has fewer apps.
Most importantly, you need to get noticed on at least one platform. If you have a limited amount of resources, you'd be better off focusing on one great product. Once that's done, move to other platforms if that makes sense for your business growth.
Same here - I just wish that Instapaper would share on Google Reader.
One wonders why the "drink from the firehose" style reader (Reeder) hasn't been merged with the "save for later" style reader (Instapaper). Everyone I know who finds one of those indispensable becomes enamored with the other pretty easily.
My regular flow is to have everything (RSS for blogs with long posts and RSS for simple alert/notification blogs) in Google Reader and filter through it there, only viewing everything once. Anything longer than a paragraph in there goes to Instapaper, to really read later.
I sent random links and website I want to save to Instapaper as well and was moving them to Pinboard manually on the website, but this will definitely save me time.
Hmm - never heard of Reeder so I checked it out. What would you say the primary advantage of this app over Google Reader? I really think that Google did an excellent job with the mobile UI. Are you using it for it's offline capabilities?
Yep, pretty much. I like that it downloads all articles for viewing offline which makes it faster to go through them - even when you have an internet connection. It also has good integration with other services like Instapaper, Pinboard, Delicious etc allowing you to save the article in any of those services easily.
Reeder has a fantastic UI that really allows you to speed through tons of articles, favorite articles, etc... it's a fantastic app on both iPad and iPhone and while I love Google Reader on my desktop, I much prefer Reeder on the iPhone.
Why does it come to mind? What it so different between Grooveshark and Spotify that Spotify is on the AppStore but Grooveshark can't be?
I see their iPhone application page saying they can't be on the AppStore, but no explanation as to why they can't be (and no, "Apple is unwilling to work with Grooveshark to approve our application." is not an explanation) and the blog post announcement does not provide any more information. The only mention I found is an other, older blog post saying the following:
> Earlier this afternoon, Apple sent us a letter notifying us that, due to a complaint they received from Universal Music Group UK
Apple's behavior seems logical and sensible here as the "gatekeeper" of their store, it's not their job to resolve trouble between UMG and Grooveshark.
And again, Spotify was still in the AppStore last time I checked, so what Grooveshark's app is not, in and of itself, "a [...] killer apps there which would never make it to the AppStore."
It comes to mind because I really wanted Grooveshark on my iPhone and would have paid for it but it's not there.
(Except by jailbreaking and I'm not willing to do that)
Apple's behavior seems logical and sensible here as the "gatekeeper" of their store, it's not their job to resolve trouble between UMG and Grooveshark.
They're already trying to resolve trouble by doing what UMG wanted.
In any case, we could nitpick over that point for hours.
And again, Spotify was still in the AppStore last time I checked, so what Grooveshark's app is not, in and of itself, "a [...] killer apps there which would never make it to the AppStore."
Seriously? Last time I checked, Spotify was only available in about 7 countries. (Last time being 5 minutes ago).
I don't see how you could even compare the two services. They work differently.
In any case, my comment wasn't specifically about Grooveshark, rather, to point out that there's a whole class of apps that people may want but would never be available on the App Store for various reasons (legitimate or otherwise) but will be available on Android.
> Seriously? Last time I checked, Spotify was only available in about 7 countries. (Last time being 5 minutes ago). I don't see how you could even compare the two services. They work differently.
I asked how different they were, because I can't see it apart from Grooveshark's ignoring of IP (which is very much the root of them having been evicted from the AppStore until their resolve the situation). Which is I fear a very debatable "feature".
> In any case, my comment wasn't specifically about Grooveshark, rather, to point out that there's a whole class of apps that people may want but would never be available on the App Store for various reasons (legitimate or otherwise) but will be available on Android.
You specifically pointed out to Grooveshark as an example of that kind of applications. It's not.
It's not available on iOS, and as far as I can tell, can't be. I would actually love to get an iPhone because the hardware is so amazing and software is so polished (for the most part... notifications, I'm looking at you), but given the choice between polish and control, I choose control. At least in this case.
So, to answer the question in the GGGGP: yeah, the Android ecosystem is awesome.
To be clear, that wasn't my example, and I took your rejection of his example as a rejection of his assertion.
And I'm still not clear on your stance. So, you don't deny that there are a whole class of applications that are possible on Android that aren't on iOS. Does that mean you agree?
But. You don't believe this makes the Android ecosystem awesome.
You also, marginally relatedly, believe that the prevalence of "IP theft" on the Android ecosystem detracts from its awesomeness?
Do I have that right?
Personally, I don't think "IP theft" is a very good characterization of copyright (or trademark, in this case) infringement. But I suppose that's a whole nother debate.
Also, though, from what I can tell, this app doesn't directly take any images from Instapaper. It's an uppercase "I" in a generic block serif on a gray background. I think it's debatable whether this is a trademark infringement?
How about the "Terms of Use" that say "Apps and other products and services may not use Instapaper’s name, logos, or other trademarks in their titles or logos, or in any way that implies endorsement, sponsorship, or false association with Instapaper"?
Same here. And then the person up I'm pitching the iPhone to is like, "Oh...cool." haha!
When someone asks what my favorite apps are, he is expecting me to tell him about the apps that use the accelerometer in some crazy innovative way. Oh, the look of disappointment when I excitedly talk about Reeder.
I have an app, called Printful, which kind of merges Instapaper and Reeder. Email me if you're interested in trying it, I'll send you a promo code as soon as the next release is approved.
>The iPad no longer uses the top and bottom gradient to fade the text out, instead opting for a clean shadow line borrowed from Reeder’s style.
Glad to see this. It was irritating to almost-but-not-quite see the first line of text as you scrolled, which sometimes meant you had to scroll back, which sometimes meant you lost your place, which sometimes resulted in hair being pulled out.
Does anyone else find themselves wishing that Instapaper could intelligently pull multiple-page articles, like Readability does? You can of course solve the issue by finding the printer-ready version of an article (if there is one), but that extra step feels so unnecessary..
(aside from that quibble, love Instapaper and congrats on the great new release!)
Printful merges multipage articles into a single article. I don't have any promo codes right now, but email me and I'll send you one as soon as the next release is approved.
I love the idea behind Instapaper and bought the $5 version, but I have found it has a surprising number of bugs for a paid app. The application has crashed several times on me. Sometimes articles don't download properly. Also, often large swatches of text are repeated in the articles I add to my Instapaper. Finally, when I archive items out of the Editor's Picks, they often re-download again later (maybe I am not understanding how archiving works).
Has anyone else run into sorts of issues using Instapaper on the iPhone 4? I hope that 3.0 fixes these issues! Off to download it now. :-)
I dunno, my "Editor's Picks" subfolder seem to have been replaced by a huge button that starts a web browser. If I wanted to browse the web I would have started Safari, wouldn't I?
I really like Instapaper, they seem to be executing the problem of taking photos on your mobile device really well. I dont like long upload time, huge photos nor a cluttered UI. Instapaper gets it.
I definitely see them releasing an android-version of instapaper soon. It would be a wasted opportunity if they didn't
Looks Great! Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper, has a weekly podcast about iOS App Development called "Build and Analyze". Great resource for any level iOS hacker. http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze
Instapaper is definitely the number 1 reason I use Twitter as my primary news source - and the integration to the Twitter iPhone app is perfect. Seems like a perfect potential acquisition.
"As usual, Instapaper 3.0 is a free upgrade to anyone who has ever bought the paid app. For new customers, it’s only $4.99 for the universal iPhone and iPad app."
I absolutely LOOVE instapaper, one of my absolute favorite iPad apps (the rest are here http://bit.ly/hb8l5H)!
..agree with everyone that its a true "killer" app for the device. Imagine once Marco and the team starts adding true collaborative filtering based on your past history (and your friends and the broader community of IP users) and suggesting you stuff to read!
This sentence worried me though:
>With these great new additions, many customers won’t even >need the bookmarklet anymore.
Without the bookmarklet Instapaper stops being useful to me - I have no interest in another source of information, however 'social' or curated that may be.
I feel that instapaper is trying to move into the 'sharing cool stuff' space, which is already over saturated, instead of concentrating on it's original stronghold of providing a great consumption experience.