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Marco arment instapaper4/9/2023 Text size changing alone is quite nice (which apparently used to be a free feature as well). Instapaper’s paid application offers significantly more features than the free version, as you can see in the gallery. Once saved, you can then access your saved pages through either the website or the mobile interfaces. An Instapaper subscription removes the lone ad in the web interface. This same Instapaper subscription is bundled into the iOS app, since that was created by Marco. This is on top of any fee charged for the app itself. To defray the costs associated with Instapaper’s backend, users of those apps need to pay a $1/month (in three-month increments) subscription fee. His intent was to allow others to create apps for more mobile devices than he could write himself. Instapaper’s creator, Marco Arment, recently released an API to allow third party applications to use Instapaper’s service. It also adds several extras like adjustable text size, dark mode for night reading, tilt-scrolling and page flipping, access to folders, dictionary lookup and sharing on social media websites. Stepping up to the $4.99 Pro app expands article count to 500. The free iOS app provides a subset of Instapaper features and allows access to 10 saved articles. Support for other mobile platforms is via third-party apps that use an Instapaper API. Instapaper natively supports only free and "Pro" iOS apps. You read Instapaper-converted content via an app on your mobile device. You mark items for Instapaper to convert by using a bookmarklet, similar to those used for popular web bookmarking services. Instapaper looks to solve this problem by stripping out all the crud on a web page, grabbing the important content and making it readable on any screen size. While many websites have started to deploy mobile-friendly versions, there are still millions of sites that aren’t mobile optimized. With the explosion of mobile devices, many smartphone users have found it very difficult to view content on the web. Instapaper is a simple tool that performs a job many of us couldn’t have seen necessary three years ago. Non-iOS users must pay ongoing subscription fee.Lacks official support for mobile platforms other than iOS.API available for third party developers.Very good at predicting relevant content for display.Free or cheap ( $1/month subscription) to use.Simple interface meant to stay out of the way. It’s high time the system began rewarding quality-built and well-maintained products that provide true usefulness to their users.Instapaper provides a more readable version of websites for mobile phones and other small-screen devices. Meanwhile the market will continue to crank out apps. The iPad has a much smaller installed base, so iPad development is even harder to justify,” Arment continues. I picked on the iPad earlier because its problem is deeper and more visible than on the iPhone today: while the iPad has most of the pricing and competitive pressure of the iPhone, the iPhone’s immense installed base can hide the problems for longer. “ pressures are taking an immense toll on the quality and sustainability of iOS apps. If they’re trying to boost iPad sales and increase differentiation between iOS and Android devices, that’s the first place to start.” “I hope Apple realizes how important it is to everyone - developers, customers, and Apple - that they make changes to encourage more high-quality apps. “The best thing Apple could do to increase the quality of apps is remove every top list from the App Store,” he writes. In fact, the problem is so pervasive the Arment suggests doing away with the idea of top lists altogether. “Profits at the top are so massive that the promise alone attracts vast floods of spam, sleaziness, clones, and ripoffs.” “Top lists reward apps that get people to download them, regardless of quality or long-term use, so that’s what most developers optimize for,” Arment writes. “Because while I’m not the most devoted or frequent iPad user, the software landscape on mine has become alarmingly stagnant,” Arment notes.Īccording to Arment, a huge part of the problem is Apple’s App Store and its focus on the “top list.” As the creator of Instapaperand the original publisher of The Magazine, he’s often cited as someone that “gets it right.” So when Arment talks about App Rot in the iPad landscape, we listen.Īrment notes a huge problem with the state of third-party apps for the iPad: updates lacking, badly done versions, a lack of vibrant new choices. Marco Arment knows a thing or two about good app design.
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