Instapaper Finally Makes Its Android Debut, And It’s Almost Amazing | Hacker News Reader

Instapaper Finally Makes Its Android Debut, And It’s Almost Amazing

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82 pointsspeg47 comments

Meh. Pocket (née Read It Later) pretty much already filled Instapaper's uses for me, and it's free. Too little too late, IMHO.

I am also a Pocket user, and find it to be an adequate analog for Instapaper.

Interesting to me that you both don't really seem to love Pocket - you're just happy it almost does what Instapaper does, for free.

What's interesting about it, is the things people will decide to go without, due to something being free - when really the price difference of Free or $5 is fairly negligible.

( I don't use either service... merely an observation )

Keep in mind that there's a cognitive cost to evaluating alternate services, too. If Pocket works for you, and trying out InstaPaper costs you an hour and $5, the $5 are negligible. The hour isn't.

That's IMHO the big problem with all app market places - there's a glut of solutions for every problem. Nobody can be reasonably expected to sift through this, and so we end up with lots of small apps.

Corollary to that: By now, it's almost a waste of time to develop an app in a segment where a cheap clone can be knocked off in a few weekends.

That's a good point. And an interesting observation I'd never consciously taken into account.

> Interesting to me that you both don't really seem to love Pocket - you're just happy it almost does what Instapaper does, for free.

I'm a former Instapaper user that loves Pocket. I was barely willing to try Pocket since my queue was already in Instapaper, but I was tired of my chosen platform being treated as second-class. Android Instapaper apps sucked except for the excellent PaperMache (Yes, I have an HP TouchPad), which was just slow on Android.

So, I moved to Pocket and I love it. The text formatting on my CM9 tablet is GREAT by default, keeps images (in offline mode, too) and has a VERY attractive grid of unread articles that shows an article thumbnail. It's a much more enjoyable experience.

That said, I bought Instapaper for and tried it out. I'd be happy with the new Instapaper app had I never switched to Pocket, but Pocket is just better than Instapaper in their current iterations. I'm definitely glad there's competition on Android now though.

One Instapaper feature I miss though: auto-tweeting articles that I have starred.

I love Pocket. It's one of my favourite Android apps. Apart from the great features (video, paging, tagging) I've always found the parsing algorithm to be superior to the alternatives. Another plus is their dedication to support many platforms, which means I'm not tied to Android.

Ultimately I liked Pocketso much I paid for the pro version, just like many others[1]. Their business model seems pretty sound and they have a lot of users and the product is excellent. What is so exciting about Instapaper?

[1] http://getpocket.com/blog/2012/01/what-devices-did-read-it-l...

Eh, I just think the service read it later type apps provide has been commoditized. I have used pretty much every one of this kind of app. They all do the same, relatively unimportant thing with about the same level of polish. In the words of Jobs, it is a feature (of future browsers), not a product.

well, all those $5s add up when you buy enough apps, and that's the whole economics of the app market. you spend small amounts on enough apps, and you won't even realize how much you have spent compared to one time payment to all apps as a bundle.

Also I never understood the appeal of instapaper, what exactly does it do better than pocket? I never used instapaper, so any answer would be appreciated.

As a user of both (though it's been awhile since I've used Instapaper) I think Pocket does more than Instapaper (handles videos), I'm also curious to hear what Instapaper does better, if anything.

Actually, there's a third option: people that have never used instapaper (because it's never been on any of our platforms). Some people like me have boycotted Apple hardware for years. (Shock, horror)

It does more than Instapaper though I think. As far as I can tell Instapaper doesn't handle video like Pocket does?

(I've been using Pocket since before it was Read-It-Later on my iPhone and paid for it on iOS and again after switching to Android, maybe Instapaper does more now).

why is this reply being downvoted? Damn it people, if you don't agree, reply. don't downvote.

(EDIT: shawnc's answer was being downvoted at the time of writing, now its' in green)

While waiting for Instapaper, I also moved on to Pocket and Readability.

I always loved Instapaper, but the single focus killed it for me. Pocket, which looks just as pretty (if not more so - the colors do add a lot), can also handle other types of media.

I would end up with about 10 videos on Pinboard, a handful of presentations, and a dozen articles by the end of a week. Pocket can handle all those. Instapaper meant I needed other services to fully capture all the media I wanted to deal with.

Easy choice.

Same here, he took a bit long so I became a pocket user.

I'll have to check out Pocket. Do many apps support it? The main reason I use Readability is that many apps I use (like Tweetbot and Alien Blue) support it. Sure, I could always copy and paste the URLs into whatever read-later app I want, but it's so much more convenient to have integration.

Using the official Twitter client for Android, I just share the tweet to Pocket and it parses out the link for me. I can't comment on it for iOS, but it works great on Android.

agree its just I'm invested in Spool and Pocket and provides better functionality. I see no reason to switch at this point.

I liked using Picplz too, and it was free.

This is likely true: there are a number of Instapaper similes that are available now, many gratis (if your time/screen space are free, though that is a different conversation).

I hope that we don't see a "this confirms all my suspicions about Android" type of post in the coming months. The market is nothing like it was when Instapaper first hit it big on iOS (during a period where some of the biggest yielding apps were "Where's my car" and flashlight type products).

To be fair to Pocket it would be better to say Instapaper is a simile of it, as Read-It-Later (Pocket's original name) was first.

edit: Read-It-Later was a web service initially. The idea behind it is the same as Instapaper. Instapaper released a mobile app before Read-It-Later (though Read-It-Later was around as early as 2007).

Please don't try to rewrite history. Instapaper was first and basically invented the space. The oldest comment in the iTunes reviews for Instapaper are from Aug 28, 2008 which is before the Android Market even existed. Read it Later originally launched in 2009.

Edit: Read-It-Later appears to have launched Apr 8, 2009.

http://blog.ideashower.com/post/15139665330/read-it-later-ip...

"Read It Later, whose Firefox extension (but not web or iPhone app) actually predated Instapaper,"

http://www.marco.org/2010/05/19/on-read-it-later

Read-It-Later came out in 2007, the mobile application came later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(application)

Read-It-Later started as an article bookmarking system, and then pivoted to be like Instapaper (article parsing and delivery to a mobile app). Calling Read-It-Later older than Instapaper is like calling Bing older than Google. Bing is an evolution of msn search and Microsoft is older than Google.

Calling Instapaper a simile of Read-It-Later stikes me as misleading.

To call Bing older than Google seems entirely true to me (if nothing else, Bing is the heir to Yahoo search). Google was by no means the first search engine, and didn't transform the market or create one where there was previously none - they simply did it better than everyone else.

Out of interest, what's Pocket's business model?

Giving away stuff for free till the VC money runs out. Startup lottery.

Yeah kinda seems that that way doesn't it? I gladly paid for read it later and was surprised when they transitioned to free without any apparent source of income..

This was Marco and other iOS developers' mistake. If they wait too long to come to Android, there will be established competitors on the platform, and instead of being considered a market leader, they might even have to play catch-up with those already established on Android.

This is the same reason why even Microsoft has decided to make Office for iOS and Android. They can't just ignore 700 million users (and soon to be much bigger) just because they'd want people to use Windows instead. Windows is a big cash cow for Microsoft, but so is Office (about as big in revenue), and they can't risk losing the Office market to others, and not getting to decide the future format for docs, and other benefits they now get from being the absolute Office leader.

>This was Marco and other iOS developers' mistake.

How so? Instapaper is literally one developer; isn't it better to be a market leader on one platform than to spread yourself across two platforms and dilute both applications?

It sounds like once the right team approached him (one that he trusted the quality and business ethics of, and he knew their work) he cut a deal for an Android version.

To me, that seems like an optimal use of limited resources.

The guess here: http://www.quora.com/Instapaper/How-much-money-does-Instapap...

Is that Instapaper nets somewhere in the $1-2M range. I'd hardly call that "limited resources." The ability to staff up and/or outsource work effectively is an important skill for a business. You don't get a do-over just because you want to do all the work yourself.

That source says that that money is over the apps lifetime. So divide that by 4 (?) and its starting to become more limited. EDIT to include the quote (the low end of the scale starts to make things quite tight by my guestimating):

>>> TL;DR: Final estimate is somewhere between 0.15% to 0.60% of the iOS market, netting it somewhere between $875k to $2.3m for the duration of its existence (not yearly)<<<

Instapaper is a place, time AND device shifting service for content. Its market leader position on one or two devices was made more precarious by not branching out as soon as possible to as many devices as possible.

Marco's personal inclination was to support only platforms that he himself used—that's why he built a free service into Instapaper for the Kindle platform while ignoring the Android platform. I initially had an iPhone and an iPad, on which I owned the Instapaper client, then upgraded to an Android phone. I promptly switched to another service with support for my platform.

All fair points, but history demonstrated that Marco was doing much more than making a rational business decision. I would say that he suffered under the delusion that his blog posts would change the market (let's call it the Gruber Complex). Instead of rationally understanding and analyzing the market he spit venom and conjecture against Android, under the seemingly bizarre notion that it would halt its rise.

I doubt Microsoft will make a native iOS version of Office. Simply for the reason that they'll have to distribute through the AppStore, meaning Apple will take a 30% cut. I don't think Microsoft would be ok with Apple talking a cut on a product like Office.

I'm leaning towards the theory that Microsoft will release a "free for existing customers" mobile version of Office. I'd thought the primary motivation would be to deal with their cannibalization concerns, but it would also avoid issues like Apple's slice.

I assume Microsoft's Office for iOS/Android is just a slightly adapted webview of the online version.

After reading through several comments it's clear that Marco took way to long to release this, and users have found alternatives. I use Evernote. Many people prefer Pocket apparently.

The real shame is that a week from now Marco (a well known Android basher) is going have a blog post up with poor download stats. Deflect the blame, and proceed to explain how he was right all along... that it was not worth the money to have the app created, that Android users don't want to pay for quality apps, it's fragmented, blah blah blah.

So given that he didn't release Instapaper early on Android, what should he have done? Stayed away? Given he wasnt on the platform, is not going to it all a better move or not?

I think the tone I'm picking up on is that he should do this: Not make a post complaining about poor Android sales.

There is no "should have done" past-tense about what these people are saying.

It's good that he released the application and I'm sure many people hope it does well, but several have clearly indicated that they believe it's now too late to blame poor sales on anything if not his own hesitancy.

Has Marco commented on this at all? Dont see anything searching a bit... Given his former comments stating basically that he didn't think it was worth doing this is surprising.

He addressed it in today's Build & Analyze *(a podcast on 5by5 that he co-hosts with Dan Benjamin):

http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/80

Very excited to hear his thoughts.

Too late for me...I used instapaper religiously but due to not nice Android client I tried Pocket last month. Switched everything to it.

Instagram, Flipboard, Instapaper. Who's next?

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