Why you can’t read 9to5Mac on Instapaper
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
But what the heck is going on today? He questions The Verge's integrity (despite having nothing more than the absence of a iMac/HP Spectre One comment), tries to backpedal on it, then starts blocking sites he's feuding with?
Lame. He's normally the most level-headed of the popular Mac bloggers.
I wouldn't take either of their opinions seriously. The Verge is the best tech website out there period, and there's no reason to believe that its journalists are biased. They are doing some amazing reporting and really trying to revolutionize online journalism.
And fuck Instapaper - Marco was such a douchebag about Android support. Use Pocket[3], they have beautiful apps for all platforms and don't inject their personal opinions and biases into their software. You can export your articles from Instapaper and import them into Pocket, so there's no excuse for not switching.
0: http://joshuatopolsky.com/post/31285353423/integrity-and-bul...
1: http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/12/2630911/on-the-verge-epis...
2: http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3033481/on-the-verge-episo...
The former is an attack on their journalistic integrity, Gruber's much less so - although still an attack, nevertheless.
Gruber knows to temper his rhetoric, being a guy with journalistic sentibilities himself. Marco is just a guy with a blog.
Unfortunately they are also pretty good at being utter children about near everything else, and seem to live their (public internet) lives in some kind of us vs. them bubble, ripe with snide bickering and pointless hatemongering.
They seem to be, unfortunately, the Fox News of tech journalism.
HP comes out with an all-in-one. Instead of resembling a generic monitor, which would be the obvious choice for a computer meant to look like a simple display, it resembles an iMac to a bizarre degree. (Note: I don't even like how the iMac looks)
How do you defend writing a long article about it without mentioning the resemblance even once? I'm not suggesting motives; I just can't understand it. Yes, I've heard the "oh it was obvious so it didn't need to be said" defense, I just don't get that.
These guys look at gadgets all day long. What it comes down to is they get tired of ripping on every new gadget that comes out with "lol, they ripped off Apple" and instead focus on other things because there's absolutely nothing interesting about writing the same thing over and over and over again. After a while, it does get to the point that it's so obvious that pointing it out becomes superfluous.
And I mean, in the case of the Spectre One, it's not even as direct a knock-off as the Envy line. The stand design is bulky and inelegant compared to the iMac. When viewed from the side or rear, it's fairly clear there are far worse offenders in the "steals from Apple" category.
Which isn't to say it isn't there and it isn't a shameless aping, just that if you look at gadgets for a living, it doesn't really stand out enough in that regard for it to feel worth the energy to point it out.
>How do you defend writing a long article about it
This may be a bit of a nitpick, but both the posts Marco accused of shilling for HP are under 500 words; that's not really a long piece at all.
I don't care about this story, I just care about the provider of a service that decides to block me for his personal matters.
Sorry but it just feels like an insult to me.
To be honest though I simply cannot believe he would think such a thing acceptable, he seems like a pretty clued-in guy this would be a blunder of epic proportions if true, there's something more to this story.
But that's different from doing a specific edge-case breakage with a petulant message.
I don't think either is an appropriate characterization of the situation. More likely, Apple had features they wanted that Google wouldn't license (eg turn by turn), so Apple decided to develop its own product. The license terms of the agreement for which Apple was paying Google included shipping the Google Maps app, so when Apple decided not to renew the agreement, they had to stop shipping a product called Google Maps.
Someone with in-depth knowledge of the licensing agreements! You must know exactly what happened, based on your assertion of credentials, here.
> More likely, Apple had features they wanted that Google wouldn't license (eg turn by turn)
Wouldn't? Or couldn't? Do you know? Do you care? It seems your mind is made up despite not having the inside knowledge you assert.
My mind is not in the least way made up. I'm curious where that came from, honestly. That's a strong assertion that I actually tried to keep out of my post as I hypothesized what I saw as a plausible scenario given only whats been in the media.
I have no clue, and I highly doubt anybody posting here does, either.
You said it was "more likely," implying you had some reason to believe it besides what people say on the Internet.
Edit: he has lifted the block and apologised for putting it in place without the publishers explicit request, guess he saw sense in the end, everyone gets clouded by anger sometimes. http://blog.instapaper.com/post/31303984531
Is there much more to say about it than that?
I will never understand why people personalize so much what what Arment says. He's an independent developer; he's one of us. He happens to like iOS more than a lot of HN'ers. "Liking the wrong operating system" seems like a much smaller sin than "shitting all over an indie developer".
Perhaps because his writing, frequently obnoxious and bereft of charm, makes him very easy to dislike. Even for people like myself who might otherwise agree with his positions.
Yes he made a mistake, that's why this thread exists. But making a mistake is not the punishment for making a mistake.
Until he comes around, apologises and reverts what is arguably censorship, all that is being said needs to be said.
The point is not in what he said, that's folklore more than anything, the point is that he crippled his software over some Twitter feud.
The Instapaper error message should at least be more truthful, or the opt-out list made public so you know restrictions before purchasing the application.
...I really don't foresee doing this for any other site unless they explicitly request it. What 9to5 has consistently written about me and Instapaper goes far beyond what's acceptable, is potentially libelous, and could cause potential legal issues. This has never happened to this degree from any other site, and would certainly never happen from a professionally run publication. I will not tolerate their behavior or the potential legal risks of interacting with 9to5 or Seth at all, so I removed the ability for Instapaper to interact with their site.
[edit] Marco's tweet: https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/245163432758878208
Marco's current problem is that he's put himself in such a bloviating position that relenting and whitelisting 9to5Mac is going to make him look like a huge idiot.
Someone with a thicker skin would probably have asked the guys whether they really thought Instapaper was illegal, and whether Marco should disable Instapaper support for them. That way, he wouldn't be editorializing his articles.
This measure also creates a precedent where site owners can petition him to disable support for their website - which, taken far enough, is going to make Instapaper very undesirable to prospective users.
Those of us who've paid Marco money would rather that he didn't take a service we've paid money for to use as a bargaining chip.
NyTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/magazine/04FOB-medium-t.h...
Technology Review: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/419326/why-instapaper-w...
BusinessInsider: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-23/tech/30193029...
Content is worthless without a means to access it. That's what Instapaper is at its core.
If someone's libeling you, you talk with a lawyer about suing them for libel. If someone's libeling someone else and you're worried about legal risk to your product, you talk with a lawyer about that. Then, if necessary, you censor. And when people ask why, you respond with something along the lines of: "I talked with a lawyer and I had to censor 9to5Mac to avoid legal risks. I'm sorry, my hands are tied."
I don't like 9to5Mac, but I dislike censorship more. I had to cancel my subscription because of this. It particularly sucks because Instapaper is a joy to use.
I realize my decision means nothing by itself, but it looks like other people are canceling their subscriptions for the same reason. Hopefully, that'll be enough to get Marco to change his stance.
I guess it is time to turn the minaway setting up...
edit: Actually it's more like watching Jersey shore. A fantasy world where people have problems that everyone should listen to.
The whole he-said-she-said minutiae of it all are pretty dull, unless people want to get on some kind of tired free speech horse.
Ultimately, I'll still use Instapaper as long as Arment keeps making a quality app and keeps his personal choices out of what I see in the app.
Because the service is useful, and incidents are rare.
Are there any alternatives I should know about?
The absolute worst thing Instapaper can be accused of is implementing an old-Readability style function that strips pages of non-article content, most frequently ads.
By that definition Safari Reader is a scraper, so is AdBlock, Reeder, or any other app that tries to improve on the average abysmal reading environment most websites provide.
I think the new-Readability style is contentious, wherein the content is stored re-formatted, whereas the old style was just basic JavaScript, no different from a downloaded GreaseMonkey userstyle.
(no disrespect meant to Marco)
His actions here stink of foul play rather than any genuine worry. Maybe he has another side to this – but if he does, telling people to fuck off isn't the way around it.
Too often this is a euphemism for "he's a jerk who's unwilling to consider anyone else's perspective or requirements".
You can kinda get away with that in software development if you're incredibly smart, but it's an awful attitude to bring to any other part of your life.
But in updating, I spelled his name wrong —”Marcus Armento”—as a laugh.
I also linked to his Tweet above about spelling his name wrong and the funny replies it received.
I (also jokingly) called his app “Instascraper,” which publishers often
call the app because it removes ads from the websites it views. “Scraping”
is what publishers call bots and other robot services that strip content
from a site and republish it without any financial payment
Marco isn't completely blameless, however I completely understand why he was upset. Banning 9to5 was a step too far however he realized his mistake and owned up to it.
Dare I ask - what else do you want?
There are sites Instapaper does not scrape. For example, ArsTechnica does not allow scraping of full articles. Instapaper respects this whereas other scrapers ignore ArsTechnica and scrape anyway.
My point is, just because Instapaper refuses to scrape a site does not automatically mean censorship has occurred.
https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/245163180479885312 https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/245165731120033792
Marco more or less admits to as much in an email to Buzzfeed.
>What 9to5 has consistently written about me and Instapaper goes far beyond what's acceptable, is potentially libelous, and could cause potential legal issues. This has never happened to this degree from any other site, and would certainly never happen from a professionally run publication.
>I will not tolerate their behavior or the potential legal risks of interacting with 9to5 or Seth at all, so I removed the ability for Instapaper to interact with their site.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbuchanan/how-to-get-banned-from-...
Now, there's room to debate whether this should be called censorship, but it's clear that 9to5Mac is blocked on InstaPaper as a direct result of what they've published on their site.