Instapaper Blog

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Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:26:49 -0500

Instapaper on the Kindle (by ocellnuri) So that’s how it...

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:05:55 -0500

Instapaper on the Kindle (by ocellnuri)

So that’s how it looks.

Note to self: Get a Kindle and make this awesome.

Our Favorite iPhone Apps: Best information tools

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:08:55 -0500

Our Favorite iPhone Apps: Best information tools: Great mention of Instapaper Pro by Macworld. Thanks!

Website updates

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:02:32 -0500

I’ve just updated Instapaper.com with a few new features:

“Move articles to archive automatically” toggle. Until now, “yes” has been the only behavior. If you uncheck this, articles won’t be automatically marked as read when you click their links to read them. (This behavior does not apply to the iPhone app.)
Password resets (only if your username is a valid email address)
Change your username
Delete your account

Also, the body font is now Helvetica (or Arial on Windows). I’ve never been happy with Georgia’s rendering on Windows, and this makes the site’s main list interface look a bit cleaner.

What's next?

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:46:00 -0500

Instapaper.app 1.3 has been very well received, but I’m already hard at work on the next major version.

There will be some great new features coming in the next few versions, but to enable them, I’m first rewriting the entire storage/update engine. This is incredibly dull and time-consuming, but it will provide some nice benefits:

Updates happen in a separate thread, so you won’t need to sit and stare at the list screen while waiting for them to complete. Everything will be downloaded in the background, similar to Mail.
Articles and their two versions (text and graphical) can be downloaded separately from the app learning about the article for the first time. This will enable individual-article reloads from the app as well as a possible “download graphical version of just this article” feature.
Article content is stored separately from the articles list, and the content is not included in iTunes backups. This will greatly speed up backups.
Complex graphical layouts will download in less time and be less likely to crash or slow down.
Operations can be enqueued while offline and sent to the server on the next sync, enabling a “Read Later” button for tapped links in saved articles.

…and a few more features that I’m not ready to announce publicly yet.

I don’t have a release-date estimate yet. Rest assured that 1.4 will be a significant update.

Time's top 10 iPhone apps of the year

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:09:00 -0500

Time's top 10 iPhone apps of the year:

(thanks for finding this, fatmanatee)

Time has named Instapaper the #7 best iPhone app of the year. Thanks! I’m honored.

I love everything about this.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:57:38 -0500

I love everything about this.

This is the nicest feedback I’ve ever received.

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:52:55 -0500

This is the nicest feedback I’ve ever received.

New York Times support updated

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:46:42 -0500

The Instapaper service has just been updated to accommodate a change in The New York Times that was causing multi-page articles to only include the first page.

With all of the login requirements, redirects, multi-page articles, and mixed character encodings, The New York Times is a very difficult website to fetch content from. Because of this, I cannot guarantee that their content will always work properly in Instapaper.

I have tried making arrangements with them to allow Instapaper users to access their content in a more uniform, supported way, but my requests have fallen on deaf ears so far. I hope this can be improved in the future.

Please let me know if you spot any other issues with The New York Times and I’ll do my best to fix them as they arise.

This one?

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:22:03 -0500

This one?

Macworld: Gear for your iPhone

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:46:52 -0500

Macworld: Gear for your iPhone: Macworld features Instapaper in a list of iPhone recommendations. Thanks!

I’m working on some minor issues: Some multi-page articles from The New York Times are only...

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:56:36 -0500

I’m working on some minor issues:

Some multi-page articles from The New York Times are only importing page 1.
Articles from Salon appear as graphical-only with a malformed red background.

Also, updates are taking longer than usual, especially when including the Graphical versions of pages. Instapaper’s usage is growing quickly, which is great news! Unfortunately, I’ve outgrown the current server that runs the Instapaper service, and I’ll need to upgrade to a higher-end model.

Assuming it goes as planned, you shouldn’t notice the transition at all. I expect the move to happen within two weeks.

Once the transition is complete, updates should be faster — or, at least, limited only by the speed of your device’s current internet connection.

How to sell an iPhone app for $9.99

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:50:28 -0500

How to sell an iPhone app for $9.99: TUAW liked my article. Thanks, Mike Schramm!

Instapaper Free 1.3 now available from the App Store

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:47:46 -0500

Go get it!

Huge WebKit leak from iPhone OS 1.0 finally fixed in 2.2?

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:53:24 -0500

Like many other third-party apps, as well as Mobile Safari itself since iPhone OS 1.0, Instapaper can sometimes force-quit frequently after a lot of heavy use until after a reboot. (It’s not technically a crash — the iPhone OS runs out of memory and forces the app to quit, but the app goes through its clean shutdown procedure, which is why Instapaper Pro is always able to save your position.)

The symptoms are always the same: you’ll be reading an article, not doing any other actions, possibly not even scrolling, and the screen will go all-black for about 3 seconds, then return you to the home screen.

I’ve been battling this problem since the beginning, and my best guesses have led me to believe that it’s a memory leak in WebKit, the Apple component for rendering web pages in Safari and any third-party app that uses UIWebView (which is nearly all of them that render text with mixed formatting or inline images). The leaked memory persists after an application closes, possibly because it’s in a system-wide shared WebKit layer. That’s why a reboot always fixes it for a while.

In my testing with iPhone OS 2.2 so far, I haven’t been able to make the crash happen. I can still get the OS to issue low-memory warnings while reading long pages, but WebKit is then able to free enough memory that the force-quitting doesn’t follow.

I’m continuing aggressive testing, but so far, it appears that the problem is either significantly improved or eliminated. I’m optimistic on this one, and very happy that Apple has finally found and fixed this bug.

Instapaper Pro 1.3 now available

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:37:00 -0500

Apple has approved the 1.3 update for Instapaper Pro. It’s now available in the App Store as a free update for all Instapaper Pro customers, or a $9.99 upgrade from Instapaper Free.

The 1.3 version of Instapaper Free is still pending approval. Both versions were submitted at the same time, so I expect that you’ll see it within 48 hours.

Instapaper 1.3 submitted to App Store It will probably be...

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:30:26 -0500

Instapaper 1.3 submitted to App Store

It will probably be available within a week.

New in Instapaper 1.3 (Free and Pro)

Continuous updating: Articles are now downloaded one-at-a-time until there aren’t any more. No more “Update again for more…”.
Text-only option: Dramatically improves update speed by downloading only text versions. This is the new default, since the speed improvement is so huge and most users only use the text version. You can change it in the Settings screen.
Slightly larger default font in articles.
Smaller font in title screen to fit more characters.
Bugfix: Rotation no longer resets the scroll position to the top. Sorry about that.
Many minor interface behavior improvements.
Instapaper now crashes less frequently when reading large pages. The root of the problem is a memory leak in Apple’s WebKit component, and the same problem plagues Mobile Safari, but I’m working around it as much as possible. I feel your pain on this, and I appreciate your patience as Apple and I find solutions.

New in Instapaper Pro 1.3

In addition to the updates above, Instapaper Pro customers receive additional improvements for version 1.3:

Tilt scrolling: Now much smoother, works in landscape orientation, and shows position indicator.
Dark interface mode: Upgraded the previous “white text on black background” mode to an optional dark mode for the entire interface. Great for reading at night.
New font picker: Now with a live preview and far more available sizes. In the Settings screen.
Larger reading area: The top bar has been removed from the reading view, increasing the reading area by 12%.
Disable-rotation option: In the Settings screen.
Text zooming in Web view now goes to 500%.

The future

Thank you to all of my customers so far. Your enthusiasm is encouraging, and your feedback is invaluable.

This is only the beginning for Instapaper. There’s a large roadmap of great features and improvements planned for the website and iPhone app over the next few months.

Thank you for your support.

On App Store pricing

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:19:16 -0500

Over the weekend, two authors wrote great posts about the sad state of App Store pricing:

Andy Finnell: How to Price Your iPhone App out of Existence
Veiled Games: A New Hope (in response)

Andy Finnell attempts to persuade app developers to raise prices and make $9.99 the new starting point. It’s a great post, and developers should strongly consider his message.

Veiled Games’ response, which plausibly could represent the average developer response, made some incorrect generalizations:

People aren’t willing to pay very much for iPhone apps.
If you charge more than $0.99, a lot of people will complain.
Very few apps are priced at $9.99 or higher. Of those, nobody’s selling in any volume.

Well, guys, I’m a developer and my app sells for $9.99. It’s not a blockbuster hit, and it hasn’t made me a millionaire, but it sells at a healthy rate considering that I only spend a few hours per week on it, I haven’t spent a penny on promotion, and I haven’t released a new version in months (although I’m about to). A few people have complained about the price, but their numbers pale in comparison to the people who email me to say how happy they are with my app.

Selling an app for $9.99 isn’t impossible, but you can’t expect just anything to sell for that price. Here’s a combination of my anecdotal evidence and some general hunches on how to do it:

Offer a free version. It’s tough to ask someone to pay more than $2 blindly without any way to try your app. Make a free version that doesn’t suck, but leave enough great features or content as paid exclusives, and make sure the free app tastefully tells its users that the paid version exists (and why they should buy it).

Deliver real value. Solve a problem that a lot of people have — not just geeks like us. Make people love your product so much that it will be worth more than the cost of two sandwiches. This will not be easy, and it will take time.

Respect yourself. Have pride in your work, and don’t deliver crap. But respect the value of your time. Make it worth your while. Don’t bother making software that won’t pay you a price that’s worthy of your efforts.

Never pander to cheapskates. You’ll get emails, blog posts, App Store reviews, Twitter statuses, and comments from cheapskates complaining about the price. (If you don’t, your price is too low.) Ignore them. If you pander to them, they’ll keep complaining until your price is $0, then they’ll complain about the color scheme. You will never satisfy everyone. You don’t need to. There are plenty of people out there willing to pay reasonable prices for apps of value, but like happy blog readers and intelligent YouTube watchers, they tend to be less vocal.

Have reasonable expectations. Do the math to figure out a fair price point or decide if an app is worth making. How many copies are you likely to sell? Well, break it down. How many iPhones exist? If you’re selling an app that only a certain group of people can use (e.g. users of a certain website), how many people are in that group, and how many of them have iPhones? Of your potential, what percentage are likely to hear about your app (maybe 5% if you’re really good)? Of those, what percentage will actually choose to buy it?

Achieving all of this and selling at a reasonable price will naturally be harder for some types of apps. I don’t think many people are going to pay $9.99 for a tip calculator or unit converter.

Games are a special case. You can sell a game for $9.99, but it’s much harder than selling a good app: games don’t solve most people’s problems, get them laid, save them time, make them money, or enrich their lives. Most have little lasting value: once you’ve beaten them or gotten sick of them, you rarely play them again. And the game market is absolutely flooded with cheap or free competition. But there’s nearly infinite demand for new games, and the potential market for a good game is much larger than the market for a good app. You can sell a great game for $9.99, but the bar is pretty high.

I suck at ending articles, so I’ll leave you with this: There are a lot more people than you think that will pay reasonable prices for good software, but most of them don’t leave reviews or send emails. They quietly buy the app and you never hear from them. These people are the market, not the complainers and whiners.

People have always been willing to pay money for valuable software, and users of the iPhone platform are no different. It’s not some crazy new voodoo platform where nobody will pay for anything. Treat it like any other software market, and you’ll see that it responds in the same way.

"Readers who ride the train, bus, or subways will likely find Instapaper an essential part of their..."

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:25:55 -0500

“Readers who ride the train, bus, or subways will likely find Instapaper an essential part of their daily commute or journey.”

- Instapaper review at AppCraver

"Still printing articles to “read later”? Get over it. Almost any cellphone has a good..."

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:07:42 -0500

“Still printing articles to “read later”? Get over it. Almost any cellphone has a good enough screen to read text. If you have an iPhone, you can even use the “Instapaper” application to automate the process — hit the Read Later bookmarklet and enjoy the article later, away from your desk. The forests will thank you for it.”

- Wired Blog: Five Useless Gadgets You Should Throw in the Trash Right Now