Instapaper has now gone version 4 and Marco Arment has been kind enough to let me test out this new version. I can say that this new version is, without a doubt, fantastic.
Arment is fond of saying that Instapaper has the most generous update policy (every update has been free) and I would argue that the only software company more generous is Apple with iOS. But, why — why wouldn’t Arment charge for these fantastic updates? Let’s let him explain:
There’s no good way to charge for updates in the App Store. Maybe Apple will add this functionality in the future, but they don’t seem to care so far. Maybe they’ll add it when they want upgrade pricing for the next version of Aperture or Final Cut Studio.
But I’m not sure I’d charge regardless. I get a lot of goodwill from my customers by continually improving the product that they bought months or years ago, and that goodwill helps spread the word and drive new sales. I know I charge a “premium” compared to many other apps, but I want people to feel like Instapaper is a ridiculously good deal.
In my book Instapaper is certainly a “ridiculously good deal” and that may sum up Instapaper 4 perfectly.
Read Ben's entire review for a complete overview of each new feature.
Marco Arment, posting on the Instapaper blog, has announced the release of Instapaper 4.0 for the iPhone & iPad. Marco's post outlines, in detail, all of the new features packed into 4.0 including:
* complete navigation UI redesign
* tweaked reading UI redesign
* support for wikipedia lookup
* footnote support
* multi-select support
* expanded sharing support for browsing - see all links in your Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr feeds that friends have shared
* complete reading and archive list search support
* app directory showcasing Instapaper compatible apps
* other minor features
App Store Link
In the bigger picture, this is something that Apple seems to understand time and time again that their rivals do not. Technology is an ever-important part of everyones’ lives, but the only way to make it truly accessible to the vast majority of users is to humanize it. That’s Siri. Google, Microsoft, etc — they all fail miserably at doing this.
There are many good sections that it was hard to quote just a single paragraph. Read the entire article.
With the iPhone 4S, Apple went back to announcing “1 million units sold” — only with pre-orders and after 24 hours, not three days. In the launch weekend, as reported this morning, the company reported over 4 million iPhone 4S units sold in the seven countries the device launched on October 14th: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia and Japan.
Also, check out MacStories' graph:
CUPERTINO, California—October 17, 2011— Apple® today announced it has sold over four million of its new iPhone® 4S, just three days after its launch on October 14. In addition, more than 25 million customers are already using iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, in the first five days of its release, and more than 20 million customers have signed up for iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices. iPhone 4S is available today in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, and will be available in 22 more countries on October 28 and more than 70 countries by the end of the year.
While Apple usually gets everything right, they occasionally drop the ball. Here is an instance of them dropping the ball:
Marco Arment writes:
Instapaper has stored its downloaded articles in Caches for years, since I didn’t want to slow down iTunes syncing for my customers or enlarge their backups unnecessarily, and full restores don’t happen often enough for it to be a problem for most people. This new policy now locks me into using Caches: I no longer have a choice.
But in iOS 5, there’s an important change: Caches and tmp — the only two directories that aren’t backed up — are “cleaned” out when the device is low on space.
…
A common scenario: an Instapaper customer is stocking up an iPad for a long flight. She syncs a bunch of movies and podcasts, downloads some magazines, and buys a few new games, leaving very little free space. Right before boarding, she remembers to download the newest issue of The Economist. (I think highly of my customers.) This causes free space to fall below the threshold that triggers the cleaner, which — in the background, unbeknownst to her — deletes everything that was saved in Instapaper. Later in the flight, with no internet connectivity, she goes to launch Instapaper and finds it completely empty.
…
When customers save an article with Instapaper, get a book in iBooks, or download a podcast with Instacast, they expect it to be there next time they launch the app. Even though it’s technically redownloadable, customers see that as their data — they put it there, and it’s theirs to remove if and when they see fit.
When the cleaner wipes it out, it appears that the app has failed and deleted their data. And customers won’t know that it’s an iOS 5 behavior — they’ll understandably blame the app developers. Even though it’s not our fault, it’s certainly going to become our problem.
There needs to be a file storage location that behaves the way Caches did before iOS 5: it’s not backed up to iTunes or iCloud, it’s not synced, but it’s also never deleted unless the app is deleted.
I posted large excerpts of Marco's article because I want to help get the word out on this issue. This is generally more than I would like to repost from someone else's site, but considering the circumstances, I would think Marco would be fine with it.
Today was Apple's largest simultaneous software rollout, ever, or at least for as long as I can remember. In no particular order, these items were released in the past 24 hours:
* OS X 10.7.2 - adding iCloud support & other fixes.
* OS X 10.7.2 - recovery partition update
* iTunes 10.5 - adds iCloud support and is required for iOS 5
* iOS 5.0 - for iPhone 4S, 4, and 3GS
* iCloud 1.0 - go to me.com to convert your MobileMe account. I highly recommend you read Serenity Caldwell's iCloud article which should answer any questions you may have about the new service and the transition over to it.
* iOS iWork apps: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote - adds iCloud document storage support
* iPhoto 9.2 - adds iCloud integration with Photo Stream
* Aperture 3.2 - adds iCloud integration with Photo Stream
* Cards app - new iOS app
* Find Friends app - new iOS app
* Airport Utility app - new iOS app
* iTunes Trailers app - new iOS app
* Newstand store - new iTunes component to support iOS Newstand feature
* iMessage network - adds support for iMessages in iOS 5
* Safari 5.1.1 - adds iCloud support and fixes bugs
* AppleTV update - adds AirPlay mirroring support & iCloud support
And while not released today, some customers have reported as to already having received their iPhone 4S devices early, despite that they were to be delivered on Friday. As a result, retail customers (not just review journalists) are now making use of the new Siri servers with their new iPhone 4S handsets.
Whew. Did I miss anything? That is an impressive list.
What other technology company has recently pulled off a software rollout on this scale and can report the only complaint from customers has been that downloads were slower than usual (because everyone is downloading the updates currently)?
This is the easiest product review I’ve ever written. The iPhone 4S is exactly what Apple says it is: just like the iPhone 4, but noticeably faster, with a significantly improved camera, and an impressive new voice-driven feature called Siri.
Want to see Siri in action? The Editorial Direction at Macworld, Jason Snell, posted a demo video last night:
This is listed above in the iCloud bullet point, but again, I highly recommend you read Serenity Caldwell's "Getting Started with iCloud". Even if, like me, you feel you are a know-it-all asshole who doesn't need to read anything that begins with the title "Getting Started..." suck it up and do it anyway. Serenity includes a few useful tidbits that even I didn't know about.
Also, today's Talk Show episode over on 5by5 with Dan Benjamin and John Gruber dedicated almost all of its time to discussing iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S.
iPhone 4S Upgrade Eligibility
On the subject of the iPhone 4S: I do not plan to buy the 4S, as I am waiting for my AT&T contract to expire in order to switch over to Verizon next summer (or next fall - whenever the iPhone 5 comes out). However, I did use Apple's "eligibility check" web app to see my upgrade availability status. I was puzzled to find that AT&T won't let me buy an iPhone 4S at the subsidized price until February 12, 2012, despite my having bought an iPhone 4 on day 1 one of its release last year. Marco Arment did a bit of wrote an article on this very subject today. Useful stuff.
Oh, and no sign of iTunes Match yet. Apple seeded iTunes 10.5.1 to developers last night, which has iTunes Match. I was under the impression that iTunes Match was supposed to roll out alongside the rest of these updates. Perhaps this means that there were a few bugs yet to be worked out still. Apple is probably focusing on those now, to hopefully have iTunes 10.5.1 out to customers by Friday (alongside the iPhone 4S launch) or perhaps next week?
Also,