Marco Arment Previews Instapaper Pro for iPad, Discusses Development Quandary Ahead of Device's Launch

[MacRumors]

Developer Marco Arment yesterday announced that his popular Instapaper service for saving Web content for later reading will be coming to the iPad, hopefully in time for the device's launch on April 3rd. The service, which currently offers a pair of iPhone/iPod touch applications including the limited Instapaper Free and the more powerful Instapaper Pro ($4.99), downloads text-only versions of Web content and saves them to a user's free account for later reading on a variety of devices.

In his blog entry, Arment offers some preview screenshots and discusses his motivations for developing iPad-specific versions of Instapaper. (Instapaper Pro will be a universal application for both iPhone and iPad, requiring users to only purchase the application once.)

Once I nailed down a few definite iPad-friendly features, I realized that I could port all of them to the iPhone version of Instapaper Pro. And if I did that, all of my customers (and I) could use these great new features now.

So, rather than rewriting my entire interface for the iPad over the two months that we've had, I spent the first few weeks finishing and launching the 2.2 update to my iPhone app, a major undertaking that added a lot of great features, using techniques that would allow me to easily adapt all of the features to the iPad. And I spent the remaining time adapting my interfaces, rewriting or modifying where necessary, for this new platform.

Arment also discusses the quandary faced by the many iPhone developers who are looking to move their apps to the iPad but have not had access to an actual device for testing. Consequently, developers have to either trust the iPad simulator in the iPhone SDK 3.2 and Apple's reviewers in order to have their applications ready for the iPad launch or hold off until the device comes available and have customers make do with iPhone versions of their applications for several weeks or months until iPad versions can be created.

For Arment, seeing the pixel-doubled display of the iPhone version of Instapaper Pro in the iPad simulator was enough to convince him that he needed to have an iPad version of the app ready to go as soon as possible.

It sucked, and it was completely unusable by my standards. I don't think I'll want to run any pixel-doubled apps on my iPad in practice.

As far as I'm concerned, Instapaper isn't really available on the iPad until it's native. (This also influenced my decision to make it a universal iPhone/iPad app: I don't want anyone subjecting themselves to the iPhone edition in pixel-doubled mode.)

As a result of this decision, Arment is prepared to accept that a few minor issues may exist with the iPad version of Instapaper Pro and that he can fix them soon after the device launches. But that risk is outweighed in Arment's mind by the opportunity to have an iPad-specific Instapaper experience from day one.

Article Link: Marco Arment Previews Instapaper Pro for iPad, Discusses Development Quandary Ahead of Device's Launch

 

[talkingfuture]

Looks very promising. Not long until we can try these apps and the iPad itself.

 

[steve-p]

Pixel doubling is never going to be a satisfactory user experience for most apps. It was just a way for Apple to be able to make the claims about 150,000 apps available from day one.

 

[anthonymoody]

Yeah I'd come across his post. Good stuff. Not a big user of the app, but I liked reading about his experience as a developer.

 

[SteveSparks]

I am willing to deal with some issues knowing that iPad developers did not have the actual devices in order to get native applications on day 1.

This is exciting and I think he will sell 1000s of copies of his application.

 

[sishaw]

Sounds like a perfect app for the iPad. I never used instapaper before because the idea of having all that reading material on a small screen did not appeal, but I would definitely look at the iPad version.

 

[SteveSparks]

Pixel doubling is never going to be a satisfactory user experience for most apps. It was just a way for Apple to be able to make the claims about 150,000 apps available from day one.

The nice thing is that while the app is small in native mode, you are not left without your favorite application.

 

[sishaw]

Pixel doubling is never going to be a satisfactory user experience for most apps. It was just a way for Apple to be able to make the claims about 150,000 apps available from day one.

Well, the other option was to have iPhone apps not work at all on the iPad, which is even less satisfactory. I think pixel doubling is nothing more than a stopgap measure until the native apps are produced.

 

[steve-p]

I am willing to deal with some issues knowing that iPad developers did not have the actual devices in order to get native applications on day 1.

This is exciting and I think he will sell 1000s of copies of his application.

I agree, it looks good and is an insight into just how different the apps will be when the potential of larger screen size is taken advantage of.

 

[killmoms]

Whether you use his software or not, Marco Arment's one of those luminaries of the Mac world whose words definitely matter. He's got a lot of smart stuff to say, and not just about iPhone/iPad development.

Neat guy.

 

[DanielSw]

Pixel doubling is never going to be a satisfactory user experience for most apps. It was just a way for Apple to be able to make the claims about 150,000 apps available from day one.

So what? The user merely has to try pixel doubling to see if they like it. If they don't, they turn it off and the iPhone app runs as it would on a phone. You grumblers really need to get a life.

 

[rumplestiltskin]

If Apple had not provided a pre-release Macintosh 128 to Microsoft, we wouldn't have had any M$ apps in a timely manner.

Of course, one might argue that this would have been a blessing.

 

[dvassallo]

I concur that pixel doubling will likely look like ish...I also feel that running iPhone apps in their native resolution looks absurd on such a large display...the apps look like they are free floating in a sea of black.

I think it would be nice if you could run multiple iPhone apps in iPhone native resolution concurrently sort of like a dashboard. One single app looks asinine but if I could throw a couple across my screen it would look neat and give me a "dashboard" view of a lot of content. Wonder what the battery/ performance implications would be?

 

[palaemon]

Pixel doubling may look different on the actual iPad, but I completely agree that (having backwards compatibility) was necessary. It's being pushed (in part) as a gaming machine, and what was the last gaming machine that didn't offer back-compat?

I think "stop-gap" is the best way to put it. NO ONE is going to open an iPhone native app and think "yea, that's good enough." (at least not on a paid app.)

At the same time, I'm not sure (since I have an iPhone) that I'll care about certain apps like a twitter or IM app. Facebook, I think needs to update, but if history teaches us anything, they'll drag their feet (ala Fackbook 3.0)

 

[FFArchitect]

Hopefully the window of pixel-doubled apps is small and the native apps come quickly. I'm pretty sure for the major ones that'll be the case.

 

[Lyle]

Although I do most of my InstaPaper reading on my Kindle these days, I bought InstaPaper Pro for my iPhone and use it pretty regularly. This application, or service, whatever you'd call InstaPaper, is one of my favorite discoveries of the past few years.

 

[MrCubes]

Not that they need it, but I totally back up Marco's words. When I first tried my iPhone game in the iPad SIM it looked awful - but then simply rebuilding as a universal app and trying again was so much better that, despite some rough edges, I'm considering pushing an update out this weekend for it!

Unfortunately my iPhone code uses a slightly unorthodox way of getting translucent tableviews that doesn't work on the iPad (at least in the sim), so I'm having to redo that part. These are the areas that worry me the most in not being able to test on the device, though. There are things that, while not necessarily using private APIs, nonetheless appear to work one way in the sim and a different way on the device.

 

[Rojo]

I'm VERY happy to hear he's making a universal app that will work on iPhones AND iPad. I'm really hoping a lot of other developers do this, and don't require us to pay twice for the same app (unless of course the iPad version is a completely re-written and more advanced version -- only THEN can I understand charging more. HOWEVER...I still hope developers can make it an in-app purchase of an iPad-capable upgrade, rather than making us buy a separate app! Is that possible? I sure hope so!!)

 

[aristotle]

For games, pixel doubling is perfectly acceptable. For text heavy apps, it is less than ideal but better than nothing while waiting for an iPad version.

 

[TheSlush]

Sounds like Arment has the the right mindset and approach to this.

Pixel-doubling is a mere transition step, to enable Apple to claim "tens of thousands of apps available for iPad" from day one.

 

[diamond.g]

Pixel doubling may look different on the actual iPad, but I completely agree that (having backwards compatibility) was necessary. It's being pushed (in part) as a gaming machine, and what was the last gaming machine that didn't offer back-compat?

PS3 (well all the new ones), DSi can't play GBA games.

 

[iSee]

Wow. MR loves Marco Arment, apparently.

It's the best approach though: one app that runs natively on both iPhone and iPad.

 

[kurosov]

Pixel doubling is never going to be a satisfactory user experience for most apps. It was just a way for Apple to be able to make the claims about 150,000 apps available from day one.

More likely because people would have demanded to be able to use those iphone apps they already bought if they didn't add such a feature. This way people don't complain about it.

 

[vettori]

I'm VERY happy to hear he's making a universal app that will work on iPhones AND iPad. I'm really hoping a lot of other developers do this, and don't require us to pay twice for the same app (unless of course the iPad version is a completely re-written and more advanced version -- only THEN can I understand charging more.

There are situations where the universal app approach is not pratical. For example one of my apps contains 400MB of videos optimized for the iPhone. The iPad version has a different interface and videos are optimized for the iPad. This means that the size of the universal app has to be doubled or more with respect to an app for the specific device.

Even when the size of the app is limited, if it contains a lot of graphic elements I think it will be common to see two different apps to remain under the 20MB limit imposed by Apple to be able to download on 3G.

With casual games (like one of my other apps) priced 0.99$ a complete rewrite using different graphics elements optimized for the iPad will probably be sold as device specific app.

I suppose the universal app concept makes sense especially for apps with reduced graphic elements, priced 5$ or above.

 

[ValSalva]

Sounds like Arment has the the right mindset and approach to this.

Pixel-doubling is a mere transition step, to enable Apple to claim "tens of thousands of apps available for iPad" from day one.

Yes, and his app is very good. Just wish I had more time to read