It won't remember your location if you quit while in the middle of an article, it now shows ads, and it limits you to having only your ten most recent saved articles on the iPhone. I must have about 100 saved stories on my phone under the previous version, which I'll just be keeping.
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Don't update InstaPaper to 2.1
- Thread starter piblondin
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i've tried both and i prefer read it later over instapaper. read it later is also much cheaper and has a great addon you can use in firefox.
For text only, Instapaper Pro is great! I assume that the developer couldn't keep up servers for all the articles coming in from the Free version, and imposed limits (both to encourage people to buy the pro version, and cut down on an ever expanding need for servers). He also needs to eat, so he probably accepted ads in he free version so he could make a bit of money from people who don't want to pay for his Pro version.
Hi, everyone. A quick response:
Instapaper Free was out-"selling" Instapaper Pro by a very wide margin before. I understand why: Pro was priced to last summer's App Store standards, and Free satisfied many people's needs (although this was also due to me doing an inefficient job of selling people on Pro's features). Even many of my biggest fans, and many reviewers, said that Free was "good enough".
That caused two main problems: I had to support them for free, and many users weren't getting features that they really should have been using from Pro because they had convinced themselves that they didn't need to spend the money.
Operating the service was getting very expensive, but Pro sales had plateaued and were slowly dropping. I needed to make a change, or I'd run the risk of needing to shut down Instapaper completely. (Keep in mind that I'm an individual with no corporate backing or investment, doing this in my free time and paying for its costs myself.)
The two most commonly cited reasons for sticking with Free were that Pro didn't add enough features and it was too expensive. With the 2.0 series, I dramatically changed both products so that Pro had tons of new features and is sold for half of the previous price.
I take all of your feedback very seriously, and I'm open to suggestions if you feel I've made a serious error.
That said, I believe I've done a fair job of keeping Free useful but ultimately convincing most serious Instapaper users to buy Pro.
Instapaper Free was out-"selling" Instapaper Pro by a very wide margin before. I understand why: Pro was priced to last summer's App Store standards, and Free satisfied many people's needs (although this was also due to me doing an inefficient job of selling people on Pro's features). Even many of my biggest fans, and many reviewers, said that Free was "good enough".
That caused two main problems: I had to support them for free, and many users weren't getting features that they really should have been using from Pro because they had convinced themselves that they didn't need to spend the money.
Operating the service was getting very expensive, but Pro sales had plateaued and were slowly dropping. I needed to make a change, or I'd run the risk of needing to shut down Instapaper completely. (Keep in mind that I'm an individual with no corporate backing or investment, doing this in my free time and paying for its costs myself.)
The two most commonly cited reasons for sticking with Free were that Pro didn't add enough features and it was too expensive. With the 2.0 series, I dramatically changed both products so that Pro had tons of new features and is sold for half of the previous price.
I take all of your feedback very seriously, and I'm open to suggestions if you feel I've made a serious error.
That said, I believe I've done a fair job of keeping Free useful but ultimately convincing most serious Instapaper users to buy Pro.
Marco, thanks for weighing in. As a user, it's difficult to realize that something that's billed as an "upgrade" isn't really one, in many ways. I don't feel like users should be put in the position of saying, "Oh crap! I shouldn't have hit the upgrade button!"
It would be great if developers who were going to reduce an application's feature set would rename the app before submitting it to the App Store so that it wouldn't come up as an update. However, I do understand the tough position you're in, given that your app has been wildly popular but hasn't delivered sufficient monetization.
On a side note, if you ever add a feature that would allow me to highlight text and easily view all my highlights together, I would gladly pay $10-$15 for your app (assuming that you also lifted the limit on the number of items I could store on my iPhone).
It would be great if developers who were going to reduce an application's feature set would rename the app before submitting it to the App Store so that it wouldn't come up as an update. However, I do understand the tough position you're in, given that your app has been wildly popular but hasn't delivered sufficient monetization.
On a side note, if you ever add a feature that would allow me to highlight text and easily view all my highlights together, I would gladly pay $10-$15 for your app (assuming that you also lifted the limit on the number of items I could store on my iPhone).
OK, call me old fashioned or whatever, but after reading the Dev's comments, I went and bought the Pro version. Probably because I'm used to the "shareware" culture and can honestly say that the free app alone was worth the few bucks the Pro version cost.
I advocate supporting developers and while the early App Store ethos was for free stuff and now we have free apps as demos, I have no problem paying this dev. who has produced a really useful app.
I advocate supporting developers and while the early App Store ethos was for free stuff and now we have free apps as demos, I have no problem paying this dev. who has produced a really useful app.
Instpaper rocks. The scrolling text feature alone is worth the price of the Pro. Add in so many apps take advantage of it and it can be easily set up on any computer browser and even the Safari app.
Thanks for the responses.
This execution may have been an error on my part. I assumed, given how I blogged about the limitation months ago, and that I clearly stated the new limitations both on the blog at submission time and on the App Store's "What's new in this version" field, that most people wouldn't be caught by surprise.
Judging by emails, blog posts, Twitter mentions, and forum posts, most people seem content. I've had tens of thousands of upgrades in the few days since release, and fewer than 20 complaints that I can find.
I'm planning to do something similar later in the 2.x series. Fortunately, I'm still only charging $5.
This execution may have been an error on my part. I assumed, given how I blogged about the limitation months ago, and that I clearly stated the new limitations both on the blog at submission time and on the App Store's "What's new in this version" field, that most people wouldn't be caught by surprise.
Judging by emails, blog posts, Twitter mentions, and forum posts, most people seem content. I've had tens of thousands of upgrades in the few days since release, and fewer than 20 complaints that I can find.
I'm planning to do something similar later in the 2.x series. Fortunately, I'm still only charging $5.
I usually don't read developer blogs -- I just use the apps, unless I have a really serious problems that needs to be resolved. At which point I'm more likely to just delete the app and try something else than take the time to hunt for solutions at developer's websites. But I digress. Also, when I get update notifications for my apps, I usually just hit "update all" without reading what the updates entail. Maybe I should take more time to read up on the updates, but it's a pain, especially if I get more than one update notice at once, which happens quite frequently. Anyway, just thought I'd mention some reasons why people might be surprised by your "update" even though you've wrote about them in your blog and product descriptions. I totally see why you needed to make changes to your free app, I bought the Pro version a while back when you had it on sale for half-price, and have been quite satisfied with my purchase.