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Instapaper for Retina iPad

marco.org

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Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#41

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

tuananh wrote: post #37
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marco has implied that he makes a "six figure income" from it (on the Planet Money podcast) but has never given more details than that that I'm aware of. My reading of a lot of the commercial Android developer pieces is not that it's impossible to make money on Android, just that where you have limited resources it tends to be the case that they can more profitably be utilised on iOS work. The issue for someone like…

May I ask is that "six figure income" is per month?

He didn't specify.

Essentially he was talking about what an iOS developer "might" earn. If memory serves he pitched that the equivalent of a six figure salary was possible / reasonable if you were successful and I think agreed that that was the sort of thing he was getting.

Obviously that puts it at between $100,000 and $999,999 a year, so fairly wide error bars on that.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#42

Post by nirvana »

Erwin wrote: post #24

The screenshot is looking great. Ignoring form factor, is the new iPad going to match Kindle's reading quality? I generally read fiction on the Kindle (2nd gen) and anything that has graphics or requires rapid page turning on the iPad (1G).

Having used a retina screen iPhone and iPod I'd say in my opinion the new iPad (which I haven't seen) is going to far exceed the kindle's screen in readability.

Where I think kindle probably still has the edge is in ergonomics, specifically weight. The iPad is too heavy for me to hold like I would a physical book. (but I make do with this fact and use it anyway as one... and I've got the heavier first generation iPad.)

All the other things the iPad does have a big impact, but as a pure reading device (iBooks is my killer app) the iPad is working out great for me, so I look forward to getting a third generation.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#43

Post by nirvana »

hnal943 wrote: post #11
mds101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really make much sense. If reading articles is your main application for the device, why not buy the iPad 2 especially after the huge price drop?

Or for that matter, why not a Kindle?

The kindle has only two things that make it competitive enough to be worthy of discussion- e-ink and lighter weight. In every other category (ok, excluding price) it fails compared to the iPad.

on e-ink there isn't really an advantage to my eyes. I've never gotten eyestrain reading on my (first generation) iPad. The image quality of the e-ink display is worse than even the first generation iPad (to my eyes), in large part because the e-ink display is not responsive.

weight- I deal with it on the iPad. The kindle is better in this regard, but not enough to make it compelling.

Amazon had a great product in the original kindle, but it was a single purpose product. It hasn't kept up (or e-ink hasn't advanced fast enough) and its losing the race.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#44

Post by huggyface »

rubergly wrote: post #40
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #14

Competition is good. Readability is certainly making him stepup. I still think ignoring android is a mistake (assuming he continues to do so in the future.). I foresee sharing happening within these read later apps and the size of the network matters.

It's a "mistake" from the perspective of users who wish it were on a platform they used, but it's not a mistake from the perspective of Marco, who is busy enough working on the iOS and server components of the service; an Android version wouldn't provide enough revenue to warrant an employee or contractor. Is it a mistake for the developer of TextMate to not spread to Windows?

an Android version wouldn't provide enough revenue to warrant an employee or contractor.

A statement with absolutely zero backing.

Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Marco doesn't do analysis but instead just parrots the standard rhetoric, seemingly hoping that his words alone will make Android irrelevant and thus unnecessary of effort. His loss.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#45

Post by rubergly »

huggyface wrote: post #44
rubergly wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a "mistake" from the perspective of users who wish it were on a platform they used, but it's not a mistake from the perspective of Marco, who is busy enough working on the iOS and server components of the service; an Android version wouldn't provide enough revenue to warrant an employee or contractor. Is it a mistake for the developer of TextMate to not spread to Windows?

an Android version wouldn't provide enough revenue to warrant an employee or contractor. A statement with absolutely zero backing. Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Marco doesn't do analysis but instead just parrots the standard rhetoric, seemingly hoping that his words alone will make Android irrelevant and thus unnecessary of effort. His loss.

> Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product.

Readability has a completely different (if any) business model. They're following the standard approach of using venture funding to gather as much market share as possible and then exploring way to extract revenue once they have a large user-base.

Do you expect him to shell out a large sum of money to develop an Android app to _hope_ he'll regain the money through sales? There's a large amount of risk there, and it's definitely not your call to make how risk-averse he should be. How many apps are only available for Windows or OS X? As an independent developer, it makes more sense to focus on one high-quality product.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#46

Post by AndrewDucker »

gtufano wrote: post #19
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #14

Competition is good. Readability is certainly making him stepup. I still think ignoring android is a mistake (assuming he continues to do so in the future.). I foresee sharing happening within these read later apps and the size of the network matters.

I don't really know. Assuming that this is a free market, I think the fact that nobody stepped up on Android (with a noticeable success) is probably an indicator of the fact this could not be an error. More seriously (hoping we can have a quiet discussion about differences in market between iOS and Android): Instapaper makes (probably serious) money selling the app. Can you make (serious) money in Android without Ads…

I use ReadItLater on Android. It seems to work pretty well, and formats things better than reading actual web pages would.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#47

Post by huggyface »

rubergly wrote: post #45
huggyface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an Android version wouldn't provide enough revenue to warrant an employee or contractor. A statement with absolutely zero backing. Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Marco doesn't do analysis but instead just parrots the standard rhetoric, seemingly hoping that his words alone will make Android irrelevant and thus unnecessary of effort. His loss.

> Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Readability has a completely different (if any) business model. They're following the standard approach of using venture funding to gather as much market share as possible and then exploring way to extract revenue once they have a large user-base. Do you expect him to shell out a large sum of money to develop an Andro…

Do you expect him to shell out a large sum of money to develop an Android app to _hope_ he'll regain the money through sales?

I would bet that he could have (well...not any more as the opportunity has long passed) gotten any of countless decent individual developers to write a very good port for free, asking for only a fraction of sales: It is not a complex app and isn't pushing the envelope.

I would never expect that from Marco, however, as he has been hilariously unprofessional about the Android/iOS divide, essentially choose to cheerlead a team over considering rational business choices.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#48

Post by melling »

I didn't know Marco had a podcast until I heard about it in this thread. Got it this morning and I'm listening to him say how he was ready for iPad Retina back in October. I've had that being ahead of the game feeling before then something comes along at the end to throw a wrench in it. I think that's why releasing/shipping is such a good feeling.

Even then, once I built the free version of my app without a necessary ObjC linker flag and shipped it with a bug that caused it to crash on a couple of screens. Was always testing in debug mode...

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#49

Post by rsynnott »

rubergly wrote: post #45
huggyface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an Android version wouldn't provide enough revenue to warrant an employee or contractor. A statement with absolutely zero backing. Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Marco doesn't do analysis but instead just parrots the standard rhetoric, seemingly hoping that his words alone will make Android irrelevant and thus unnecessary of effort. His loss.

> Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Readability has a completely different (if any) business model. They're following the standard approach of using venture funding to gather as much market share as possible and then exploring way to extract revenue once they have a large user-base. Do you expect him to shell out a large sum of money to develop an Andro…

He's also a bit of a perfectionist; I can't really see him using a contractor, so he'd probably have to do it himself.

Re: Instapaper for Retina iPad

#50

Post by rsynnott »

huggyface wrote: post #47
rubergly wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Readability did the analysis and certainly seemed to believe that Android supported their product. Readability has a completely different (if any) business model. They're following the standard approach of using venture funding to gather as much market share as possible and then exploring way to extract revenue once they have a large user-base. Do you expect him to shell out a large sum of money to develop an Andro…

Do you expect him to shell out a large sum of money to develop an Android app to _hope_ he'll regain the money through sales? I would bet that he could have (well...not any more as the opportunity has long passed) gotten any of countless decent individual developers to write a very good port for free, asking for only a fraction of sales: It is not a complex app and isn't pushing the envelope. I would never expect tha…

http://www.marco.org/2011/12/07/standing-up-for-android

He has invited people to do just that; if you make it with his public API, and he thinks it's good enough, he'll let you call it the official Android version and split revenue 50/50.

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