Leaving Instapaper for Readability • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#31

Post by Protonk » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 12:15 PM UTC

AlisdairO wrote: post #23

veidr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can certainly imagine that making you want to stop listening to his podcast and stop reading his blog, but it is surprising that it would be the reason you switched to a competing software product. Are Instapaper and Readability otherwise so similar that the merits of the apps themselves didn't tip the balance?

I think it's quite a good reason - for example, I try to avoid flying Ryanair because I find the guy who runs it objectionable. If I don't like the person providing the product, putting money in their pocket feels wrong.

Sure but the biggest claim I could make from listening to BnA is that marco is kind of a dick. I'm sure that a good 30% of the software I used is written by someone who is kind of a dick. He's not Pol Pot.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#32

Post by mmahemoff » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 2:05 PM UTC

dmazin wrote: post #13

_frog wrote: post #3

Regarding the thought that Instapaper is somehow robbing writers of ad revenue, I think it needs to be noted that you actually have to visit an article to add it to your Instapaper queue. On top of that, Readability's model of paying authors isn't all that effective, a recent article on The Brooks Review[1] showed that even a moderately popular site such as his generates nearly no income from Readability's service, e…

I know that lots of services let you add to Instapaper, but with Instapaper itself it's impossible to add articles without visiting them. I think I recall Marco talking about the fact that this is on purpose for the previously stated concerns. Also, Instapaper doesn't let you stitch articles broken up into multiple pages.

"I know that lots of services let you add to Instapaper, but with Instapaper itself it's impossible to add articles without visiting them."

I can understand his dilemma, but this policy unfortunately makes the social feature of Instapaper almost unusable. You want to Read Later a bunch of articles your friends have liked? You have to load each one of them up just so you can add it later.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#33

Post by scrrr » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 2:12 PM UTC

AlisdairO wrote: post #23

veidr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can certainly imagine that making you want to stop listening to his podcast and stop reading his blog, but it is surprising that it would be the reason you switched to a competing software product. Are Instapaper and Readability otherwise so similar that the merits of the apps themselves didn't tip the balance?

I think it's quite a good reason - for example, I try to avoid flying Ryanair because I find the guy who runs it objectionable. If I don't like the person providing the product, putting money in their pocket feels wrong.

I avoid them because my knees hurt when I sit in their planes. For example I'm not too interested in Bill Gates or Steve Jobs either, but if Bill Gates was the nicest guy ever and Steve Jobs was the biggest objectionable a*e ever, I'd still prefer the OSX to Windows.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#34

Post by mmahemoff » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 2:14 PM UTC

Revenue distribution is an interesting variation of Flattr.com's business model.

Flattr is more general as it's a platform for distributing micro-donations to creators of music, games, etc., whereas Readability is specifically about publishing and effectively offers a product/service directly to micro-donators. You could see the same model being applied to other verticals.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#35

Post by w1ntermute » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 2:14 PM UTC

duck wrote: post #7

I left Instapaper for Readability as well, but my reason was entirely different and a first for me (at least on the web): Marco. I'm not even sure what it is about him exactly, but after listening to some of his Build and Analyze podcasts and reading his slanted blog posts I just found myself not wanting to use or support Instapaper anymore.

Same here. His Apple fanboyism really shouldn't be that big of a deal, seeing as every other person on the internet is an Apple fanboy. But as an Android user, Marco's glib ignorance of the platform because he believes its users are cheap really rubbed me the wrong way. Oh well, Read It Later Pro got my $2.99, his loss.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#36

Post by mikecarlucci » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 3:06 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #35

duck wrote: post #7

I left Instapaper for Readability as well, but my reason was entirely different and a first for me (at least on the web): Marco. I'm not even sure what it is about him exactly, but after listening to some of his Build and Analyze podcasts and reading his slanted blog posts I just found myself not wanting to use or support Instapaper anymore.

Same here. His Apple fanboyism really shouldn't be that big of a deal, seeing as every other person on the internet is an Apple fanboy. But as an Android user, Marco's glib ignorance of the platform because he believes its users are cheap really rubbed me the wrong way. Oh well, Read It Later Pro got my $2.99, his loss.

As an Apple user with an Android phone I've really tied with pointless bashing from either side. Android is successful and Apple fans need to live with that.

At some point with it's like athletes who shout political/religious beliefs until it overshadows their play on the field. I just stop following them. Which is too bad because I liked what Marco said about other tech issues and coffee.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#37

Post by codex » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 4:11 PM UTC

Only one feature keeps me with Instapaper: Readability's crappy bookmarklet implementation. On my iPhone, I can save a page to Instapaper with a click of the bookmark. Readability, however, will throw up a prompt page asking me to confirm that I really want to save the page. The extra latency turns out to be really annoying in practice. If you're going to prompt, at least do it client side.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#38

Post by rdl » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 4:19 PM UTC

I really like Instapaper. I only really use it within the iOS ecosystem, and only by adding articles directly from the instapaper site, or from longreads or longform. I use an ad blocker anyway, so the sites aren't losing out on marginal ad revenue from me.

Maybe Readability or Read It Later are better, but instapaper is the first one I found, and I'm happy with it, and have a queue of about 500 nice articles built up, so I'm not likely to switch unless I see a better reason than "Marco is a bit presumptuous in podcasts" and "a competing site integrates a tipjar."

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#39

Post by zoul » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 4:42 PM UTC

codex wrote: post #37

Only one feature keeps me with Instapaper: Readability's crappy bookmarklet implementation. On my iPhone, I can save a page to Instapaper with a click of the bookmark. Readability, however, will throw up a prompt page asking me to confirm that I really want to save the page. The extra latency turns out to be really annoying in practice. If you're going to prompt, at least do it client side.

I have installed the bookmark recently and on the iPhone it does not ask for confirmation. Maybe they have changed the code?

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#40

Post by reidmain » Sun, Mar 04, 2012, 4:51 PM UTC

Protonk wrote: post #30

reidmain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still listening to Build & Analyze but I'm one or two more nonsensical episodes away from removing it from iTunes. The earlier episodes were a lot better in my opinion. Conversation was focused much more on actual development and the way they talked about it was interesting to me. Now they talk about topics that they think are interesting to developers but I guess I'm no longer their target demographic. Like you…

I was also frustrated by the sort of arrogant response to all the complaints about non-development topics. It's not like we can't have interesting shows about technical topics! Hypercritical and The Critical Path are proof enough with the same host. And I wouldn't even mind technical topics about coffee or thermostats (ok maybe I would mind about that). What kills me is the half-baked life coach bullshit that 1/3rd o…

Exactly. Back in the earlier episodes when they were talking about development they were pulling the topics from concrete problems that they had solved.

Their topics now seem to stem from random anecdotes from their lives and their "expertise" on these topics is questionable at best.

I fear what will happen is once Marco's child is born, half of every Build & Analyze episode will be about Dan and Marco's children and how they manage their time. It is their show and they can talk about that if they want but at that point they will have finally stopped talking about topics that matter to me.