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I think marco is totally right that this can only help instapaper in the long run. Let me tell you a story from my own experience: My partner and I created an

I think marco is totally right that this can only help instapaper in the long run. Let me tell you a story from my own experience: My partner and I created an iPad game for cats. We wanted to get some extra marketing boost so we contacted friskies (purina). In Nov (2010) I exchanged a few emails, and talked to them on the phone about our game. I sent them a video and they told us they loved the idea and they would get back to us. Then one day, silence. We didn't hear anything for months. Then a couple weeks ago they released the Friskies "Games for Cats" which are suspiciously similar to our game. The blogosphere exploded. "Friskies releases creative iPad game for cats" "Friskies is oh so clever etc." We were pissed. But sales improved. A lot. I tried to track their rankings so I searched for them on the AppStore. Hmm, thats odd. I couldn't find them. It turns out /they didn't make native apps/ they were "simply" HTML5 pages on their website that you open in browser [1]. So what was/is happening is people see "Friskies iPad Game for Cats" they grab their iPad and search for "game for cats" on the AppStore and then they find our game and we profit. Also, most people who have cats and iPads don't even think to look for a game for their cat. So by Friskies putting marketing into this they actually increase the size of the market (to be honest, I hope they run a TV commercial advertising their "ipad game for cats"). Moral #1 of the story is: BigCo might steal your idea, but they will likely mess it up and it can end up helping you. Moral #2: high water raises all the boats [1] I realized HTML5 is a "real" app, but most normals don't yet view it that way. They expect to find apps in an app store. UPDATE: formatting

ChrisLTD 15y ago
But will people be unsatisfied with Reading List enough to bother looking for alternatives on the App Store? Non-Apple platform sync seems to be the biggest missing feature, but what else is there that folks would pay for?
- msbarnett 15y ago
  Figuring out what else Reading List is missing that users would pay for is precisely what Marco is going to have to do. But that's where the broadened visibility will help significantly. With whole new classes of people discovering this category of App, wishing that it did X, and searching around for alternatives that provide X, he'll probably see an uptick in people asking him about features like X that he's in a far better position to quickly iterate around than Apple is.
  - ChrisLTD 15y ago
    Great point!
- dstone 15y ago
  Off the top of my head, the big ones are offline reading, keeps your furthest-read position (especially across devices), Kindle integration. I'd pay $5 for any one of those alone. The new features in 3.0 that Marco seems to think are the differentiating features are the ability to see friends' saved articles and editorial content. The editorial picks are pretty good, but nothing that you couldn't get with Reading List. The social integration works if you know people who have Instapaper. But those first three are really the nicest bits, in my opinion.
  - Lazlo_Nibble 15y ago
    Instapaper also works from any browser on any platform. I don't see that happening with Reading list anytime soon.
kenjackson 15y ago
That's a lot different than functionality being added to the OS. What Apple is doing is effectively what MS got in trouble for. Apple is adding functionality to the OS that exists as a standalone application out of the OS (this is probaby the main reason why antivirus doesn't ship in the box with Windows). The question MS had to answer was if this functionality was crucial to the operation of the OS. The TCP/IP stack apparently was deemed so. IE wasn't deemed crucial. The difference between MS and Apple is that MS had a desktop monopoly. Apple has no such monopoly in mobile devices. Although if Apple keeps touting their 90% tablet market share, they could inadvertantly put themselves in the middle of antitrust crosshairs again. I know Marco has said that he would not use legal means to stop Apple -- but he shouldn't rule it out forever. Because trust me, Apple would have no problem doing it to him.
- tptacek 15y ago
  You're engaging only a facsimile of Marco's argument, which he frames in terms of Starbucks and indie coffee houses: yes, Starbucks put a lot of coffee houses out of business, some times in a predatory fashion. But the good coffee houses often saw their sales increase, sometimes dramatically. Apple is educating Marco's market about deferred-reading. They are inevitably going to add far more people to the total market that they'll take from Marco. As the market expands, he needs to capture smaller and smaller fractions of it to remain successful. Meanwhile, Apple may have also done Marco a positioning favor, by establishing a low end market that he can position a niche against. He calls it the "deluxe" market now (which it is; the $5 I spent for iP is some of the best money I've spent on the app store), but that also leaves an opening for a "Pro" niche that commands an even higher price point. I'm sure this situation leaves Marco with a lot more teeth gritting than he hoped to have. I don't want to downplay the situation. But I think Marco's got as good a shot as ever to make something big out of iP; maybe an even bigger one, albeit with more alpha.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  > What Apple is doing is effectively what MS got in trouble for. Microsoft got in trouble for telling manufacturers not to ship Netscape.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jlees 15y ago
My partner and I created an iPad game for cats. I have to derail here. What inspired you to do this? Sounds like a fascinating idea.
- jashmenn 15y ago
  It was part art, part joke. It turns out, it also fulfilled a real "need" people had: an interspecies gaming experience with their cat. I want to improve the cat/human connection by letting the human use the iPhone to control the mouse on the iPad. Keep a look out for that feature in the coming months. EDIT: The hardest part about adding that feature isn't the bluetooth communication between devices. (That's easy, Apple provides sample code.) Rather, the most difficult part is designing an interface that is easy to use. I can't tell you how many iterations we've been through to design a way to pause the game that is 1) hard for cats and 2) memorable and intuitive for humans. I call this the Game-For-Cats-Law-of-Touch-Screen UI: any UI feature that is too hard for a cat is too hard for your average iPad user.
  - joshu 15y ago
    FYI, my (larger) dog CAN press both buttons at the same time. Here's my smaller dog playing with a sound board: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5702009514/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5702009514/in/photostream...
  - jlees 15y ago
    I call this the Game-For-Cats-Law-of-Touch-Screen UI: any UI feature that is too hard for a cat is too hard for your average iPad user. I am partly in awe of your skill and this extremely insightful comment, and partly terrified.
  - jasonkester 15y ago
    I can't tell you how many iterations we've been through to design a way to pause the game that is 1) hard for cats and 2) memorable and intuitive for humans. Look in the app store for a Baby App called Rattle. It has a simple, effective way to get to the menu that babies can't do by accident. It has a little "i" icon that, when held, brings up a non-obnoxious, non-modal, hardly noticeable translucent text message saying "drag this down with 2 fingers". Do so, and the menu appears. Do anything else and it reverts back to the game.
ignifero 15y ago
Counter-example (massive): all the games made by zynga.
- famousactress 15y ago
  I think these arguments are best applied to situations where a large entity is stepping out of their core domain, or maybe more accurately into someone else's. Apple isn't likely to put nearly as much sweat, smarts, and energy into Read It Later as Instapaper.. Friskies employees have probably put less energy into their game than has been used to comment on this article... but Zynga's single-minded mission is to make very well-liked games.
yoshyosh 15y ago
I think you forgot one thing, Apple is no Friskies my friend

ChrisLTD 15y ago

But will people be unsatisfied with Reading List enough to bother looking for alternatives on the App Store? Non-Apple platform sync seems to be the biggest missing feature, but what else is there that folks would pay for?

msbarnett 15y ago
Figuring out what else Reading List is missing that users would pay for is precisely what Marco is going to have to do. But that's where the broadened visibility will help significantly. With whole new classes of people discovering this category of App, wishing that it did X, and searching around for alternatives that provide X, he'll probably see an uptick in people asking him about features like X that he's in a far better position to quickly iterate around than Apple is.
- ChrisLTD 15y ago
  Great point!
dstone 15y ago
Off the top of my head, the big ones are offline reading, keeps your furthest-read position (especially across devices), Kindle integration. I'd pay $5 for any one of those alone. The new features in 3.0 that Marco seems to think are the differentiating features are the ability to see friends' saved articles and editorial content. The editorial picks are pretty good, but nothing that you couldn't get with Reading List. The social integration works if you know people who have Instapaper. But those first three are really the nicest bits, in my opinion.
- Lazlo_Nibble 15y ago
  Instapaper also works from any browser on any platform. I don't see that happening with Reading list anytime soon.

kenjackson 15y ago

That's a lot different than functionality being added to the OS. What Apple is doing is effectively what MS got in trouble for. Apple is adding functionality to the OS that exists as a standalone application out of the OS (this is probaby the main reason why antivirus doesn't ship in the box with Windows). The question MS had to answer was if this functionality was crucial to the operation of the OS. The TCP/IP stack apparently was deemed so. IE wasn't deemed crucial. The difference between MS and Apple is that MS had a desktop monopoly. Apple has no such monopoly in mobile devices. Although if Apple keeps touting their 90% tablet market share, they could inadvertantly put themselves in the middle of antitrust crosshairs again. I know Marco has said that he would not use legal means to stop Apple -- but he shouldn't rule it out forever. Because trust me, Apple would have no problem doing it to him.

tptacek 15y ago
You're engaging only a facsimile of Marco's argument, which he frames in terms of Starbucks and indie coffee houses: yes, Starbucks put a lot of coffee houses out of business, some times in a predatory fashion. But the good coffee houses often saw their sales increase, sometimes dramatically. Apple is educating Marco's market about deferred-reading. They are inevitably going to add far more people to the total market that they'll take from Marco. As the market expands, he needs to capture smaller and smaller fractions of it to remain successful. Meanwhile, Apple may have also done Marco a positioning favor, by establishing a low end market that he can position a niche against. He calls it the "deluxe" market now (which it is; the $5 I spent for iP is some of the best money I've spent on the app store), but that also leaves an opening for a "Pro" niche that commands an even higher price point. I'm sure this situation leaves Marco with a lot more teeth gritting than he hoped to have. I don't want to downplay the situation. But I think Marco's got as good a shot as ever to make something big out of iP; maybe an even bigger one, albeit with more alpha.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
> What Apple is doing is effectively what MS got in trouble for. Microsoft got in trouble for telling manufacturers not to ship Netscape.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jlees 15y ago

My partner and I created an iPad game for cats. I have to derail here. What inspired you to do this? Sounds like a fascinating idea.

jashmenn 15y ago
It was part art, part joke. It turns out, it also fulfilled a real "need" people had: an interspecies gaming experience with their cat. I want to improve the cat/human connection by letting the human use the iPhone to control the mouse on the iPad. Keep a look out for that feature in the coming months. EDIT: The hardest part about adding that feature isn't the bluetooth communication between devices. (That's easy, Apple provides sample code.) Rather, the most difficult part is designing an interface that is easy to use. I can't tell you how many iterations we've been through to design a way to pause the game that is 1) hard for cats and 2) memorable and intuitive for humans. I call this the Game-For-Cats-Law-of-Touch-Screen UI: any UI feature that is too hard for a cat is too hard for your average iPad user.
- joshu 15y ago
  FYI, my (larger) dog CAN press both buttons at the same time. Here's my smaller dog playing with a sound board: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5702009514/in/photostream/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshu/5702009514/in/photostream...
- jlees 15y ago
  I call this the Game-For-Cats-Law-of-Touch-Screen UI: any UI feature that is too hard for a cat is too hard for your average iPad user. I am partly in awe of your skill and this extremely insightful comment, and partly terrified.
- jasonkester 15y ago
  I can't tell you how many iterations we've been through to design a way to pause the game that is 1) hard for cats and 2) memorable and intuitive for humans. Look in the app store for a Baby App called Rattle. It has a simple, effective way to get to the menu that babies can't do by accident. It has a little "i" icon that, when held, brings up a non-obnoxious, non-modal, hardly noticeable translucent text message saying "drag this down with 2 fingers". Do so, and the menu appears. Do anything else and it reverts back to the game.

ignifero 15y ago

Counter-example (massive): all the games made by zynga.

famousactress 15y ago
I think these arguments are best applied to situations where a large entity is stepping out of their core domain, or maybe more accurately into someone else's. Apple isn't likely to put nearly as much sweat, smarts, and energy into Read It Later as Instapaper.. Friskies employees have probably put less energy into their game than has been used to comment on this article... but Zynga's single-minded mission is to make very well-liked games.

yoshyosh 15y ago

I think you forgot one thing, Apple is no Friskies my friend