

What Safari’s “Reading List” in Lion means for Instapaper - jakewalker
http://www.marco.org/2011/04/30/lion-safari-reading-list

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jakewalker
There are some legendary stories about what happens when Apple enters your
market. I think Marco's right that he's pretty safe on the Instapaper front
(for the reasons he says). That said, here's another tale of Apple entering a
market, written by Cabel Sasser at Panic about Audion:

<http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/>

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ja2ke
Panic's "Graduate from iTunes" banner ad campaign for Audion is a great
example of trying for the pro/hardcore market when Apple has entered your
space. Specifically, it's a great example of how it is very very hard to make
it work out for you, but still, they tried.

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cmchien
Re: the Starbucks effect, I'm not sure I agree. I think the difference between
Starbucks moving in next door and Apple implementing a feature like Reading
List is that in the case of Starbucks moving in next door, their marketing
drives foot traffic to the vicinity of your location--which you can then take
advantage of. I.e., people walking by see your signage and therefore you can
capture sales. It is the creation of demand, but it's the creation of demand
that your own (much less resourced marketing) can then take advantage of.

In the Reading List case, there's no guarantee that customers that "get
educated" about the product will necessarily ever find out about yours. It's
still up to you to be in the same "location" as the competitor's product in
order to benefit from their marketing.

This _may_ be the case for very well-known products that are always going to
be discussed in concert with a feature launched by an Apple in the media,
product reviews, etc. But it's certainly not categorically the case.

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tolmasky
The track record for Apple turning third party apps into features (as opposed
to their own apps ala iTunes), has been pretty pathetic: usually what happens
is that its so poorly done by Apple that the feature just stops being used and
the functionality just flat out dies. Examples:

1\. Quicksilver <-> Spotlight. Spotlight is terrible. Everyone I know who used
quicksilver just uses nothing now. They certainly haven't "switched" to
Spotlight because spotlight doesn't do anything half as well as quicksilver
did, not even launching apps for god's sake.

2\. Kaleidoscope <-> Dashboard. Another disaster. Dashboard seems to exist
solely to be accidentally opened, or I guess for some people it serves as
their dedicated weather "space". Apple does not hype up widgets at all
anymore.

3\. Safari RSS. Does anyone actually use this? Or how about Mail.app RSS? At
least here the third party RSS apps didn't die (although I see less people
using RSS than ever, but I don't attribute this to OS RSS integration).

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spullara
Most of the people I know that used to use Quicksilver now use Alfred:
<http://bagcheck.com/item/0238-alfred> The rest are very happy with Spotlight,
like myself.

On the other hand, the Reader button in Safari is awesome and if the new
Instapaper-like functionality syncs that content, it will do quite well.

~~~
lukifer
Also worth a mention for a Spotlight replacement: the fantastic and successful
Launchbar. <http://obdev.at/products/launchbar>

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olivercameron
I agree with everything, except his last point:

"And if they build a large enough feature-set and backing service to make it a
true competitor, they’re likely to create a lot of potential Instapaper
demand."

Isn't that a little backwards? If Apple builds a true competitor, then it's
going to create a lot less potential Instapaper demand. See Watson and
Kaleidoscope for reasons why.

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veritgo
I think he's betting on being able to implement better than apple.

He states: _My biggest challenge isn’t winning over converts from my
competitors: it’s explaining what Instapaper does and convincing people that
they actually need it._

So if apple deploys this _everywhere_ , more people will understand it. Since
Instapaper already has such a huge user base, established users will
(supposedly) say 'oh, I use instapaper. It's much better'.

So apple creates new users, which are then drawn to Instapaper's superior
service.

This is all dependent upon Instapaper actually implementing substantially
better, but so far apple has sucked at multi-device syncing of, well, just
about anything.

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olivercameron
I don't buy it. If Apple creates new users, more often than not they will keep
them. I wouldn't count on Instapaper's huge user base (which I'm guessing is
mainly the tech crowd) influencing normal, everyday users.

Sherlock beating Watson was a prime example where Apple's execution was
somewhat similar (some say worse), but it still killed that product.

~~~
morrow
I'd argue that apple is largely responsible for android's success - normal,
everyday people knew they wanted a touchscreen smartphone only after apple
made it possible to own one, but more importantly, made it popular to own one
with the iPhone. As long as there is enough of a difference between them to
choose one over the other, I think he's right to bet on it being a net-win for
him.

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kenjackson
What if Apple pulls Instapaper from the iPad/iPhone app store claiming it
duplicates capabilities?

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glhaynes
I don't believe they've ever pulled an app _that had already been up on the
store_ for duplicating built-in functionality.

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scottjackson
There was the kerfuffle at the start of the month with QuickPick. Apple
rejected an _update_ to an app that was already on the Store that duplicated
(future) built-in functionality: [http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/08/quickpick-
update-in-limbo-for...](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/08/quickpick-update-in-
limbo-for-lion-similarities/)

The original version of the app is still up on the Store, but the update was
rejected. Which is confusing.

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rbanffy
Not much unless OSX achieves higher market share than its competition or
people on other platforms start to use Safari instead of their preferred
browsers. That won't happen anytime soon.

I'd be more worried about a feature like this coming to Mobile Safari.

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hollerith
I'd rather have a "Video Viewing List" that gets video watching out of the
browser. Apple is one of the few participants in the ecosystem that might have
enough "market power" to do that at this late date.

~~~
morrow
I agree - I'm trying out <http://vhx.tv> after someone recommended it here,
though it is still in the browser at the moment ( I believe they are working
on apps). However, there's still a problem I haven't seen any video-instapaper
service solve - how to cache videos for offline / multiple device viewing.

I think you run into a lot more issues with copyright enforcement, storage
space, and ability to even copy files (different format, might only be served
in flash) than text-based services have. We might have to wait until HTML5
video grows enough in popularity before seeing a decent implementation of this
feature.

~~~
lallouz
I have been using instapaper for a while and absolutely love it, but I think
the real kicker for me was when iwas able to view what my social graph was
saving for later with their twitter and fb integration.... That being said, I
am a HUGE fan of Shelby.tv. I have tried a few other services in the space,
but have yet to find anything that I go back to. I am finding their "always
on" experience to facilitate choices. But again, I think the kicker is the
social curation that I love most. They figure out which videos I want to watch
based off my activity....

....now if only my instapaper filled up with articles that I wanted to read
all by itself....

~~~
rebeccazhou
I have been on the shelby.tv alpha for a weeks... I love it and totally agree
with all your points but I wanted to add that one of my favorite things is how
easy it is to share the videos back out while you are watching them (retweet,
tweet, post & comment on facebook).

Also, the application is extremely lightweight and doesn't get in the way of
the video --- a simple, yet powerful experience.

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benmichael
If Apple brings this out, it wont have an API. They may promise one (like
facetime) but Instapaper will still be #1 for at least another 12 months.

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originalgeek
Dude has a much better attitude about it than some other guys who ended up in
a similar situation. (The Konfabulator tantrum comes to mind)

