![]() Tapbots is one of the few developers that does non-standard right. Most of the time, I hate non-standard iPhone UIs. Tweetbot gets called “heavy” sometimes, and while the description isn’t all that descriptive, I get what people mean when they use that term. (I’m an OG beta tester, yo.) I’ve seen Tweetbot when it lacked most of the features it has now, and I’ve seen it grow into the best Twitter client out there. I’ve been a Tweetbot user for a long time. You’ll feel better about yourself for giving some money to the writer of that article you ripped the ads out of instead of helping Marco pay for his self-important coffee. If you want to be a good Netizen, try using Readability. Sure I’ve given about $20 to Readability in four months, but the sites that are getting money from me are happy to get it, I’m sure. I paid $10 dollars for Instapaper and I’m sure no one beside Marco Arment ( or Apple) ever saw a cent of that money. Sure, it’s a free app and a free service, but if you choose to become a contributor, 70% of your contribution goes to the sites that you’re reading (provided they integrate Readability into their site) and 30% goes to Readability to cover maintenance and employee salaries, I suppose. I usually enjoy the stuff that I randomly come across through web searches more. I’ve never enjoy reading the articles that people link to. Folders in Instapaper led me to hold onto articles I should’ve just archived, the “friends” I had in Instapaper either had the same things I had saved or had articles that I had no interest in reading. There aren’t any social features, you don’t have “friends” but you also don’t have folders or feeds you can subscribe to. ![]() Readability is where Instapaper was, functionally, a few years ago. If you tap once on the screen, you get a menu at the bottom that lets you star, archive, delete, adjust style or share the article. You just swipe to the right and you’re back at the “Reading List”. I also love that there’s no “back” button while you’re reading an article. You can choose a look and log into your Twitter and Facebook accounts for sharing purposes. There’s not a whole lot to do in the settings. You can search your articles, move and delete them in batches, add articles from URLs or start a Google search and lastly access the settings. There’s also “・・・” button that gives you a few more things to do. There’s a “Reading List” button at the top that accesses your unread items, favorites and archived items. It’s got five great themes with modern fonts and both daytime and nighttime reading modes. Unlike Instapaper, it actually has a nice icon! It’s a very non-standard iOS UI. It didn’t have social features tacked on, it had beautiful themes, and it had better Kindle integration than Instapaper ever had. I tried out Readability since it was new and pretty and immediately loved it. After the major update that added that stupid browse bar, friends and changed the stars to hearts, I just hated looking at the iOS app. I was a paid Pro user back when it was still $10. It did a while ago as a service, but now that the Readability iOS app is out, I can safely say that I’ll never use Instapaper again.
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