Marco Arment
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Overcast app's big redesign helps it compete with Apple Podcasts
The Overcast podcast app has received a major redesign that could help it serve as a viable alternative to Apple Podcasts.
Overcast can skip podcast intros and outros
Don't like drawn-out podcast introductions, or just don't want to hear the same closing credits every episode? If you're invested in the Apple ecosystem, you might not have to endure them. Marco Arment has updated his Overcast app for iOS, iPadOS and Apple Watch with an option to skip intros and outros. You can tell the player to skip a certain number of seconds at the start or end of a podcast on a per-show basis -- if you know the first 30 seconds of a show is always fluff, you can cut to the heart of the podcast and save precious time.
Overcast can create clips from any public podcast
It can be a headache to share a favorite podcast moment with your friends. Unless you're willing to dive into the file with a media editor, you'll usually have to share the whole episode and make a note of the time. Overcast, however, might have just made sharing relatively trivial. An update to the iOS-only app makes it possible to create shareable minute-long clips from any public podcast, whether it's audio or video. Choose to share a clip and you'll get a basic timeline editor, complete with different aspect ratios to make video clips social-friendly.
Marco Arment ships Bugshot app for markup of UI gaffes
Developer extraordinaire Marco Arment (Instapaper, Marco.org) has delivered a nice little tool for the development community or for anyone else who needs the ability to mark up screenshots to point out errors. Bugshot (US$0.99) is perfect for grabbing screenshots of those pesky UI errors and then placing bright international orange arrows and boxes on them highlighting the gaffes. Arment notes on his website that "In some ways, it's reminiscent of what Skitch for Mac used to be good at. I always loved the old Skitch, but never found something that was as fast to get in and out of on iOS." And why did he choose to develop and ship Bugshot now? "Simple: I'm finding tons of rendering bugs in iOS 7. I've already used Bugshot many times to report bugs to app developers and Apple. It was also a great practice-project for me to get back into app development after about six months away." For those of you who are also working on iOS 7 bug-smashing, Bugshot is a fast and simple way to make your annotations on a screenshot and then send the mashup to others via email, Messages, Twitter or Facebook. Arment has semi-ironically pointed out a few bugs in the app and expects them to be fixed shortly.
Digg owner Betaworks acquires Instapaper
Betaworks, the company that rescued the faltering Digg, has now acquired Instapaper, says a report in TechCrunch. The news originated from an email sent by Betaworks founder and CEO John Borthwick and was confirmed by Instapaper founder Marco Arment. Arment writes on his blog, I'm happy to announce that I've sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We've structured the deal with Instapaper's health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff and develop it further. Borthwick says that Instapaper is a "perfect fit" with Digg and the company's upcoming Digg Reader. He also confirms that Betaworks plans to expand the staff working on Instapaper and develop it further. [Via TechCrunch]
Daily Update for February 22, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
NPR's Planet Money goes behind the scenes with The Magazine
Jacob Goldstein of NPR's Planet Money took a look at the economics behind The Magazine, the iPad-only publication created by Marco Arment of Instapaper and edited by Jeopardy champion and Macworld/TidBITS contributor Glenn Fleishman. The Magazine launched late last year with essays from well-known, technology-focused writers such as Jason Snell, Lex Friedman and Harry Marks. The Magazine is published every two weeks and costs US$1.99 for a monthly subscription. Unlike most online ventures that struggle to get off the ground, The Magazine already has 25,000 subscribers and is pulling in a healthy profit. You can read more about the financials of The Magazine and the reasons why Arment started the venture on Planet Money's website.
Why no Retina on the iPad mini? Money and power
Marco Arment, Instapaper creator and publisher of The Magazine, has enough time in his busy schedule to write on his personal blog Marco.org. Yesterday he took the time to put some thought into why the iPad mini doesn't have a Retina display, and notes that it comes down to two things: money and power. It's not that he dislikes the iPad mini. He loves the small form factor and external design, how cool it runs, the fast charging of the device and how the "Smart Cover even sticks to the back better when it's flipped around." But the lack of a sharp Retina display is apparent to him when he turns on the device. That's why he refers to it as a "conflicted product." He notes, however, that the "Retina iPad screen is a much bigger power hog than a non-Retina screen of the same size," and the practical result of what a Retina screen would do to an iPad mini is: "Its battery life, portability, or performance would suffer significantly. (Probably all three.)" Add to that the higher component prices required for a more powerful battery, the Retina display itself and the heftier GPU required to drive the display, and the price would possibly start at $399 instead of $329. So, as Arment concludes, "That's why we don't have a Retina iPad Mini yet. It's not only about price: it's because the resulting product would suck in at least two other important ways."
Daily Update for July 27, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple aware of corrupt apps issue, working on a fix (Update: Fixed!)
Earlier this morning, reports started circulating that the App Store was pushing corrupt binaries to iOS and Mac users, resulting in constant crashes of the affected apps. Marco Arment, of Instapaper fame, was one of the first to notice and very vocal -- bringing the issue to the attention of many in the media and at Apple. The list of affected apps is pretty staggering, including such high profile titles as Angry Birds Space, Yahoo! Search, Google Reader and, of course, Instapaper. The number of developers affected now tops 115, so we'd hold off on those updates. For the first several hours Apple was mum on the issue, but it has finally acknowledged the problem in the support forums and even reached out to developers via email. Suspicions seem to be that the FairPlay DRM is at the root, but until we have official word from Apple we'll refrain from laying the blame at its feet. Cupertino is working (we assume tirelessly) on a fix, which will hopefully be delivered sooner, rather than later. Update: Apple has confirmed to AllThingsD that the problem was due to a "server that generated DRM code" and has been fixed. Affected end users are advised to delete the corrupted apps and redownload them.
App Store delivering corrupted binaries for some apps (Updated)
Update: Per AllThingsD and TechCrunch, Apple has now commented on the binary corruption problem; it says the server issue that was responsible for problematic DRM code has been rectified. There are better ways to spend the 4th of July holiday than answering scores of angry support emails, but that's apparently what several iOS and Mac App Store developers wound up doing thanks to a glitch in Apple's software distribution systems. First reported by Instapaper sole proprietor Marco Arment and subsequently affirmed by other devs including Good.iWare (Goodreader) and Readdle (Scanner Pro), the problem seems to have affected apps updated on July 3rd forward. User symptoms are pretty simple: the app crashes, rather abruptly. The good news is apparently only users who updated within the first few hours of a new version's availability are affected, and deleting and reinstalling the app generally clears up the issue; that removes any on-device settings and stored content, however. Goodreader's developers did a nice job of documenting the backup/app removal/reinstall/restore process, if you've got a corrupt app with onboard data. As to the "why" of this problem, it's not clear yet, but the affected developers (more than 70 so far by Arment's count) are zeroing in on issues with Apple's encryption pass on the submitted executables. When an app is handed off to Apple for distribution in the App Store and approved by the review team, it's signed with Apple's digital keys (to allow iOS devices and Macs to run it) and encrypted to discourage piracy. The Goodreader devs suggest in their post that this encryption process isn't fully complete at the point that customers are getting a "new version available, download now!" notification -- so when they click that Update button, what they get is a half-baked binary rather than the correctly formatted app. In the short term, there's not much for users to do except wait an hour or two before downloading new app updates that show up (kind of like waiting 30 minutes after eating before heading into the pool). We'll reach out to Apple for comment and see what, if anything, we hear back.
Instapaper launches on Android devices
Instapaper creator Marco Arment has been kept so busy with the iOS version that he decided to contract out the Android iteration to Mobelux. Fortunately, this is the same developer that crafted Tumblr apps for both the iPhone and Android, so we can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Available today, priced just shy of $3, Instapaper ties together one of iOS' favorites with Android's capacity for sharing across multiple apps. It arrives cocooned in a decidedly classy UI, even on our Gingerbread devices -- although it does get a little squashed in some sub-menus. As long as you're running an Android version higher than 2.2, hit up the source below to give it a try.
Daily iPad App: Instapaper 4
Like to read? Got an iPhone or iPad? You really ought to have Marco Arment's US$4.99 Instapaper, which just got an upgrade to version 4.0. Instapaper's free web service allows you to flag stories to 'Read Later' with a single click, and you can always get your complete reading list via the site. For reading on the go, however, the cached stories in the app are ideal. The Instapaper app now features an iPad-specific article list interface; it swaps out the simple headline-by-headline scroll for a more spacious grid arrangement, complete with the first few lines of the story. The iPhone version has been streamlined too, with story excerpts, bylines and site information clearly visible. iOS 5 users get true hardware brightness control, making it easier to read under varying lighting conditions. Instapaper wants to let you know what your friends are reading, so now in addition to the stories flagged by your Instapaper-specific social connections, you can also browse all the linked stories posted by your Twitter and Facebook friends or by the Tumblr microblogs you follow (Arment is a founder and former CTO of Tumblr). For Instapaper subscribers who choose to fork over $1 a month to support the service, the app now includes full-text search of all the articles you've ever saved to Instapaper -- downright handy. You can see the full list of new features at Arment's blog. If you're only using Instapaper via the website, you're not getting the full-on experience. There are very few apps that have made themselves a home on the front screens of both my iPhone and iPad, and even fewer that rate a spot in the app Dock for both devices. Instapaper has been firmly lodged there since version 1, and I don't anticipate pulling it out anytime soon.
Instapaper usage stats show high iOS 4, iPad adoption
Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper, has provided some intriguing usage stats for his bestselling app. While the numbers aren't representative of the entire iOS ecosystem, the fact that Instapaper is a popular paid app (almost always in the top 5 paid apps in the News category on the App Store) makes these stats worth looking at for developers looking to efficiently design and market their apps. The majority of Instapaper users (56 percent) are using the app on an iPad, versus 39 percent on iPhone and a tiny six percent on the iPod touch. In only four months of availability the iPad 2 accounts for over 27 percent of devices using Instapaper, with usage numbers already nearly identical to those seen from the original iPad. As a universal app and a news reader, it's not particularly surprising that iPad adoption is so high among Instapaper users, but the huge jump in iPad 2 numbers in such a short time is rather startling. Based on the numbers he's seeing, Arment estimates that approximately 40 million iPads have been sold since its introduction. As for OS compatibility, 99 percent of Instapaper users are using iPhone OS 3.2 or above, and 98.4 percent are on iOS 4 or later. After taking into account the high adoption of iOS 4.2 and above (96 percent of users) and the tiny number of users running Instapaper on devices that can't be upgraded to iOS 4 (0.4 percent of users still running an original iPhone or iPod touch), Arment has decided to make iOS 4.2 the minimum supported OS for the next release of Instapaper. According to Arment, dropping support for versions of iOS earlier than 4.2 has allowed him to streamline Instapaper's code in several ways. 5.4 percent of his users are running Instapaper on devices that are capable of running iOS 4.2, but for whatever reason those users have yet to update. If you're one of those users, now's the time to update your OS... and if you're still running a first-gen iPhone or iPod touch and want to keep Instapaper current, it's time to upgrade your hardware. Other iOS developers can learn a lot from Instapaper's usage stats. While the stats for your app are probably going to be a bit different, it seems that as time goes by the number of users actively using older iPhones and older versions of iOS steadily declines to the point that it's no longer efficient to support them. Arment estimates that the number of Instapaper users still using an iPhone 3G will diminish significantly after the iPhone 5 hits the market, which means many types of apps (games in particular) may benefit from dropping support for that model iPhone sometime in the next few months. If you're in the same position as Arment -- looking for ways to improve your app's codebase and considering dropping support for earlier hardware and iOS versions -- it's worth comparing your usage stats to his and seeing if, like him, you'll be better off in the long run by bumping up your app's base requirements.
No Comment: Video game systems vs. non-iPad tablets
Marco Arment posted this graph today, which shows some relative sales numbers of what he calls "obscure game consoles" (which presumably just means those outside the Microsoft/Sony/Sega/Nintendo dominion) right up against tablets which aren't the iPad. It's true -- the numbers do kind of put things in perspective about just how well non-iPad tablets are selling. We will also say that the TurboGrafx 16 launched at a price of US$249.99 way back in 1989, and you can compare for yourself just how inflation has matched that up against these other tablets. But sure, other than that: no comment. [via Touch Arcade]
Instapaper's free version goes on extended hiatus, dev explains why
Marco Arment has an interesting writeup on his blog about his iOS app Instapaper (and, of course, the web service that runs behind it). Arment says on his blog that he's quietly been removing the free version of the app from the App Store, and that's resulted in a surprising effect: sales of the full app have actually increased. Because of this, Arment says he's rethinking a free version completely, and may not bother ever bringing it back to the App Store. Traditionally, free or "lite" app versions are very helpful -- they give users a taste of what the app does without any overhead costs to them but the time to download, and they can raise awareness of an app in certain situations. Of course, the drawbacks are that a free app doesn't make any money, and it can often be a drain on resources, requiring extra development time or support. That's where Arment says his problem comes in -- the free app isn't really worth it, doesn't convert to paid as he'd like it to, and perhaps most interesting, actually causes some "image problems." A lot of free users don't realize that the free version has a limited featureset, so they aren't even seeing what the full Instapaper app can do. Moreover, the reviews for the free app (drawing from a pool of users who haven't invested anything in the app, and can "download and dump" but still review it) are noticeably worse than those for the paid version. The whole post is intriguing, and it really goes against some of the conventional wisdom on free versions of apps. Of course, I think games are different than Arment's service, but it's true -- while a free app will likely grab you a larger audience than just putting out a paid version, it still may not be the best thing for a specific app to do. Instapaper Free is gone for now, says Arment, and it may not be back at all.
Instapaper updated to 3.0, now includes social features
Instapaper, the iOS app that lets you save online articles for later offline reading, has just hit version 3.0. Already an app featured on many "must have" lists for both the iPhone and iPad, Instapaper has gained a mountain of new features in its latest update. The app and Instapaper website now have native sharing with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinboard and Evernote; according to developer Marco Arment, "You can post to any of these services from the app offline, and the app will queue up the post to be submitted next time it's online." That feature alone might make Instapaper worth its US$4.99 asking price, but new (completely optional) social features make it even more powerful. Via links to your Facebook/Twitter accounts or email addresses in your device's Contacts app, you can locate friends who use Instapaper and browse articles that they've "liked" via Instapaper's interface. Similarly, there's now an Editors browser that lets you find recommended articles. Instapaper's built-in browser also now allows you to navigate to any website and save articles from within the app itself. The full 3.0 feature list is on Instapaper's blog. Bear in mind that if you're upgrading Instapaper from an earlier version, all of your articles will re-download after the update -- so if you have hundreds of articles on your account, you might want to wait until you get home and use Wi-Fi instead of 3G. Instapaper is a universal app, available from the App Store for $4.99. If you're not already using it, I highly recommend you start.
App Store filling up with spammers and clones of popular apps
Marco Arment has noticed a growing problem on the App Store; as hits emerge from among the free and paid apps, some companies are doing a little search scamming. They're ripping off the names, styles, and sometimes even the art of popular iPhone apps. He went to get the popular Angry Birds game and found that there are companies actually selling apps with "Cheats" and "Trivia" added on to the titles, often reusing the artwork from the original game. Certainly, some of these fall into a legal gray area (Angry Bird is technically another game, even though it's obviously hopping on the back of the more popular title), but some of them are straight up scams, and the angry reviews and terrible ratings prove that's the case. Arment calls out a few companies (whose titles are still on the App Store, as of this writing). He says that developers who feel an app is infringing on their trademarks can send a message to appstorenotices@apple.com to let Apple know about the problem. We'd love to see Apple clean house on these, but of course, we're not yet sure of their position. They may have some guidelines that define how close an app can get before it's actually infringing, but some of these are clearly over the line. We'll have to wait and see what actions Apple decides to take.
