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Readability for iOS Review

The official Readability app for iOS, available today on the App Store, had a complicated history with Apple and its approval process. Since Readability relaunched last year with an ambitious focus on publishers and “read anywhere”, the service struggled to get its native app for iPhone and iPad approved by Apple due to an initial controversy with iTunes app subscriptions, which were seemingly reserved to “publishing apps” only, and weren’t meant to be accessed by any third-party developer. With the app stuck in a limbo, Readability went back to the drawing board and developed a full-featured HTML5 web app for mobile devices, whilst releasing additional tools for the web and Kindle at the same time. Months passed, and Readability – which in the meantime put together a quite impressive list of advisors and supporting developers – announced an updated strategy with free access for everyone, and a paid option for users willing to actively and directly contribute to the sites they are reading the most in Readability. With the new free plan, Readability also announced they had submitted a new version of their iOS app to Apple. Three months later, the app is now live on the App Store.

I have been able to test the app – a collaboration between Readability and development and design studio Teehan + Lax – for the past week, and I’m fairly impressed by this first version. But let’s go back to the main point: what’s Readability? And how does the native iOS app complement the ecosystem the developers have built in the past 12 months?

Much like Instapaper, Read It Later, or recent entrants in this scene like Evernote Clearly, Readability’s goal is to declutter webpages to offer an elegant, comfortable reading view on any device. Meant for web articles, Readability can fetch a webpage’s text and images, strip out unnecessary elements like ads, and reformat everything with a focus on beautiful typography, a clean layout, and the possibility of syncing this reformatted content to mobile devices like an iPhone, iPad, or Android handset. Like the services mentioned above, Readability works in any web browser thanks to a bookmarklet or extension, as well as compatible third-party apps that have been updated to include a “mobilizer” functionality or a “send to” action to forward URLs directly to a Readability account. As you can see from Readability’s website, the list of apps supporting the service includes excellent names like Tweetbot (our review) and The Early Edition 2.

With the proliferation of read-later tools and apps we’ve witnessed throughout 2011, why would anyone switch from, say, Instapaper or Read It Later to Readability, which is a rather new player in the field? Well, for one, Readability isn’t exactly new to this market, as the company behind it, arc90, licensed the original codebase for its reading technology to Apple for the Safari Reader feature seen on the Mac and iOS. Second, to differentiate its product from the plethora of available read-later browser companions and mobile apps, Readability spiced up its offering with a unique “support the publishers” spin that, as we detailed, allows users to pay for Readability and give 70% of their subscriptions back to the websites they read.

Readability explains:

Here’s how it works: Every time you use Readability to read an article, a portion of your monthly contribution is earmarked for that publisher or writer. For example, if half of the stories you read in a given month come from The New York Review of Books, half of your earmarked funds will be allocated to The New York Review of Books.

With these differences in mind, I was excited to try the finally-approved Readability iOS app, and see how it would compare to Instapaper, which is my go-to app and service when it comes to saving articles for later, as I wrote in my review of version 4.0. From an Instapaper lover’s perspective, let me get this out of the way right now: if you’re used to all the features Instapaper offers – especially on the iPhone and iPad – you’ll be disappointed to find in Readability for iOS a “simple” app to read the articles you’ve saved from a browser. There is no discovery, no Friends integration, no support for forwarding liked items to Pinboard or Evernote. On the other hand, Readability’s simplicity and focused approach might just be what you’ve been looking for, so let’s dive in. Read more

Flipboard 1.8 Brings Cover Stories to iPad

When Flipboard introduced its long awaited iPhone version back in December, the company rolled out a new functionality called “Cover Stories” that allowed iPhone owners to quickly catch up on the most interesting news, photos, and status updates shared by their friends and people they followed with a brand new, easy to use interface that took advantage of the iPhone’s smaller display and unique design of Flipboard. In the past months, Flipboard’s Cover Stories have become a fantastic way to get a quick overview of what’s happening online, with “curated results” that take into account a link’s popularity based on the number of retweets, comments, and social engagement. Cover Stories weren’t enabled on the iPad version of Flipboard – admittedly still superior to the iPhone app as a lean-back experience for relaxed reading and discovery – but this is changing today with version 1.8 of the app, which brings Cover Stories to the iPad, alongside a number of other improvements and new international content guides.

The new Cover Stories tile in the Flipboard start page doesn’t need an introduction – it’s really just a bigger version of the iPhone’s counterpart, beautifully laid out on the iPad’s screen. Whilst it’s unclear what kind of algorithm and process Flipboard uses to aggregate and build this personalized feed, the section undoubtedly works in fetching interesting stories based on the content that is being shared with you. The iPad edition of Cover Stories collects both articles and status updates, which are neatly organized in a column on the right.

With new typography, and improved photo layout and a third page of tiles, Flipboard for iPad now allows for more content, displayed in a more elegant way. The new International Content Guides are becoming to the go-to place to get started with Flipboard and great content, but I’d recommend adding sources like Instagram and 500px first to get an overview of the new photo layout – this will surely contribute to enhancing the “visual” aspect of Flipboard, which was already pretty remarkable.

For the past months, I’ve been using Zite to let “news come to me” thanks to the service’s fantastic discovery-based functionalities and system that learns from my reading habits and tastes over time. Flipboard’s Cover Stories seem like a great opportunity for the company to strengthen their offerings in smart news discovery and in surfacing relevant content for their users, and I’ll make sure to give the feature a try on a daily basis now that it’s available on the iPad.

You can get Flipboard 1.8 on the App Store. Read more

OmniOutliner 1.2 for iPad Sets the Stage for iCloud Sync

OmniOutliner 1.2 Document Browser

OmniOutliner 1.2 Document Browser

The Omni Group have removed the carousel in OmniOutliner 1.2 for a new document browser that closely resembles Pages’. Giving a broader overview of your outlines, the new file browser makes it much easier to scroll through dozens of documents without having to individually file past each one. The new file browser doesn’t let you create folders or sync to the cloud, but the original WebDAV and iDisk implementations are still available for online storage.

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Apple Confirms: Media Event on March 7

According to The Loop, Apple has just sent out invitations for a media event in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 7th. The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, starting at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EST).

Earlier this month, it was reported Apple would hold an event in the first week of March to formally introduce the next-generation iPad, so far unofficially dubbed iPad 3, to a selected press audience in San Francisco. The new iPad, reportedly set to launch later this month, has been rumored to carry a high-resolution Retina Display; MacRumors even posted photos of what they claimed to be a production unit of the display, showing an increased number of pixels when put under a microscope. The device has also been widely rumored to share the same design aesthetics of the iPad 2, with tapered edges and a flat aluminum back. Back in January, Bloomberg reported the iPad 3 would come with a faster processor, presumably quad-core, and LTE connectivity, which was also confirmed in a separate article by The Wall Street Journal. Similarly, Rene Ritchie at iMore claimed Apple would hold an event on March 7th to announce an A6-powered, LTE-enabled iPad 3.

We have collected a series of iPad 3 rumors and theories here.

We’ll cover Apple’s media event on March 7th on MacStories’ homepage.

The Guardian: Apple Working On New Audio Format with “Adaptive Streaming”→

The Guardian: Apple Working On New Audio Format with “Adaptive Streaming”

According to The Guardian, Apple is working on a new audio format for iTunes to offer higher-quality content and what they call “adaptive streaming” for iOS devices.

The new format could mean that users can get “high-definition” audio by downloading to an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Alternatively, it could offer a streaming service – like that of Lala.com, the music streaming and online storage company, which Apple acquired late in 2009.

The new system would adjust itself to the bandwidth and storage available on the receiving device.

The Guardian doesn’t know whether this supposed new format would be offered alongside the recent Mastered for iTunes initiative, as an upgrade to iTunes Match, or if Apple is planning on launching a streaming service that would serve audio depending on a user’s available bandwidth. In fact, The Guardian reports it’s unclear whether a streaming service could be tied to iTunes Match in the future, and the publication even mentions “storage” – streaming services typically only use local storage for cache. Last, The Guardian says this new format could be unveiled at Apple’s upcoming iPad 3 event, rumored for March 7.

Here’s what we know: recently, artist Neil Young claimed Steve Jobs was in contact with him to brainstorm on some ideas for a higher-quality iTunes audio format, but nothing was completed at the time. Apple’s iTunes Match service, launched last year, was long rumored to be the company’s response to streaming services like Rdio and Spotify although, in the end, iTunes Match turned out to be based on online and local storage, rather than streaming.

Two more interesting points. Apple has this to say about Mastered for iTunes:

It’s our job to faithfully and accurately deliver your songs and albums to fans around the world exactly as you intend them to be heard. To achieve this transparency, you need tools and technologies from us to ensure delivery of the highest quality master recordings possible into our ecosystem. With over 250 million iOS devices capable of playing your music, there’s never been a better time than now for us to communicate, codify, and distribute updated information to you about the best tools and processes used to produce the millions of AAC files delivered daily to our mutual customers in over 50 countries around the world.

And, you may remember Apple patented a technology to offer some sort of music streaming service that also leveraged a device’s local storage for “snippets of music”.

The Guardian’s report is short on exact details of this new format, but “HD content” and “streaming” would sure play well with an iPad capable of offering higher speeds thanks to LTE.

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New Turin Apple Store To Become Italy’s “Most Important” One

According to a report by Italian website Macity [Google Translation], Apple’s upcoming retail store in Via Roma, Turin, will become Italy’s “most important” one as it debuts later this year, with an opening date apparently set for September 2012. Citing “sources with access to information about the new store”, Macity claims the store in Via Roma will cover an approximate area of 1000 square meters (10763 square feet, possibly including warehouse and back of the store) on two floors. Previously owned by Mondadori, the empty store is now being completely emptied so to let Apple rebuild it to fit the store’s style, which will be “different” from the current retail stores in Italy (9 out of 10 are located in shopping malls, with the exception of Via Rizzoli). Last, according to Macity, once open, the new store will be as “prestigious” as other Apple retail stores in Europe, specifically in France and the United Kingdom.

Apple was long rumored to be on the verge of launching a new flagship store in Milan, although the company didn’t manage to get permissions from the city, losing an auction for the Galleria space to fashion firm Prada. The new store in Via Roma will join Apple’s other store in Turin, at Le Gru. [via GGD Milano]

Vimeo 2.0 for iOS Review

Released earlier today for free on the App Store, version 2.0 of Vimeo’s iOS app aims at making video discovering and editing more intuitive and accessible on the iPhone and iPad. With a brand new interface that was originally previewed in January, Vimeo 2.0 for iOS packs a new grid design on the iPhone that makes it easy to navigate the various sections of the site whilst retaining all the functionalities of the previous version (our review) and also adding new ones, but more importantly, it now allows iPad owners to completely manage their Vimeo accounts with options to browse videos, load subscriptions, check on the Watch Later queue, and even shoot, edit, and upload new videos straight from the device.

I took the app for a quick test this morning, uploading a video you can check out after the break. The (very) quick video was shot with a Canon EOS 550D, imported on the iPad through the Camera Connection Kit at 720p as .MOV file, edited in Avid Studio, then passed to Vimeo for upload. Interestingly enough, the Vimeo app couldn’t recognize my .MOV file in the Camera Roll, whilst Avid Studio successfully found it, allowed me to edit it, and exported it again at 720p to the iPad’s library. iMore has a good comparison of Avid Studio Vs. iMovie for the iPad. I prefer Avid Studio as well.

Vimeo for iOS puts great focus on discovery, sharing, and uploading of your own videos. Whereas the editing interface of the iPad is largely similar to its iPhone counterpart (meaning you’ll be able to easily drop media onto the editing timeline, add effects and transitions – but don’t expect the complexity of other apps like iMovie and Avid) with options to shoot new videos or load existing ones off the device’s Library, the remaining sections of the app have been reworked to fit better on the iPad’s larger screen. Upon firing up the app, you’ll be brought to the main Featured area, which lists featured videos and Vimeo staff picks, enabling you to start playing a video in the lower portion of the screen – all whilst being able to read descriptions, like a video, or save it for later. My Videos and Likes are also available in this page’s tab bar at the top.

The app works both in landscape and portrait modes, albeit I’ve found to enjoy it more in landscape given the additional screen real-estate. Videos can be played in standard definition or HD, just like on Vimeo’s website. Most of the functionalities of Vimeo.com have been ported over to the app, including comments, sharing options (for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, and email), Creative Commons information, and stats. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the way Vimeo designers converted the design of Vimeo.com to a native client – I also found the iPhone’s grid UI scheme to be particularly easy to navigate.

There are a couple of interesting things about this app. For one, Vimeo has embedded a link to purchase a Vimeo Plus subscription into the app’s Settings, but this link simply points to Vimeo.com and not, say, Vimeo’s own Upgrade page. It’s still a curious choice given Apple’s history with Amazon and links pointing to external stores (which, apparently, Vimeo isn’t doing here as they simply redirect users to the website’s homepage). In the same Settings UI, you can check on your weekly upload limit, remaining HD uploads, and overall stats. You can allow only WiFi uploads, clear the file cache, and reset the app from a sub-menu in the Settings.

Whilst the Help section opens an awkwardly small Help Center webpage inside a popover menu, much better is the functionality offered by the Stats tab, which lists your Top Plays by number of views, date, and country. The Edit section, which is project-based, mirrors the feature set of the iPhone app, allowing you to import videos from your Camera Roll, edit them, then upload them to Vimeo. From this area, you can also delete projects, render and export, or simply add new projects by hitting the + button in the top right corner.

I think Vimeo’s second attempt at delivering a rich iOS experience is a good one. The iPad app still has some rough edges, and its editing capabilities aren’t obviously on par with more powerful offerings from the App Store, but it’s sufficiently good for quick edits, and pretty great at browsing and discovering new videos. It also makes for a sweet “catch-up solution” thanks to its lean back Watch Later feature integrated right into the app. The updated iPhone app, on the other hand, is cleaner, easier to use, although it could be deemed as slightly unoriginal after all the apps that have adopted a grid design in the past years. Still, the even-so-less-innovative Home screen grid implementation works fairly well for this kind of app.

Vimeo 2.0 is a great update, and an overall good app. Give it a try for free on the App Store, and check out an extremely quick attempt at capturing the essence of the app after the break. Read more