The Magazine 1.1

Marco Arment shipped today version 1.1 of The Magazine, which I reviewed when it first came out in October:

Marco Arment’s The Magazine falls exactly under this aspect of writing. It’s about people who love technology, delivered as a curated collection of articles from great writers. In a way, it’s the opposite of Instapaper: while Marco’s more popular app is what you make of it, The Magazine is Marco’s own vision. So, yes – you’ll have to trust him on this one.

The Magazine has been growing in terms of quality of content and as an app. Version 1.1 adds new sharing options and a settings window to choose the default browser to open links with – a design decision that Marco has extensively discussed on his podcast Build and Analyze with Dan Benjamin. Fortunately, the added screen doesn’t make the app more complex: The Magazine 1.1 scans for installed third-party browsers and offers a popover (on the iPad) or a new view (on the iPhone) to set the default browser. Safari, Chrome, Opera Mini, iCab Mobile, Grazing, Mercury, Dolphin, and Terra are supported. In the same screen, Marco added buttons to manage subscriptions and read the privacy policy, as well as log out of Instapaper if you’ve enabled the service.

There are more improvements I like in The Magazine 1.1. The hyperlink popovers now have an icon to share and send an article to Instapaper, but you can also share selected text through the same method. It is a small addition, but I particularly appreciate support for posting to App.net using Netbot and its custom callback protocol: if you send a post to Netbot and hit Cancel in Netbot, you will automatically go back to The Magazine. This system is based on Tapbots’ custom protocol for URL callbacks, but it works similarly to x-callback-url, which I’m a big proponent of.

The Magazine 1.1 is now available on the App Store.