Safari “Reading List” Discovered In Lion, Apple Taking On Instapaper and Readability?

A new feature uncovered in OS X Lion by MacRumors reveals that Apple plans to take on “read it later” services such as ReadItLater, Instapaper and Readability. It has implemented a new bookmarking feature in that latest Lion builds of Safari that Apple is calling the “Reading List” and can be used by users to save pages for later reading. Apple describes it feature saying:

Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.

The feature is currently hidden away in the latest OS X Lion build and no mention of the feature has yet been made by Apple in any of its announcements or documentation of Lion. One question certainly is about how robust the feature will be and whether it will become a service that synchronises the bookmarks across devices, including mobile devices. Marco Arment, the creator and developer of Instapaper, appears not to be to worrying about it so far and believes that “Instapaper would still have a market even if Apple implemented Reading List synced to iOS devices.”

[Via MacRumors]