Instapaper might be your reason to buy an iPad

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Mobile

Instapaper is already a killer iPhone app: just click a bookmarklet in your desktop browser, and a cleaned-up, highly-readable version of the current page is sent to your phone to read later. Imagine what Instapaper can do for the iPad, a device that -- unlike the iPhone -- is built for heavy-duty reading. Instapaper's developer, Marco Arment, has done more than imagine: he might have Instapaper for iPad ready to go by iPad launch day next week!

In a blog post about the process of getting Instapaper ready for the big screen, Arment explains his motivation for creating an iPad specific version of the app: "I saw the pixel-doubled version of my app in the simulator. It sucked, and it was completely unusable by my standards. I don't think I'll want to run any pixel-doubled apps on my iPad in practice."

So, instead of an ugly pixel-doubled version, we're getting a sexy reader that's iPad optimized and based on Apple's own design practices. When it came to dealing with the split-screen landscape view, Arment borrowed a page from the iPad version of Apple Mail. Despite some of the design restrictions of the device, and the fact that developers don't actually have iPads to test on, the screenshots look great.

Arment says an iPad without Instapaper isn't a device he wants to own, and I agree. In fact, Instapaper is really making me wish I had pre-ordered Apple's new device for myself.

Instapaper might be your reason to buy an iPad originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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