Great, honest post by Marco Arment from last week (just catching up on reading now in my post-SXSW haze). He’s reacting to the recent launch of Readability’s new app which is competitive with Arment’s own Instapaper. 

Writes Arment:

Reacting well to competition requires critical analysis of your own product and its shortcomings, and a complete, open-minded understanding of why people might choose your competitors.

How often do you see someone admit that they screwed up in the face of competition? Not often. It’s usually lame excuses or flat-out denial.

No product is perfect. And if you really can’t believe and/or admit when your competition does something better than you, you’re already on the road to failure.

Great new app by the Longform guys. They auto-stock and auto-curate longer form articles from various publications for you to read on your iPad (optionally using Readability to remove the clutter). 

I’m a big fan of services like Instapaper and Read It Later, but I recognize that plenty of people don’t want to take the time to go out and find their own content to read later (though those services have their own way of surfacing curated content as well). This is a nice alternative that fulfills Longform’s mission of surfacing comprehensive journalism. And, of course, it works with Instapaper and Read It Later too. 

The app is $4.99 in the App Store. 

Classy response to an somewhat-odd-but-also-somewhat-straightforward situation by Marco Arment. 

Instapaper has been a staple of my daily routine for years now. Today brings version 4.0, which offers huge improvements both visually and in terms of functionality. I’ve been beta testing the app for a few weeks — it’s an excellent update. Creator Marco Arment talks about it in detail here.

The app is $4.99 (if you’re updating, it’s free) — well worth it — and comes with a new $2.99 subscription-based search option. Yes, you can finally search the content of each article you save, including the ones you archive. You also get access to search if you’re a subscriber (I’ve been a happily paying member for months). 

Love some of the innovative ways Marco is thinking about making money. Also, the new icon is a huge upgrade. Download it for that, stay for the awesome app.