An iPhone App that really rocks: Instapaper (read bookmarked websites offline, on your iPhone)

While there are many things I really hate about my new iPhone 3G (which is why I am still using my trusted Nokias and SEs and the Blackberry, too ;), the applications really make it worthwhile to experiment with it. My current favorite is Instapaper which allows you to bookmark a webpage and read it on your iPhone later even if you are offline (!), and in a much easier to read mobile screen format. This makes it really easy to catch up on some website reading when traveling, and not even have the usual costs associated with roaming (here in Europe, that's still huge) - and a much reduced temptation to click away, too.  Since this can be done with PDFs, too, is this a new way of reading (albeit still with a very small screen;)   The PRO version is well worth it btw - tilting the phone will scroll the text - cool!  Some more details from another blogger, here

Comments

[Steve Pasek]

Not to be a troll or anything, but for the sake of argument, do you think that the platform that Apple has developed (which arguably includes its top-notch support and marketing, which further provides a sustainable platform for creative developers) could possibly exist as open source? I'm honestly hard-pressed to find any analog to Apple's profit-based market (expensive, but broadly both developer-centric AND customer-centric) in the open-source world. The iPhone (and the iPod/iTunes platform) is a perfect example of why we still need profit-based systems to subsidize development of new models. With all its flaws, it still generates a net-positive cashflow market-wide, AND an increase in productivity and response to the needs of customers -- while concurrently increasing use of open-source systems that wouldn't exist without the (expensive) platform or channel to target.

[Gerd Leonhard]

Steve, good question, I would tend to agree that I can't imagine Apple's universe being build on Open Source - but of course that does not mean that the Apple-like approach and open-source approach cannot exist IN PARALLEL.