Open letter to the developer(s) of Instapaper

Instapaper has long been my favorite read-it-later app. I still use it, but with trepidation. In recent months it has become unreliable and has fallen into disrepair.

Recently while working with a small group of articles on my iPad, the app kept locking up. Moreover, sync wasn’t working between my iPad and iPhone. Getting frustrated, I went to the App Store to check out the recent reviews. What I found was that I’m not the only one experiencing issues with Instapaper. There were complaints similar to mine plus many more including Kindle sync no longer working, disappearing articles, and Instapaper not appearing in the share sheet. To top it off, the developer isn’t responding to any support requests and the app hasn’t had an update in over a year. Has it been abandoned?

Instant Paper, Inc., the current state of Instapaper is shameful! Please fix it or sell it to someone who will.

Oh, here’s an option. In a quote, Matt Mullenweg of Automattic told David Pierce of protocol on December 21st, 2021 that he would be interested in Instapaper.

And if that’s the plan, there are plenty of places left for Automattic to explore. “I would have loved to have Instapaper or Pocket,” Mullenweg said when the topic of reading apps came up.

​Or maybe Marco Arment should buy it back and get it working as Brent Simmons did with NetNewsWire.

Originally published at http://ldstephens.net on January 1, 2022.