Instapaper Blog
The developer of a popular Web and iPhone bookmarking app announced on Tuesday the creation of an iPad version of its service, and detailed the strategy behind its development. Marco Ament, creator of Instapaper, said he decided to launch the popular app on the iPad by April 3, despite lack of access to the tablet device for testing purposes.
“When everyone else was stalling their iPhone development for months in order to redesign entire applications for the iPad, I made the obligatory cardboard prototype and mocked up a bunch of radical interface departures,” Ament said. None of his “radical” approaches seemed practical, he said, and in the end he ported the look-and-feel of the iPhone app to the larger iPad platform.
He believes even without radical changes the move to the iPad without rigorous testing is a risk, but one he thinks his customers are willing to take. He outlines the two options: “Release the app for day one, but it might be buggy or non-ideal in a few areas” or “Release the app after we’ve had a chance to test extensively on a real iPad, but it may not be available for many weeks after the iPad’s launch.”
