Switching to Pocket

anand posted this on 10 Nov 2012

Pocket has a Mac app. Instapaper doesn’t. Having a native mac app makes so much difference and it fits my reading patterns very well.

Problem with Instapaper:

Whenever I see an article on Safari, I can add it to the service from the browser itself. And then I can continue to read on the go using my phone - solved by Instapaper.

But when  I add articles from my phone, I can’t read them on my mac. I know there is a website, but it makes a lot of difference to have a native Mac app. Having an app right there on my dock to open the reading list is much more convenient than opening up a browser, type instapaper.com & signing in to see the same reading list.

And Pocket has a neat little Safari extension that does one thing and does it well. Just saves it to the list. Instapaper doesn’t  have an extension. Instead it gives me a bookmark. I’ve never been a fan of Bookmarks bar. And I don’t like to use bookmarks for such things.

Flipboard and Zite are becoming my primary news apps. Both Pocket and Instapaper allow me to save articles from such apps. But as I said before, saving it from the phone and reading the same article from a native Mac app feels very right!

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