Apple Readies New Competitive Venture with 'Reading List' for Safari

[Michael Essany]

Apple is toiling with a pretty cool new feature for Safari in Apple's Mac OS X Lion. The attribute will changes things up a bit for bookmarking functionality in the browser. The soon to be official "Reading List" function lets users save particular pages for review at a later time.

Here's how Apple describes the new tool: "Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar."

For now, we must wait to enjoy the new "Reading List" as it remains dormant and neatly tucked away in the most recent Mac OS X Lion builds. Although Apple isn't going to push or hype the new feature until the time comes for its debut, it will directly compete with Instapaper and ReadItLater by way of this new advancement.

As reported by Venture Beat, word of Apple's looming "Reading List" comes a matter of days after Instapaper maker Marco Arment revealed that the free version of Instapaper (for both the iPhone and iPad) will be "retired." Standing alone will be the $4.99 version in the App Store. If "Reading List" becomes all that we think it can, sales of the competing services will all but certainly take a bump as a result.

Still, Arment isn't running from the potential challenge. Instead, he recently tweeted: “For many reasons, I believe Instapaper would still have a market even if Apple implemented Reading List synced to iOS devices.” He also noted that "Reading List" appears poised to "closely imitate" ReadItLater, which isn't as robust in features as Instapaper is.

Source: Venture Beat, Mac Rumors

[coolguy742]

Cool, that would greatly improve Safari.


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[whereswaldo]

So basically Instapaper?

[coolguy742]

So basically Instapaper?

Mmmmhhhhmmmm, that's want the story says


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[moon#pie]

Instapaper with an Apple spin. I'm down.

[Jahooba]

Sounds kinda neat. But I can't say I've ever actually wanted to mark something for later reading - I usually just, you know, read it when I come to it.

I mean, how many times does one have no time to read, so instead they sit down and mark some stuff real quick? If I put time aside for reading I may as well just read it when I find it, right?

So, I'm thinking now that this is mainly a tool for researchers.

[epignosis567]

Google reader beats all this crap hands down.

[bostonguy3737]

I use readitlater daily. It's a great utility to use with twitter and the web and syncs with the iPhone app. Its great to save links, tutorials, lists and so on. The added digest feature on the web version is visually great also.


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[jkent1]

How do you get rid of the links you've added to reading list when you're finished reading them?