Hasta La Gadget!

The new article view is easier on both the eyes and the thumbs

Instapaper, our favorite read-it-later app for the iPhone and iPad, has just gotten a huge update to version 4.0. This is the first major update since the developer, Marco Arment, started using his own app on the iPad. And man does it show. Instead of being little more than a scaled up iPhone app, the iPad version of Instapaper has been completely redesigned.

If you have never used Instapaper, it’s a combined web service and app. When you find an article on the web that you want to save, click the “read later” bookmarklet in your browser and it is saved. Then, when you open the app, you’ll find the article there, stripped of ads and other cruft, in a plain and easy-to-read format.

You’ll notice two things after you tap the new icon to launch the app. The first is that the navigation has moved to a bar at the left of the screen, allowing easier tapping on the iPad’s larger display. It also stays put, and small arrows let you know what section you are in at all times.

The next is the new article layout. Instead of just a list, the saved articles appear in a grid. It feels more like a newspaper.

And as you save new articles, they will now appear with the author’s byline, the date and the title of the publication they are from. Speaking of reading, there are some changes here too. Any footnotes are now converted to inline pop-ups so you no longer need to scroll up and down to read them.

You can browse all articles shared by your Twitter and Facebook friends, as well as your Tumblr feed

Also, the scrollbar is now draggable for faster scrolling, the brightness control is hooked into the actual hardware brightness control (previously it just made the screen grayer) and the iPhone version gets a full-screen mode without the status bar.

If you ever used Instapaper 3’s (anti) social networking features, you’ll like this update, too. Now Instapaper can pull in all shared articles from your friends’ Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as your Tumblr subscriptions. It’s a bit like a Flipboard lite, and is a great way to find something to read if you ever manage to plow through your own reading list.

My first search turned up just one result. And yes — I really am this childish

The last big change is full article search. This lets you search across the content of all your saved articles. It works on the Instapaper servers, so even archived articles not currently on your device can be accessed. To use search, you’ll need buy a subscription. I was already subscribing via PayPal, but newer users can do it more easily through an in-app subscription of just $1 per month.

If you are already using Instapaper, you get this great update free. If you’re new, it’ll cost you a mere $5.

Instapaper product page [iTunes]

Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone [Marco.org]

See Also:

• Instapaper: A $5 App That Justifies Your iPhone Purchase
• Instapaper 3 Adds Sharing, Curated Articles and Plain Old Speed …
• Preview: Instapaper Pro for iPad