Surprises are better than Empty Promises and Vaporware

and that’s why Marco Arment isn’t a hypocrite. Just wanted to say that before Build and Analyze airs today.

No seriously, if you listen to any of the shows on 5by5 you’ll probably pick up on this attitude. The hosts mock Microsoft and Google for announcing products that are in their infancies that either never ship or don’t live up to the hype. Meanwhile, Apple doesn’t announce things until they basically have something ready to ship, at least to developers. Can you imagine if Marco said Instapaper would be for Android back in 2011? Everyone would be hounding him for the last 18 or 6 months (depending on which part of 2011 he chose to say that.) Maybe that is when he started working for all we know. *Update – The Verge says it started in December 2011

The point is, by not promising something he(they) were working on, and then surprising us, Instapaper for Android gets a lot of launch day press (when people CAN buy it) and probably more good will than being yet another vaporware app that fails to deliver. That being said, I’m sorry I’ve been teasing iDecorate updates.