Readability Sticks It To Apple
March 10, 2011
Three weeks after its company’s founding partner berated Apple for not approving its app submission, the folks behind Readability are bringing their product to iOS iDevices another way. They have developed a HTML5-based webapp, according to news recently announced on the company’s blog.
Readability isn’t actually a publishing app. Its purpose is to make existing web articles easier to read by stripping them of ads and other distractions.
Long popular by desktop users, the service was supposed to arrive in the App Store months ago. However, when Readability’s owner, Arc90, submitted the app for approval, Apple promptly rejected it since it did not comply with its new subscription model.
The new webapp, which was completed in just two weeks, bypasses Apple’s approval process and subscription policies, and can be used on any mobile platform.
Operating Readability on your iPhone or iPad is a simple, two step process.
First, in mobile Safari, visit the website you wish to read, and copy its web address.
Next, visit http://www.readability.com and click on the Read Now tab. Then, paste in the web address previously copied.
The article is now free of distractions. It can also be customized. Articles can be viewed in portrait or landscape mode, and can easily be changed to suit the tastes of the reader. In addition, full offline support is also available, as is the ability to share the title on Twitter, Facebook or email.
According to Readability’s Chris Dary:
We hope you enjoy this update to Readability. It’s 100% web technology and 100% approval-free and we’re really proud of it. This release highlights the kind of firepower behind Readability...It’s a testament to building applications based upon web standards—effective, cross-device web applications can be built in a fraction of the time of a native app, and be provided without restriction.Thanks to HTML5, the Readability webapp is a truly optimized reading experience. And whatever happened to the app rejected by Apple? It is still waiting for approval.