There are some legendary stories about what happens when Apple enters your market. I think Marco's right that he's pretty safe on the Instapaper front (for the reasons he says). That said, here's another tale of Apple entering a market, written by Cabel Sasser at Panic about Audion:
Panic's "Graduate from iTunes" banner ad campaign for Audion is a great example of trying for the pro/hardcore market when Apple has entered your space. Specifically, it's a great example of how it is very very hard to make it work out for you, but still, they tried.
Re: the Starbucks effect, I'm not sure I agree. I think the difference between Starbucks moving in next door and Apple implementing a feature like Reading List is that in the case of Starbucks moving in next door, their marketing drives foot traffic to the vicinity of your location--which you can then take advantage of. I.e., people walking by see your signage and therefore you can capture sales. It is the creation of demand, but it's the creation of demand that your own (much less resourced marketing) can then take advantage of.
In the Reading List case, there's no guarantee that customers that "get educated" about the product will necessarily ever find out about yours. It's still up to you to be in the same "location" as the competitor's product in order to benefit from their marketing.
This may be the case for very well-known products that are always going to be discussed in concert with a feature launched by an Apple in the media, product reviews, etc. But it's certainly not categorically the case.
The track record for Apple turning third party apps into features (as opposed to their own apps ala iTunes), has been pretty pathetic: usually what happens is that its so poorly done by Apple that the feature just stops being used and the functionality just flat out dies. Examples:
1. Quicksilver <-> Spotlight. Spotlight is terrible. Everyone I know who used quicksilver just uses nothing now. They certainly haven't "switched" to Spotlight because spotlight doesn't do anything half as well as quicksilver did, not even launching apps for god's sake.
2. Kaleidoscope <-> Dashboard. Another disaster. Dashboard seems to exist solely to be accidentally opened, or I guess for some people it serves as their dedicated weather "space". Apple does not hype up widgets at all anymore.
3. Safari RSS. Does anyone actually use this? Or how about Mail.app RSS? At least here the third party RSS apps didn't die (although I see less people using RSS than ever, but I don't attribute this to OS RSS integration).
Most of the people I know that used to use Quicksilver now use Alfred: http://bagcheck.com/item/0238-alfred The rest are very happy with Spotlight, like myself.
On the other hand, the Reader button in Safari is awesome and if the new Instapaper-like functionality syncs that content, it will do quite well.
I'll grant you that Spotlight could be a bit quicker and smarter, but I nevertheless use it all the time. I was never a Quicksilver power user, but I've found Spotlight adequate enough that I've never bothered installing any alternatives (ie. Launchbar).
Every item on your list is you projecting your personal opinions onto everyone else. Just because you and your Quicksilver-using buddies don't use Spotlight, Dashboard, or Safari RSS doesn't mean other people don't.
The features Apple adds are intended to add value and convenience for the average user. If you have RSS needs so great that you require a dedicated third-party application, you're more than welcome to use one.
"And if they build a large enough feature-set and backing service to make it a true competitor, they’re likely to create a lot of potential Instapaper demand."
Isn't that a little backwards? If Apple builds a true competitor, then it's going to create a lot less potential Instapaper demand. See Watson and Kaleidoscope for reasons why.
I think he's betting on being able to implement better than apple.
He states:
My biggest challenge isn’t winning over converts from my competitors: it’s explaining what Instapaper does and convincing people that they actually need it.
So if apple deploys this everywhere, more people will understand it. Since Instapaper already has such a huge user base, established users will (supposedly) say 'oh, I use instapaper. It's much better'.
So apple creates new users, which are then drawn to Instapaper's superior service.
This is all dependent upon Instapaper actually implementing substantially better, but so far apple has sucked at multi-device syncing of, well, just about anything.
Not much unless OSX achieves higher market share than its competition or people on other platforms start to use Safari instead of their preferred browsers. That won't happen anytime soon.
I'd be more worried about a feature like this coming to Mobile Safari.
I'd rather have a "Video Viewing List" that gets video watching out of the browser. Apple is one of the few participants in the ecosystem that might have enough "market power" to do that at this late date.
I agree - I'm trying out http://vhx.tv after someone recommended it here, though it is still in the browser at the moment ( I believe they are working on apps). However, there's still a problem I haven't seen any video-instapaper service solve - how to cache videos for offline / multiple device viewing.
I think you run into a lot more issues with copyright enforcement, storage space, and ability to even copy files (different format, might only be served in flash) than text-based services have. We might have to wait until HTML5 video grows enough in popularity before seeing a decent implementation of this feature.
[+] [-] jakewalker|15 years ago|reply
http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
[+] [-] ja2ke|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmchien|15 years ago|reply
In the Reading List case, there's no guarantee that customers that "get educated" about the product will necessarily ever find out about yours. It's still up to you to be in the same "location" as the competitor's product in order to benefit from their marketing.
This may be the case for very well-known products that are always going to be discussed in concert with a feature launched by an Apple in the media, product reviews, etc. But it's certainly not categorically the case.
[+] [-] tolmasky|15 years ago|reply
1. Quicksilver <-> Spotlight. Spotlight is terrible. Everyone I know who used quicksilver just uses nothing now. They certainly haven't "switched" to Spotlight because spotlight doesn't do anything half as well as quicksilver did, not even launching apps for god's sake.
2. Kaleidoscope <-> Dashboard. Another disaster. Dashboard seems to exist solely to be accidentally opened, or I guess for some people it serves as their dedicated weather "space". Apple does not hype up widgets at all anymore.
3. Safari RSS. Does anyone actually use this? Or how about Mail.app RSS? At least here the third party RSS apps didn't die (although I see less people using RSS than ever, but I don't attribute this to OS RSS integration).
[+] [-] spullara|15 years ago|reply
On the other hand, the Reader button in Safari is awesome and if the new Instapaper-like functionality syncs that content, it will do quite well.
[+] [-] netnichols|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonch|15 years ago|reply
The features Apple adds are intended to add value and convenience for the average user. If you have RSS needs so great that you require a dedicated third-party application, you're more than welcome to use one.
[+] [-] olivercameron|15 years ago|reply
"And if they build a large enough feature-set and backing service to make it a true competitor, they’re likely to create a lot of potential Instapaper demand."
Isn't that a little backwards? If Apple builds a true competitor, then it's going to create a lot less potential Instapaper demand. See Watson and Kaleidoscope for reasons why.
[+] [-] veritgo|15 years ago|reply
He states: My biggest challenge isn’t winning over converts from my competitors: it’s explaining what Instapaper does and convincing people that they actually need it.
So if apple deploys this everywhere, more people will understand it. Since Instapaper already has such a huge user base, established users will (supposedly) say 'oh, I use instapaper. It's much better'.
So apple creates new users, which are then drawn to Instapaper's superior service.
This is all dependent upon Instapaper actually implementing substantially better, but so far apple has sucked at multi-device syncing of, well, just about anything.
[+] [-] kenjackson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glhaynes|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
I'd be more worried about a feature like this coming to Mobile Safari.
[+] [-] hollerith|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morrow|15 years ago|reply
I think you run into a lot more issues with copyright enforcement, storage space, and ability to even copy files (different format, might only be served in flash) than text-based services have. We might have to wait until HTML5 video grows enough in popularity before seeing a decent implementation of this feature.
[+] [-] benmichael|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] originalgeek|15 years ago|reply