Responsiveness

I’m an avid reader of RSS feeds and blogs, whether they be long form or short form. My iPad is the best tool to do both, thanks to the Reeder and Instapaper apps. For a reason that I haven’t been able to put my finger on until today, though, I’ve much preferred reading in Reeder over Instapaper. I think I have finally figured out why: responsiveness.

When I launch Instapaper, new article titles are loaded and displayed, but the content is unavailable for a few seconds. Then it becomes available, then I tap on the article square. It then hangs for about half a second, then displays the article screen, but there’s a spinner which runs for another half second while it processes the data, before displaying the article itself. The lags occur even if you’ve already opened and read the article before.

Reeder perhaps takes a little longer to load the contents, but once they are loaded, there is no lag (except to load pictures) at all. You can tap, flip through and read articles as fast as your fingers can move. Reeder instantly reacts to your commands in a very smooth and fluid way.

Is responsiveness important for a long-form reading app as opposed to an RSS reader? It might be less important, but I think it’s important for any application. The bottom line is that if there’s an article in Reeder that I can “star” to save for later instead of saving it in Instapaper, I’ll prefer that approach because it’s nicer to use.

It’s a complex situation, but I don’t enjoy using Instapaper nearly as much as Reeder as a result. It’s a shame, really, because it is otherwise a wonderful app with a great developer behind it. But then, so is Reeder.