They're popular with people who take the subway. Think about it, you're sitting there for half an hour with no service. An app that pre-downloads all of a newspaper's stories is handy and easy to use.
Sure it is, so long as you've remembered to fill Instapaper or Pocket with stories from the newspaper's website that you wanted to read. If you ran out the door without having time to peruse the stories on the internet this morning Instapaper won't do you any good.
Neither will having an app that you didn't launch and sync before getting on the subway. Seems like the same amount of effort to me.
There's an advantage to Instapaper and company in that it's centralized and you only have to launch the one app to pull down all of your content regardless of the source.
I've never tried this feature as it requires location services, but doesn't Instapaper offer exactly that? Location-based automatic downloading of new articles?
> Neither will having an app that you didn't launch and sync before getting on the subway. Seems like the same amount of effort to me.
And here I thought in 2013 apps could download their content in background when phone is idle. Maybe when the owner is sleeping at home with fast wifi all around. Might make too much sense though.
I can't tell if you're being purposefully obtuse or not.
iOS does not allow background downloading, unless your app is part of Newsstand. While it would seem to make sense to make your news delivery app appear in Newsstand, it does come with some trade-offs, most significantly that your app is locked inside the Newsstand shelf and can't be placed in a primary app slot.
And, even if your app is in Newsstand, you have to actively go into Settings and turn on background download on an app-by-app basis.
Finally, even then, the app will only background-download if you're on a WiFi connection. I agree, this makes sense in this age of metered WAN bandwidth.
So, if you're using iOS, there's a really good chance that you will not have that content before getting on the subway, unless you remember to click into it on the walk over to the station.
I'm not being purposefully obtuse. I was not aware of this particular limitation of iOS (and probably numerous others). Permission-controlled background downloading would seem like a reasonable solution to this particular problem to me.
OK, good -- thought I might be taking troll-bait, but in that case, glad I could provide information.
In principle, you're exactly right -- but iOS in particular has been notoriously picky about app sandboxing, and there is a very short list of permissions that apps are allowed to ask for: location, push notification, and I believe now address book access.
Offtopic, but I prefer it that way. I hear enough people yammering away all day, I don't need it on my commute as well (I'd be fine with it if they just instituted data, but since when has the MTA ever done anything intelligently?)
