Instapaper 4 is here and it’s great

Marco Arment’s clean and simple reading app for the iPad and iPhone just got a major update, and is available in the App Store.

(Instapaper, if you’re not familiar, lets you save articles and web pages to “read later” and strips out all the junk to make them easy to read. It’s the iOS app equivalent of printing stuff out to read on the can, or something like that.)

My favorite part is Arment’s continued effort to provide a distinct and well-designed reading interface for the iPad and iPhone. That means: It’s the same app for both gadgets — and you only have to buy it and learn it once — but it’s a slightly different reading experience, best tailored for each device’s screen size and how you will likely be handling it.

• On the iPad, that means a bigger navigation bar and a new “grid” index with big touch targets to easily select a story to read.
• On the iPhone, that means capturing as much of the small screen as possible for reading: The latest version removes the top status bar. (Who wants to be distracted with the time or network signal strength when they’re trying to get lost in an article?)

If you own Instapaper already, it’s a free update. If you haven’t tried it, you should — it’s one of my home-screen apps, and easily worth the $5.

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Also: What’s on my iPhone?