Really? If I generate an offline copy of an article on my phone, wouldn't I want to have access to it on my iPad? Why wouldn't I want the truth to be in the cloud?
Because there's no point in burning your cloud storage, Apple bandwidth and prolong backup times when those articles can be easly re-downloaded from Instapapers servers on iPad.
Same result, without long backup times, Apple server bandwidth usage and your iCloud storage usage.
The user can always choose not to sync Instapaper if he feels its costing him storage (though in reality, I have to wonder how much storage simple articles with occasional images could really take).
I think that has to be the best solution. It's far better to just have everything sync to iCloud and let the user choose to disable it rather than having Instapaper's primary core functionality - being able to read articles offline - not work properly.
Also don't forget that many people in world still (for whatever reason) don't have unlimited data plans. So if everything that get's downloaded also gets uploaded back to iCloud, then you've effectively halved their bandwidth quota.
...when those articles can be easly re-downloaded from Instapapers servers...
My premise, in point #2, is that this actually isn't the case with respect to Instapaper's raison d'être. In fact, that's sort of the premise behind much of Marco's post too.
So really what would make everyone is a type of Selective_Sync, i.e. there are three file types.
those that are ephemeral and can be deleted.
those that are ephemeral but should only deleted if given permission
And those that need to be backed up.
> when those articles can be easly re-downloaded from Instapapers servers on iPad.
That's kind-of the issue though, is it not? One of Instapaper's strength is that it provides for reading in a nicely formatted and offline way. You don't need a connection to go through your IP stack, unless iOS has decided to clean out everything.
His point is, if you back it up to iCloud, to get any use out of the backup, you need to be online. Therefore it's a waste, because in that scenario, you can just download it from Instapaper anyways.
I took the original suggestion as a practical solution to make the best of the current situation. It doesn't make sense to potentially have a redundant backup, but it makes for a better user experience than disappearing articles.
