As far as aesthetics go I actually prefer the approach Marco takes with Instapaper. I think Readability does have more of a polished feel but in no way does this polish make the service any more usable. The Instapaper apps are top notch in my book.

The moral angle of feeling guilty and thus using Readabilty to compensate authors is total garbage. I disagree with this guilt trip blog post on so many levels. The 30% cut that Readability takes is the whole reason Readability exists. Essentially the writers are providing free content to Readability that they get to make a nice profit on. This is exploiting the writers to a far greater degree than Instapaper. Also, not every article I save I deem worthy of a contribution to the author. I may utterly hate an author's guts and am simply reading their article to better understand their insane philosophies before I decide I despise them. I'll fall back on an old Techdirt term: CwF+RtB. If I like a writer and want to support them I'll visit their site enough to earn them ad impressions, or I'll buy their book, or I purchase something using their affiliate link. I certainly don't need Readability paying people for me while pocketing a handsome chunk of change in the process.