![]() ![]() But if you already have a favourite RSS reader either on iOS or Mac OS X, and you’re just interested in using NetNewsWire 4 for Mac or NetNewsWire iOS, then the single apps, taken alone, aren’t quite as strong. Taken as an ecosystem, NetNewsWire works well and is a decent, inexpensive offering. This way you get a coherent experience across your Apple devices. I think that to get the most out of NetNewsWire, you have to go all-in and get the whole package. ![]() The new NetNewsWire is presented as an ecosystem: there’s the Mac OS X app, the Cloud Sync service, and the iOS app. A system tool with not a very distinctive personality, so to speak. An adequate, honest app for the average user, no more no less. When I’m in NetNewsWire 4, the feeling I get is to be using a built-in Mac OS X RSS reader, if Apple had one. This is why apps from Omni and Panic have esoteric features, and in Omni’s case lots of customization options. This is why BBEdit has so many esoteric features. One can argue that most people don’t use smart folders, and few people script apps with AppleScript - but that’s exactly why there’s an opportunity for a paid app that does support such things. It doesn’t support the system share menu. There’s no meaningful AppleScript support. ![]() It still has the “lite” feature set, nothing like my beloved NetNewsWire 3. įeature-wise, NetNewsWire 4 has the essential functionality to get the job done and that’s it. But I was annoyed that the unread articles count was not maintained after the import: all subscriptions were imported with the last 30–40 articles marked as unread. Not a really big deal: I exported my subscription as an OPML file from Reeder, and NetNewsWire 4 imported everything very quickly and without troubles. As I suspected, given that NetNewsWire has its own sync service, when it was time to set up NetNewsWire 4 I could not just add my Feedly account, but had to either add feeds manually or import an OPML file generated from another reader. Readers like Unread, ReadKit and Reeder can handle accounts created with those alternative services, so it’s easy to set them up, and I can use any RSS reader on Mac OS X and iOS that’ll handle my Feedly account, and all the blogs and sites I follow, and the articles I’ve read or yet to read will be kept in sync. I found particularly easy to transition to Feedly by associating the same Google account I used to fetch RSS feeds. It feels like a minor update of NetNewsWire Lite, with a few refinements here and there, and little else.Īfter the discontinuation of Google Reader, a few alternative RSS services appeared, such as Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, Newsblur and Feedly. Still, four years have passed between NetNewsWire Lite and this new NetNewsWire 4, and while I’m sure that a lot of work was carried out behind the scenes (a new iOS version and the NetNewsWire Cloud Sync service have been released simultaneously), and that there may have been periods without development, the fact is that, when compared to NetNewsWire Lite, NetNewsWire 4 doesn’t really feel the “Pro” version of the same software. One can argue that basically all RSS readers out there have similar layouts because how else are you expected to present news and articles? Pulp for Mac tried the newspaper metaphor and associated skeuomorphism, and it’s indeed a fun UI, but this one is more practical for long reading sessions. Speaking of NetNewsWire Lite, here’s its interface: Other RSS readers I have on my Mac are Vienna, Pulp, and of course I downloaded NetNewsWire Lite as soon as Brent Simmons released it on the Mac App Store in March 2011. It’s fast, it has a good set of features, it shows a thoughtful design and UI. My current RSS reader for Mac is Reeder and I also bought ReadKit sometime ago. I’ve actually been a NetNewsWire user since the early days, and on my vintage Macs I still use version 2.x and 3.x. Since there isn’t an Unread for Mac (but there should be), on the Mac I’m a bit more flexible. I haven’t checked out the iPhone app because frankly I’m an enthusiastic user of Unread and it’s unlikely I’ll change RSS reader on my iOS devices anytime soon. I was excited when Black Pixel announced it, and I respect all the work that’s been done on it since version 3, but so far I’m rather unimpressed. I’ve been trying out the freshly-released NetNewsWire 4 for three days now. ![]()
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