Posts tagged feeds
That Syncing Feeling
42 years ago
I’ve written here a few times about RSS Readers both on the Mac and iPhone – and my quest in trying to find the one that does it all. I went from NewsFire to NetNewsWire then back again. Now it’s happening all over again.
After enjoying a long and happy relationship with NewsFire, I recently ran into problems where my feeds simply weren’t refreshing after upgrading to the most recent version. I’d look at the icon in the dock and wonder why it’s little green badge hadn’t appeared in hours to show me I had feeds to read, especially when it’s set to refresh every 5 minutes. Closing down the app and restarting prompted the downloads, but I’d find myself with almost 100 new articles awaiting my attention, not my usual easy-to-get-through bitesize chunks when arriving in a timely manner.
However, I wasn’t persuaded back to NetNewsWire for that reason alone. I’d have learned to live with NewsFire needing the occasional nudge because of it’s gorgeous UI and ability to auto refresh feeds less than just every 30 minutes, unlike NNW. No, my arm was finally twisted by Newsstand for the iPhone (my old review). It’s always been the most reliable and elegant RSS Reader on the iPhone, in my opinion, but the arrival of version 2.0 last night gave it the killer feature – Google Reader syncing. NetNewsWire now also syncs with Google Reader meaning that these two apps go together quite magically and beautifully.
As you can see by the above images, the Newsstand [£2.99 | iTunes Link] icon has been beautified even more, as has the app itself with the new carousel style flick through feeds. The only thing that would make this partnership even better is push notifications in Newsstand when new articles are available.
So, for now my RSS needs are being catered for by NetNewsWire on the Mac and Newsstand on the iPhone, with Google Reader syncing bringing them both together. It’s not the perfect solution for me as my heart still belongs to NewsFire for it’s beautiful UI. I hope our paths will cross again, hopefully when it’s own iPhone app is available with syncing.
NewsFire
123 years ago
A year ago almost to the day I switched from NewsFire to NetNewsWire when the latter was released free of charge and came with a killer feature: syncing. I’ve been using NNW exclusively since then but experienced a few niggles that didn’t have me 100% sure this was up to the job.
Syncing across my Macs and iPhone with NNW wasn’t always a perfect art, but the worst was discovering recently that some of my favourite feeds weren’t being delivered, including that of a friends blog that I hadn’t received stories from since the end of last year. So, I blew the cobwebs off NewsFire and tried my friends feed in there. All of his 2009 posts turned up, whereas NNW just still didn’t want to know.
I was prepared to sacrifice syncing if it meant my feeds would be delivered to my main desktop app quickly and reliably, not hours, days or even weeks after they were published. I have now made NewsFire my default reader and have to admit it’s good to be back – I’ve always been impressed by it’s beautiful sleek UI. Syncing, while nice to have there as an option, is a feature I can live without given that I don’t follow any more than around 35 feeds currently.
After reading through the NewsFire developers blog this evening it looks like a little something-something is heading to the iPhone. Since his other iPhone app is so sleek looking I have high hopes for this. If the future NewsFire iPhone app includes syncing then I think I made the switch back just in time for (hopefully) some exciting things ahead.
What’s your chosen RSS reader on your Mac/PC/iPhone…?
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