Posts tagged newsstand
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.
Read All About It: Newsstand app for iPhone
73 years ago
by Sam
in Applications
Since moving back to NewsFire RSS app on my iMac from the very flaky NetNewsWire, I haven’t been able to keep up to date with my RSS feeds on the iPhone. This largely hasn’t bothered me as I use my iMac more than the iPhone and even when I did have the syncing ability between NNW on my Macs and iPhone I never checked them.
Because I will be iPhone exclusive in a couple of weeks I suddenly remembered that I won’t be near my RSS feed on my Mac for a number of days. Being delivered the feeds I subscribe to on the iPhone during my Mac and wifi timeout will be one of the things I’ll look forward to as no doubt I’ll be beating a lot of boredom.
Last night I searched through the iTunes App Store for an app that would allow me to access my feeds by importing my OMPL file. Syncing wasn’t high up on my list, but something that performed well and looked good was.
Newsstand is arguably the most elegant RSS feed app in the App Store at this moment. Not only can you view and organize your feeds in portrait mode but flip your phone into landscape mode and this is where the app shows it’s true beauty, turning into a beautiful shelf of newspapers that you scroll through with a flick of your finger.
To open up a feed in shelf mode just tap the screen twice and it flips that feed open like a newspaper.
To add subscriptions to Newsstand you can import your subscription list from any Bloglines account, OPML file on the web or Google Reader. I imported my OPML file by uploading it to my webspace first. You can also add your OPML by uploading it to a free service such as opmlmanager.com You can also manually add new RSS feed URL’s at any time, aswell as share articles from Newsstand via E-mail, Twitter or delicious.com bookmarks. Be sure to check out the video here.
Newsstand is a beautiful app that is well worth the price at £2.99 [iTunes link] Newsstand will elegantly tide me over until NewsFire is available in iPhone app style with syncing abilities. I culled my RSS subscriptions list to around 22 recently, so when I’m back to my Mac I shouldn’t be too overwhelmed by unread feeds.
Recent Comments