NetNewsWire Premium
by NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
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Description
NetNewsWire is an RSS reader for iPhone — you can read news from the millions of weblogs and sites that publish RSS feeds.
Because NetNewsWire syncs with Google Reader (Google account required) — and with NetNewsWire for Macintosh and FeedDemon for Windows by NewsGator — if you read an item on your iPhone, you don’t have to read it again your Macintosh or other computer. It’s automatically marked as read everywhere.
You can star items or send them to Instapaper to save them for later. You can email articles or post links to Twitter to share with friends.
Going through your articles is easy: just tap the Next Unread button.
And if there are feeds you don’t want to read on your iPhone, you can hide them.
The premium version of NetNewsWire is ad-free.
What's New in Version 2.0.2
- Fixed several crashing bugs.
- Fixed the "confused navigation" bug.
Customer Reviews
Google Reader broke the shackles
Back when NewsGator's own syncing framework was the only game in town, the combination of their decent desktop client and horrible iPhone client was a lock-in. But now that they've offloaded syncing to Google, this mediocre update to the iPhone client can be ignored. I've been using Newsstand lately (primarily because NewsGator is delivering this update nearly a month after it was promised), and it's vastly superior on every level -- intelligent interface, wonderful customizability and completely transparent syncing using Google Reader. There's simply no reason to purchase NetNewsWire. It's gone from lame to unusable -- and the preference panel is a joke. Literally the only option is to enter your login information -- no customizability whatsoever. Your two bucks are better spent elsewhere.
A formerly great app, but quite buggy with some bizarre interface changes
Many, many problems:
- Can't sync properly. Changes made sometimes propagate to Google, sometimes don't. Those that do make it to Google never make it to the desktop client and vice versa.
- Latest News doesn't sort articles by read/unread, and doesn't clear out read articles, so finding new ones is nearly impossible - defeating the entire purpose
- Feeds don't update their read counts properly. I marked all as read in "Latest News", and none of the other article counts on the groups and feed updated.
- Read feeds aren't hidden, making it very frustrating to find new updates and making the list of feeds unweildy and strangely fragmented. Some feeds have new items, some don't, and if you haven't gotten any updates yet, the feed won't show up at all. It makes no sense.
- The main list interface is deeply flawed. On the one hand, it tries to show the last update to a feed and the date. A nice gesture, but when it only shows four words - and only from the first update at that, it's useless ("Apple, rapper Eminem... Today, 11:10 AM").
- Stars don't sync to clippings/flags on the desktop. Star something on the iPhone, and it may as well be gone.
- The lack of preferences is a noble goal, but taken to extremes here that make the product all but useless.
- "Open in Browser" is in a submenu, yet it's the most commonly used button in an RSS reader (after "Mark All as Read"). What?
In a nutshell:
- Fix syncing, wherever the problem lies. Right now, this is a dealbreaker not having the same view on the iPhone as the desktop.
- Remove read items from all lists - main feed list, Latest News, etc. If people want it that much, and others (like me) hate it that much - make it a preference.
- Sort "Latest News" by unread. Or... make it a preference, much as I can sort how I please on the desktop.
- Redesign the main feed list.
Regarding the main feed list, I propose offering two modes: compact and detailed. Make it a preference.
- Compact: only shows what is currently the first line - favicon, name, and number of unread. Fairly high density, optimized for large numbers of feeds. Similar to 1.x.
- Detailed: shows a list of update titles beneath it, perhaps capped at 5 or 10 (but not 1!). Eliminate the dates when in portrait mode - there's just not enough space to show the title and date. That would allow for enough title to be useful, and show several (perhaps all) updates at once. The only downside is that list entries would be different heights, but then they would be useful.
Let me say it again - add preferences. I admire an application with sensible enough design and defaults to not need preferences, but this has been taken to an unfortunate extreme.
I have the deepest respect for Brent Simmons, but this update is much more difficult and irritating to use. Meanwhile, in any major rewrite there are bound to be bugs - and this is no exception. I'm used to finishing up reading things on the desktop, grabbing my iPhone, and being able to pick up where I left off immediately. Right now, no luck - no matter what I do, I can't get the iPhone to reflect read/unread status changes I make on the desktop. Perhaps there's a delay involved in Google Reader; whatever the case, the product doesn't work as well as it did in 1.x. Syncing is also glacially slow. Here's hoping 2.1 improves things, but we still have to wait for Apple's own glacial process to approve it. I wish I could go back to 1.x, as it was a vastly superior product.
Have to get used to again
I liked the previous version better but it's a good upgrade just wish that it had a way to turn auto-rotation off. I like reading in portrait mode, that was what made it my favorite RSS reader.
- Category: News
- Updated Nov 08, 2009
- Current Version: 2.0.2
- 0.4 MB
- Languages: English
- Seller: NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
- © 2005 NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.
