Newsfire USD $18.99
Website: newsfirerss.com
I never really saw the value of using an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader or aggregator, but with the strong recommendation from a friend and the desire to spend less time browsing digg I decided to give NewsFire a chance. At the time I started using NewsFire my default BitTorrent client was Xtorrent, another Mac application by David Watanabe. My previous experience with Xtorrent gave me high expectations for the design and simplicity of the application, and in those terms I was definitely not let down.
NewsFire appropriately touts itself as “The ‘Anjelina Jolie of applications’” on its home page. Using the slick brushed look of applications Apple’s Safari, NewsFire looks like it belongs on your Mac. When a RSS feed is updated the feed entry swoops to the top of the list, grabbing your attention with a simple animation. While it doesn’t offer many unique visual features, fitting into the operating system so well goes a long way for any application.
Also helping it blend into OS X, NewsFire allows you to set groups and labels to manage your content and even includes Spotlight integration. NewsFire can organize your content so you only read the things you care about. With the “Smart Feeds” feature, anyone familiar with iTunes will know what they are doing immediately. You can quickly make a “Smart Feed” based on combination of attributes like date, author, description, or type of file attachment. “Search Feeds” allow you to make a custom feed to pull from specific search terms on certain websites, which can be very useful if you find yourself repeating the same searches often.
The only problem I have so far, is that I wish there were more features. If NewsFire integrated tabs for the sake of having multiple feeds open and visiting links within the same application, the experience would feel much more streamlined. However, David Watanabe has developed an application so beautiful, simple, and stable that it feels like a feature Apple just forgot to include with OS X. Considering the current USD $18.99 price tag and the fact that it just feels to be missing a little something extra, it might not be the perfect application for a casual user.
NewsFire, being one of the few applications I always leave running, gets four stars and a whole-hearted recommendation to anyone who is looking for a simple RSS reader.
I was running this app a while back, I had left it open and in 30 minutes or so I got a warning that my hard drive was getting full and that I needed to start deleting files, ( at the time I was running between a 1Gb to a 1.5 Gb of storage space left on my internal drive). Does this program cache all the articles it recieves to the hard drive?
Wow? I never had anything even remotely similar happen to me personally. It by default saves all article for “Eternity,” however you can change that in the preferences. Strange.
I started using it over NetNewsWire a little while ago since it sorts feeds better. For some reason NNW will change the sort order randomly. Odd.
My only true gripe with NewsFire is that there is no .Mac syncing support. That’s my most favorite feature of NNW since I use RSS readers on two machines. I asked the developer about it but he gave the standard “Apple” answer. Oh well. I like that it is lighter weight than NNW (doesn’t feel quite so bloated), but you are right, it is missing some features.
NetNewsWire is next on my list. dotMac support isn’t very important to me personally, but I can see why you would want it. It will probably be more useful to me when I’m using multiple Macs, but even then I doubt I’d pay for the service anyway. I personally can’t quite put my finger on everything that it is missing, so it was difficult to not give NewsFire a five star rating. While there is only so much a newsreader should have to do, I can’t help but feel as if you’re not getting your money’s worth. Considering NetNewsWire is more expensive I would have even more high expectations for the software.
Perhaps one big thing that is missing is an integrated web browser. I prefer using a full featured web browser to read stories, but this is one thing that grew on me in NNW. It makes it really easy and fast to not have to launch your default browser if you just want to take a glimpse at things (and it uses tabs).
Another thing that NewsFire is missing that is in NNW is the “dinosaur” feature. It checks for feeds that have not been updated in a while. This way you can remove them if you like. It’s particularly helpful for housekeeping if you have a large number of feeds. And for some strange reason, the developer has opted not to include a feed counter. It’s kind of nice to know how many feeds you are up to!
The three-pane view is also handy. I feel that the way that NewsFire displays the feeds when you click on them is a little counterproductive but easier at the same time. On one hand I like seeing the feed as a single page that takes up half the application window because it’s easier to view, but on the other I do not like having to go up to the top of the screen to click the back button to see what’s next. Of course you can just hit “space” to go onto the next in the feed’s list. I like to pick and choose what I read. Often a feed may only have a few stories that interest me.
NNW 3.0 is coming up really soon (a pre-beta is available). I guess I will see if it is worth the upgrade, or if I will buy the lifetime upgrades for NewsFire for $9 once the next version comes out.
I think at the same time though, that simplicity does make it feel like more a part of the OS. I’m definitley going to give NetNewsWire a chance. Considering NewsFire was my first experience with an RSS reader I think it says something that I already felt something was missing.
I stand by my claim though that it is so simple and smooth, it feels like it should be part of OS X. Maybe part of that is because it isn’t bloated with features, but the great feel of NewsFire cannot be denied.
Expect a NNWLite review within the next few weeks.
It looks like a great app, however Vienna has been my news reader for a while, and it does almost everything I need and it is free!!
I spent some time with NetNewsWire Lite today and was less than trilled. Not nearly as smooth as NewsFire… I’ll have to give Vienna a try later on.
NetNewsWire Lite was my first RSS reader when I decided that Safari RSS was too limited for my needs. Basically, it didn’t take me long to switch to the full version of NNW. The search feature alone is worth it!
A friend of mine was using Vienna for a while, but decided to go with NNW also because it uses much less RAM. I think it might be Java. I haven’t used it personally. For me NewsFire and NNW are the best RSS readers on the Mac. There’s another reader that may be worth your while called RSS Owl. It’s cross-platform but not as Mac-like from what I have seen. I found it at http://opensourcemac.org/.