NetNewsWire 5.0: Open-Source RSS Reader for Mac | Hacker News Reader

NetNewsWire 5.0: Open-Source RSS Reader for Mac

ranchero.com

35 pointstobr10 comments

NetNewsWire has been around in various forms since 2002. It’s great to see it’s back from the dead.

Source code is here: https://github.com/brentsimmons/NetNewsWire

Historically, it's been an awesome app. I just launched this new version and it pulled up all of my old feeds and refreshed them very quickly (I have no idea the last version I had installed).

For those, like me, who remember the app fondly, but can't remember the whole history Wikipedia has a dry version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetNewsWire

So what does it offer that Feedbin itself doesn't provide?

I especially ask because I never found a compatible mobile app that was even as good as Feedbin's web UI. Being better than Feedbin on a desktop browser strikes me as difficult.

Based on the praise others have been giving this, I can't help but feel I'm reviewing a completely different app.

To me, supporting only Feedbin is a showstopper and woefully insufficient considering its contemporaries all support half a dozen or more RSS aggregators out of the box. I'm not about to completely switch providers just to try out a different RSS reader.

I also find it strange any development effort at all went into "On My Mac" as an option. Local-only RSS is functionally useless to me since at any given time I'm reading either on two different Macs, an iPad, or an iPhone. No RSS reader is an island!

I get it, it's open source and free, and I suppose if you value that over a product's functionality and usefulness, then NetNewsWire's the RSS reader for you. But for me, this is simply not good enough.

Other feeds will be added: (https://ranchero.com/netnewswire/frequently-asked-questions)

I do use local-only RSS. I am still running an ancient version of Netnewswire (maybe 2.0). So, I do appreciate that option.

Agreed. What I noticed with most other Mac RSS clients is that they omit a very obvious sync option: iCloud, even despite providing an iOS version.

I bought both the Mac and iOS version of Reeder and was very disappointed by the lack of iCloud support. It was quite pricey for an app that I never ended up using properly.

For now I’ve settled on News Explorer. I still miss Reeder’s UI but at least News Explorer actually works for me.

What a sad, pathetic comment. Apparently you have no appreciation for the interesting, important history of this app and how its original author decided to bring it back to life. If NewNewsWire 5.0 doesn't work for you, don't use it and keep your snark to yourself.

The complains give me a different appreciation of this: https://inessential.com/2019/08/20/immunization

What’s the HN term for “slashdotted”? Because that’s probably what happened here, site is down.

it's HN's hug ( of death ).

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