It can pipe article links and text through other programs. I can pipe YouTube videos to youtube-dl, article text through pandoc and w3m, podcast files through podboat (newsboat's sister podcasting program), and links through a bookmarking program. You can also pipe article text through something like urlview to select links by pressing a key. I can also reload each of my 200+ feeds in a different thread to speed things up.

NetNewsWire 5 just released for MacOS. I believe it's also coming to iOS eventually.

Works perfectly fine.