The NewsBlur iPhone App - visual feed reader with intelligence

I fail to see what this does that Reeder doesn't do 10x better with a way nicer interface, nor do I see why a writer would need a different type of RSS reader that seems significantly less elegant and devoid of any notable features to set it apart.

You need to be way more specific when explaining what "helps you follow authors" actually means. Also, I'm not aware of any RSS reader in existence that won't give you an option to view the regular site, so I'm not sure you are capturing the uniqueness of that one either.

It's much more than possible that I'm missing something, but that website does an absolutely terrible job of telling me what is unique about this app. Honestly, all I see is six screenshots riddled with design errors.

EDIT - Besides being open source and free. Those might be unique selling points to a handful of users, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of iOS users have a buck or two to blow on an app and couldn't care less about whether an app is open source or not, if they are even aware of the concept.

What does "with intelligence" mean in this context? The website has that tagline, but there's no explanation of it, or why this is a better feed reader. Given that there's no dearth of feed readers, they will hopefully do a better job of selling it on that page.

I'm sorry, but why is this on Hacker News? The app looks like crap! Yellow folder icons? Come on! It seems as if it was written at the time where iOS 2 was new. Not bad, but just totally not able to compete with fancy apps like FlipBoard or even Reeder. If this would run on Android, maybe. But iOS? The bar went up.

So, do I miss something here?