Newsify RSS Reader for iPhone Review
I wanted to take a minute to talk about my favourite RSS reader for
the iPhone (no iPad version, yet) which I have been testing for the
last month: Newsify.
RSS for me is the most important way to stay on track and ahead of
news so a solid RSS reader is key. I have tested a lot of them,
recently switched back to the Google Reader mobile web version because
all of the available readers lacked something for me.
Then Newsify came along.
The feature I love most: The “Mark Previous Articles as Read” feature.
It’s such a simple and great feature that I am missing so badly on
other Google Reader apps. If happens quite often that I have just a
couple of minutes - 5 to 10, maybe - that I can use catching up on my
RSS news. As far as I know, most readers simply download all your news
and display them in a more or less readable way. But then an email
comes in that needs to be answered, sometimes they crash, sometimes
you start playing a game - and when you get back to your RSS reader
app it has been wiped out from memory and you start at the top of the
list of your feeds and see - again - all the posts that you didn’t
want to read, that you scrolled by, etc. - and that at least to me is
very annoying.
With Newsify I can simply select the “mark previous articles as read”
and don’t have to worry about seeing the posts that I didn’t want to
read again.
There are some flaws, of course, and please note that this is the
first iteration of Newsify. And since the last weeks of testing some
kind of a wishlist came up that I would like to share, hoping that the
developers might see them:
Deeper Instapaper Integration
I can instapaper every article from within Newsify (see how “to
instapaper” became a verb for me? I could also say “save it to Pocket
or Readability”, but since Instapaper is my read-later-client of
choice…). However, many blogs (e.g. Daring Fireball) often simply
link to interesting articles which I want to save for later. I can
click the link to the respective article in Newsify, however I can
only read it right there or open in in mobile Safari and instapaper it
there. Not so elegant. Reeder has a great solution for that and I wish
Newsify copied the Send to Instapaper feature from there.
Switch between browser views
I can predefine how I want to see webpages within Newsify. Either the
original web version, the Instapaper version or the Google Mobile
version. I would like to see a in-browser switch here as I have it in
Tweetbot.
In-app article counter
When scrolling through my subscribed feeds I would like to have a
small counter telling me how many articles I have left to read. Please
copy here from Tweetbot, again: They have a little number on a
transparent bar that tells me how many unread tweets I have left. A
tap on it and it goes away. So easy.
Timeline scrolling placement
A little tricky to describe..: Say I have scrolled from one article to
another to another, etc. - say 5 or 10 articles. Then I swipe back to
list view. What happens is that I get right to where I started reading
the very first article and that the ones that I already read do appear
as read, however I have to scroll down the list again to find the
position where the next logical posting would come. My wish would be
to simply come out at the very same position within my articles list
where I just stopped reading.
Nicer arrows
OK, eye candy only, but I really don’t like the arrow design when I do
a rubber-band scroll from one article to another.
Zoom photos
I’d like to see a way to zoom into photos within an article. To be
able to see them fullscreen, at least.
Night mode
Due to lack of time I often read in bed at night or in the evening.
Please add a night mode. Even better: If possible, please copy the
Instapaper automatic night mode switch which is an awesome feature. I
hope Marco is ok with that.
Improvements on the swipe back gesture
I have set Newsify to display posts in full screen mode. A simple
swipe back gesture brings me back to the list view. However, sometimes
an article is rendered “too wide” and some horizontal scrolling kicks
in. Then I am not able to swipe back to the list view.
Save position in articles
When I read an article I sometimes accidentally swipe back to list
view. It just happens, no big deal. However what I think is annoying
is that I have to scroll all the way back down to the position I were
within this particular article.
So this post here might sound like a rant, but it is not. It is a
praise of the great work the developers of Newsify put into this
little app. It’s free on the App store right now and for me right now
it is the best RSS reader for the iPhone I can think of at the moment.
Why I switched back to mail app from Sparrow (but still love it)
A couple of weeks ago a new email app for iPhone launched - Sparrow. A great new approach to processing email on a mobile device, fast when you work on emails you have already downloaded and a beautiful interface.
Reading through many reviews about Sparrow you will find one common “con” that everybody mentions: The lack of push mail. While this is no big deal for me (and perhaps even manageable in the foreseeable future) there is one gripe that actually made me switch back to Apple’s built-in mail app: Accessibility and speed of incoming emails. And this is a “con” that - as far as I know - all Apple iOS apps have. You can’t have content updated in the background (exception: Newsstand content, I guess) so here’s what happens: You receive an email alert (be it via Boxcar, e.g., or via the default email app notification. Then you open Sparrow. And then you wait. You wait, until the new emails have been downloaded. With the built-in mail app you don’t have that problem. You hear the notification and boom your email has already been downloaded and is readable.
I guess it’s really just me being an impatient person and it is definitely not Sparrows “fault” but that’s just the way iOS works for now. Background downloads would be one of my favorite requests for iOS 6. For Sparrow, Instapaper, Flipboard, etc.
Until then I happily switch back to Sparrow from time to time, but when it comes to quick email access I will continue to rely on the built-in mail app.
Growing up in the future
My daughter is two and a half years old. Growing up for her means knowing and accepting technology that for many of us seems futuristic as everyday appliances.
For her, every screen is a touchscreen. She knows how to unlock an iPhone or iPad, swipe to her favorite applications and interact with them. Some weeks ago she wanted to see the pictures on a regular point and shoot camera that didn’t have a touchscreen. Pictures needed to be clicked through by using buttons. Guess what, she kept on swiping on the glass screen, dismissed the camera as a dumb thing to use and was really disappointed that you had to use something as unnatural as a button.
For her, having a phone conversation means to be able to visually interact with her counterpart. My whole family - her grandparents, her uncle - have FaceTime either on their iOS devices or on their Macs. Yesterday I had a regular phone call with my own grandmother who wanted to talk to my daughter. Naturally my daughter wanted to show her all the cool things she learned recently like standing on just one leg, for example. She didn’t really understand why the other person on the line wouldn’t see her. Another dumb experience. You hear a voice but can’t show and visually interact whereas her young life provides so many things to show and share?
She grows up in a world with constant connectivity to the Internet. A world where tablet computers will most likely be the regular way to use a computer when she enters school.
For her it’s not the future. It’s her reality and presence.
Pre Apple Keynote RSS Deletion
Right now I am subscribed to 405 RSS feeds in Google Reader. And most of the times I manage to keep track with them. However, there are at least two times a year when I really struggle to come to RSS zero by either reading (or Instapaper’ing) all of them or simply deleting them.
That time is before Apple keynotes.
Right now especially my tech feeds are full of iPad 3 and Apple TV rumors and speculation. These are the feeds that I usually ignore. And the worst thing that can happen after an Apple keynote is to find such a rumor post in my feeds. It just doesn’t make sense. When the news is out then I will happily go through all of my tech feeds, read about the little findings that might have been missed during the keynote and I will spend a lot of time reading all of that.
But I would really hate it to find one single rumor here.
Show unread emails in iOS
Ever since the iPhone came out I envied one particular feature from the phone app that I would like to see in the mail app: Solving the “unread emails” issue the same way the have solved it within the call history menu item.
In the call history there are two buttons on the top: “all” and “missed” and I can easily see the calls I missed.
Right now, my iPhone’s mail app tells me that I have 28 unread messages. The only option for me is to scroll down and down and down in order to find those unread messages. Even the Gmail app let’s me do a search for “is:unread” and shows me just that.
Well, there is a solution: Using the notification center.
Now - even when I’m in the mail app - I can simply swipe down the notification center and see all the emails that are still unread. So simple. I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that before, having it right before my eyes ever since the first iOS 5 beta came out.
