Ode to Apple

I was a loyal customer of FeedDemon (Windows). When Newsgator took over FeedDemon and Topstyle, FeedDemon customers were given Newsgator Inbox as gifts (I have forgotten how was it, but I got it because of FeedDemon).

When I shifted to Apple Mac recently, I was looking for an alternative which should be at par with either FeedDemon or Newsgator Inbox. Well, my first option was NetNewsWire. I have been evaluating it for the past one week and I am extremely happy with it. However, before finally taking the decision to buy it ($29.95), I decided to study and see what are the other alternatives (preferably a freeware) that I can get if not as kick-ass as NetNewsWire but comparible enough.

Read further to know which one will cost you, which one is free and of course the best and free RSS Feed Reader. I have listed them in reverse chronological of my choice (so my choice is the last one).

PixelNews ($25)

The screenshots of PixelNews was itself bad enough for me not to go further to try it.

PulpFiction ($25)

PulpFiction cost $25 and that very reason drove me off already. I decided to read the features and find them not even close to NetNewsWire. If I had to buy, I would add the $4.95 and buy NetNewsWire itself.

NewsFire ($25)

NewsFire have something called the smart folders which seems to do cool stuffs, it is not that bad looking either, you can search within your subscriptions easily and save the same. It has the ability to subscribe to podcasts too. The first letdown is of course the price, it will cost you $25. Morevoer, I never found a way to properly organize the items! There is no option for synchronization or archiving the feeds.

Squeet (free)

Squeet is not really a standalone RSS Feed Reader but can deliver feeds to your email. However, it is not that good and its inability to group feeds was a real letdown. Like a mail list subscription, it can though get you a delivery schedule in the form of a digest or mail you as and when it happens.

Vienna (free)

Personally, I feel that Vienna is too simple for the Mac. It lacks many customization features which I really needed like, separate refresh intervals for my subscriptions, my own custom labels and ability to get podcasts easily. However, Vienna is free and if your requirement for an RSS Feed is not that high, this is the solution for your mild requirements.

Shrook (free and my choice)

Shrook took advantage of the widescreen display which is in vague these days and has that Mac’s Finder feel. Despite being free, this was closely comparable to NetNewsWire and has the ability to sync it online on Shrook’s server. However, their online interface is not that upto Newsgator Online. A sweet surprise was its ability to detect (or was it just with NetNewsWire?) the presence of NetNewsWire on my Mac and update its feeds directly from NetNewsWire complete with the Folder structure.

It has the ability to sync podcasts with iTunes. It even goes ahead by not only copying the audio, but Shrook downloads the text content of all your feeds to read on your iPod’s screen, complete with links to access the audio. I am yet to experience this but Shrook claims that new items appear on your desktop just five minutes after they were published, quicker than any other news reader. This is down to Shrook’s sophisticated Distributed Checking mechanism. Each time one copy of Shrook finds a new item, it tells the central server, which tells all of the other copies, including yours.

So, the winner for the best and free RSS Feed Reader is Shrook.

Note
This does not yet mean that I have totally shift to Shrook, I will be analysing it against NetNewsWire till it expires (I have 3 more weeks from the time of writing this article) and decide which one I should stick too. The freeware status of Shrook have charmed me a lot though.

My Final Choice
I went with NetNewsWire.