May 01, 2009, 10:58 AM — What makes the difference between a run-of-the-mill RSS reader and an extraordinary one? Having spent a fair amount of time using several RSS apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, I've come around to the view that it's the little things.
The interface, obviously, should be clean and easy to navigate. You should be able to sort your feeds without much hassle. You should be able to mark all stories as read with a tap of a button, and you should be able to flag a story for follow-up the same way. Every RSS reader worth its salt does those things.
A handful of readers strive to move beyond the merely utilitarian to the genuinely innovative, with graphics and additional features. In the case of the three RSS readers reviewed here, however, the results are decidedly mixed.
iNews (not to be confused with iNewz [ Macworld rated 3 out of 5 mice ]) has some interesting features, but one fatal and confusing flaw.
The app from gdiplus lets you tap an arrow to read the next story, but won't let you read a previous item. Once you've read it, the item goes straight into the trash. You can refer to the item again, but you need to exit what you're reading, return to the home screen, tap the trash menu and hunt down the story.
To flag a story, you need to add it as "favorite." The item is then moved into its own menu. The developers advertise all of this as a plus, but it's an awfully presumptuous and inconvenient way to manage feeds. (Ironically, the only place iNews gives you the option to navigate back up a previous item is in the trash menu.)
The app's "fancy screen" feature is a more simplistic version of Newsstand's ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) design , with simulated front pages of each feed. The feature doesn't add much--the publication names get cut off, and any graphics just slow down the app. The more feeds you have, the slower this is to load--and, indeed, the app crashed on me more than once. You can switch the feature off in preferences.
iNews does have some nice features that other readers would do well to emulate, such as hiding empty news sources, a tilt scroll option and the ability to read either the mobile text or original Web version of a story in a browser. iNews lets you share stories by e-mail, to Twitter with or without comment, or to Instapaper ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ), which remains perhaps the easiest way to read articles on the iPhone and iPod touch. A word of caution, however--iNews prompts for your Instapaper name and password. If you happen to forget either, or enter one or both wrong, this feature will never work right unless you reinstall the app. That's not so nice.
As of this writing, iNews is on sale for $1--its App Store page indicates that it normally costs $4. A free version that's limited to six feed sources is also available.
