RSS is a great way of catching up with news in this fast-paced world. We've taken a look at apps that turn your RSS feeds into magazine layouts, but maybe you don't have an iPad or maybe you want a more stripped down list for your news. Whichever your flavor, there are more than enough to choose from. All three apps this week feature list organization and caching of articles for offline reading, but what sets them apart and turns a good RSS reader into a great one?
Developer C.B. Liu has one of the highest rated RSS readers on the market and no wonder. Fast, slick, intuitive, Feeddler handles your feeds with grace. You'll need a Google Reader account to get started, and that's really still the fastest way to add RSS feeds to your account, though Feeddler allows you to add with the press of a button. Two way syncing means what you read anywhere is marked "read" everywhere and changes made in one place show up in all of them.
Organize your reading in easy categories
The UI has been kept simple, though each of the buttons in the app pack loads of options. The subscription management breaks things into groups. At the top is a quick link to all the items in your account, followed by articles you've starred previously, and ones you've shared. If you've organized your feeds into folders, this category follows separately. Broken out below that are your feeds. From here tap the + to add new feeds, the G to edit your subscription list, and the gear icon to delve deep into the app's settings.
Sort those stories for maximum relevancy
Tap a subscription to see all the articles then manage them using the top buttons to sort. Tap an article to be taken to a page with an image from the article and an intro paragraph. Tap the Full Text button to be taken to a mobilized version of the page. In the article view, five buttons appear across the bottom. Two navigation arrows, a star to quickly flag an article, a Google G that gives you a plethora of management options, and the share button with all the usual ways to do just that.
Handsomely presente stories make this a pleasure
On the iPad, the same scheme rules. Instead of separate pages, the list of your articles makes up the bigger right hand side of the screen in landscape orientation, while the folders and subscription list makes up the left. In portrait, subscription management and settings are in overlay drop downs.
Not a whole lot going on differently as an iPad app
Feeddler is simple to get started with and simple to use. Our only complaint is that we are promised multiple account management, though that's actually coming in an update. For now, mulitple account support means signing out of one and signing in to another.
Silvio Rizzi's Reeder family of apps are beloved on the internets, whether as iPhone or iPad version. What Feeddler did with simplicity, Reeder goes one better. Sign in with your Google Reader credentials and you're presented with a list of your feeds. Four minuscule buttons cross the app's bottom presenting your starred articles when you tap the star, your unread upon tapping the dot, and all items under the three line list icon. Tap a feed subscription and you're taken to the list of articles. Tap an article to get something similar to what we've seen in Feeddler.
Not a lot of clutter in your subscriptions
A main title bar meets you at the top of the article screen with a single main picture below and a one paragraph caption. Tap the title bar to the article itself or tap the Readability icon in the top to get a mobilely optimized version of the page. Across the article page bottom is a circle, a star, two arrows, and a sharing button. The circle marks the article as unread, the star does what you expect, the arrows move you through articles, and the Share button throws the various social sites up on the screen.
Beautiful, just beautiful...uh, the app too
On the iPad, Reeder does something rather different than merely imitating the iPhone version but larger layout. Here, your feeds, instead of being lists are set up as tiles. If you've organized your RSS subscriptions into folders, they appear as a slightly unaligned stack, reminiscent of the iPad's photo albums. Tap a folder and all the articles from all the subscriptions turn up as one long list. Pinch a folder to expand it out to see the individual feeds within.
Stacks of stuff to read; pinch to open up folders
Reeder also puts navigation into the swipes. In your article list, swipe right across an article to return it to unread status and swipe left to star an article. In the reading page swipe up and down to advance or go back one story.
Lots of sharing options here
Reeder also tosses in Google's and Instapaper's mobilizer if you prefer the stripped down version of one of these services. That's really all there is to it. Deeper settings can be found in the iPhone's Settings app. Want to turn off some sharing options, for instance, if you don't have a Zootool account? Here's where you'd do it. Larger fonts? Higher contrast? How long to keep unread articles? Cache images or not? Show an unread badge? All of that and more. This keeps Reeder's interface pleasantly simple, though if you are a settings tinkerer it may be less than ideal to have to hunt these down.
Someone will have to explain to us how developer Perkin Tang sees a price increase from $1.99 to $2.99 as being a special sale in honor of his new iPad RSS reader, but we'll leave that aside for a bit. We've been using the iPhone version of iReadG embiggened on our iPad because we really liked the feel and look of this app in its iPhone iteration.
The iPad app goes, oddly enough, under the name Perfect RSS Reader. This is odd for two reasons: 1. we can't see why you'd muddy the market by naming your iPad version something completely different, and 2. as much as we loved the iPhone version, the iPad app was less than perfect.
Nice interfact and a look at my account
What sets iReadG apart as an iPhone app is the simplicity of signing into multiple accounts. We have three Gmail accounts and read things of different interest and focus depending on the email's function. Being able to quickly swap back and forth is ideal. The iPad's version ports over this same ease of multiple accounts.
Thumbnails show you what's what in Play
One of the features we absolutely adore in the iPhone version of this app is the Play feature, similar to Google Reader's own Play view. Tap the television icon at the screen's bottom and the feature image from every story is presented to you as a photo album. Flip through images and when you see a compelling one, tap on it to go to the story. Articles are presented using the mobilizers to cut down on extraneous web page clutter.
Mobilized and with lots of controls
Where iReadG stumbles is with syncing. It can grab all your feeds and update them but the auto-update frequently doesn't work and you're forced into manually sending the app to gather your news. This is a small deal on the iPhone -- a tap of a button, really -- but the braggingly named Perfect routinely failed to update our feeds. It has three means of performing this function (pull down on the list, tap the "load more" link, or tap the circular arrow at the app's bottom. We've tried all three, repeatedly with no luck. The goodwill built up by the iPhone app is squandered on the iPad.
Pretty, but nothing special and it makes us work to get those stories
Both apps sport gestures. In iReadG, this is pulling down to go to previous articles and up for the next article as well as pulling right to return to the previous management page. In the iPad version there are seven possible gestures, though only two are turned on by default.
Five buttons grace the bottom of the iPhone app: the above mentioned television, a settings gear, a person's silhouette to go to your Reader profile, a globe to see the comment view of your feeds, and the ubiquitous RSS symbol for your feeds. Within a subscription list you can tap the check to mark all articles as "read," the television returns to give you a list specific photo album, and a trashcan to delete all articles.
Decent interface for subscription management
The main page of the iPad version has sixteen buttons ranging from altering text size to sharing to managing your subscriptions. Looking deeper at the two apps, it's no wonder the names are changed, as Perfect falls well short of that name, while iReadG has some of the best reading management we've enjoyed.
This article ends up giving us a split decision.
We'll admit we were pumped by the idea of an iPad version of iReadG and had high expectations. Just how far short the iPad app fell almost tainted our experience with our precious. We still adore it on our iPhone and recommend it as far more feature rich and enjoyable to use than the other iPhone RSS readers. It does everything we want and does it neatly.
For the iPad, we'd love to join in the chorus praising Reeder. Behind its cleanly designed interface, the app packs a wallop of power. The design belies that but the UI also does what we want, which is get out of our way and let us enjoy our articles. The biggest weakness with Reeder is that it is consumption only. There is no way to add new feeds or manage your feeds from within the app. Until Reeder gets that sorted out, we have to recommend Feeddler.
We feel we've given Feeddler short shrift. It's solid; it's dependable. Sure, it isn't as flashy as the other two apps, but if you're looking for a solid Google Reader management app, then Feedler gets the job done and then some. Another notch in its favor is that its universality means one price solves all your problems, while both its competitors this week force you into separate purchases.
maximegousse
November 30, 2011 at 9:15am
Your review is good, and you pointing out that Reeder is the best is true - almsot.
You should have review Mr. Reader, which beats Reeder in the ipad (no iPhone client - yet).
The reason: its ability to open a RSS entry into Web, Mobilizer or Readability without having to clic once more as with Reeder.
rtik13
November 29, 2011 at 12:44pm
How could you overlook Mr. Reader? I'm a long-time Reeder fan, but the updates are few and far between. I switched to Mr. Reader a few days ago and haven't looked back once!
J Keirn-Swanson
November 29, 2011 at 4:11pm
rtik13,
I'm a big fan of Mr. Reader as well, however, I decided that it wouldn't be fair to pit an iPad only Google Reader up against ones that worked on both platforms. Mr. Reader has much of what I liked about Reeder with more features.
