Newsstand is another of the native iPhone RSS reader apps I ‘ve been trying out over the last several weeks “ curious to see if there is anything that can stack up against the Google Reader web app. This app ‘s description in the App Store tells us that it is a ‘full-featured RSS reader for your iPhone with a unique interface ‘.
Some of its key features are:
- Automatic feed discovery
- Organization of feeds in folders
- Subscriptions can be imported from Google Reader, Bloglines, or OPML files
- Sharing via email, Twitter, or Delicious.com
- Themes for customizable display of articles
What Does It Do?
Newsstand is best thought of as a ‘standalone ‘ RSS reader “ as it lets you import your feeds data from various sources (and even export them via email as a form of backup), but does not synchronize with any desktop or online client.
What that means is that while it can pull in all your subscriptions from Bloglines, Google Reader, or an OPML file (the standard for import / export of feed subscription information), there ‘s no on-going connection or link to anywhere. So when you read items in Newsstand, Bloglines, for example, won ‘t know about it and will still show them as unread. For Google Reader users, the same applies “ and you also cannot star or share items, or see your starred or shared items.
If you only keep up with feeds on the iPhone this may be an acceptable solution “ but if you are a heavy feeds user on a desktop as well, this may be a deal breaker.
What Does It Do Well?
Those import options mentioned above “ Google Reader, Bloglines, and via OPML files “ are about all you could ask for. It works with two of the most popular RSS applications around, and any RSS app worth its salt should have an export to OPML ability, so it covers all the bases for getting your existing feeds into Newsstand.
The app also offers a small set of feeds to get you started, and it ‘s a nice selection, covering a good variety of topics. It includes feeds from the BBC, New York Times, Lifehacker, Wired, Engadget, and the Dilbert comic site. You can choose to remove these feeds if they don ‘t appeal, but I found them a nice addition.
The export function is a quick and useful method for backing up your subscriptions, in case you have to restore your phone or remove and re-add this app. The export function lets you send an email to yourself, that includes a link. To restore your feeds, just tap that link and they ‘re imported into Newsstand. This works well.
When you are looking to add a feed manually, you can use a site ‘s URL, you don ‘t have to know it ‘s full feed URL (which is generally much longer). So, for instance, if we just enter ‘gizmodo.com ‘ it will discover available feeds and let you tap to select them
What ‘s Not So Good?
If you have Google Reader feeds, in addition to sync not being available, it also just handles them badly in general. It always shows me unread items in various feeds that I ‘ve actually read weeks or even months ago.
Newsstand offers a landscape view that mimics a bookshelf or magazine rack to display your list of feeds. Just as I did with the landscape ‘3D Touch ‘ view offered in smartRSS, I ‘ve found this landscape option to be a novelty sort of feature, and not very useful. This is partly because I think I prefer portrait view anyway for feed reading “ but also because it just doesn ‘t present the information as well, for the purposes of scanning through feeds quickly.
It also often fails to auto-adjust when you tilt the phone to landscape or portrait mode.
The app ‘s inline browser is OK, but not wonderful. One thing it does not do very well is size graphics in a feed item. For example, photos at the top of an article are often sized so large that it takes horizontal scrolling to see all of them, and you can ‘t see any beginning lines of article text without scrolling either
Newsstand also offers some theming options, for customizing how feed items are displayed. I have two things I don ‘t like about this. The first is that the action button for accessing this is in a stupid place. You have to be in an individual feed item to see it, despite the fact the setting will then apply to all feed items in all feeds. That makes no sense to me.
My second problem with the themes is much more subjective “ I just find them very ugly. Making feed items use a typewriter or ‘notepad ‘ font, for instance, is just not something I fancy.
The app ‘s icons / action buttons are very clumsy and non-intuitive. In the above screencap, you can see the rightward-facing arrow at the right of the bottom nav bar. To me, this looks like fast forward, maybe skip to next feed item. In fact, it is the button to load this feed item in the app ‘s inline browser. Why not just use something that looks like a Safari icon, as we ‘re accustomed to???
Overall
If you ‘re after a standalone RSS app for the iPhone, then Newsstand is a decent option. For standalone purposes, it has a good feature set, and a nice set of default feeds to get you started if you ‘re just getting into RSS.
If you ‘re a Google Reader user, this is probably not a viable solution, as you won ‘t be able to keep desktop and iPhone in sync very effectively (and not at all if you use starring and sharing within Reader).
You can find Newsstand in the App Store, at a price of $4.99.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS:
