When I reviewed Newsprint 1.0 almost two months ago, I said that the app was beautiful, but crazy slow. Refreshing your feeds took forever and a day, and even scrolling the list of feeds caused stuttering. Things have been nominally improved in 1.1: folder support is here, loading speeds have improved, and swiping on articles is easier than ever. I also learned, during this second look at the app, that Newsprint is able to add new feeds to your Google Reader list via the edit button — something I simply didn’t notice in my review of 1.0, but that I now know to be a relatively rare feature in RSS readers.
Unfortunately. these minor improvements have come too late to the party. I’m now a fan of Reeder 2.0, which loads 500+ items in about 15 seconds, as opposed to the minutes that Newsprint seems to take. In short: Newsprint would need to be a *lot* faster for me to consider using it again.
I’m also just a little concerned by the amount of time it took (two months) to implement folder support and a relatively minor speed increase, as well as the price point of the app ($5.99 normally, although Newsprint is 50% off for a week), considering Reeder and MobileRSS Pro both sell for $2.99 even without a sale. I think the folks at HashBang Studios might need to consider their pricing points and focus even more on speed for the next update, or risk staying in the shadows of faster and more affordable RSS readers.
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TAGS: Google Reader, rss reader
