I had the exact same concern and sent the feeddler developer an email. He replied very promptly and suggested that if I was concerned to create an alternate gmail account just for rss readers. I thought it was a great suggestion.

Yeah, sharing passwords is always worrisome these days – but then again most all the RSS apps handle authorization in roughly the same way I think. I don't recall seeing any OpenID or OpenAuth or anything similar.

*ahem*

Reeder!
Reeder!
Reeder!

🙂

Thomas and a number of our writers here are big Reeder fans as well.

(Just wanting to share my opinion 😉

On NNW – no argument here, it definitely has some major flaws. I've experienced sync issues with it. It also *still* does not support Greader shared items at all, which for me is a huge miss.

Fair enough. NNW is not terrible. The design is nice, but for me, its sync function does not work. For a while, it was getting wildly wrong numbers as to who many unread articles there were in each feed. That may now be fixed in the latest release. Biggest problem for me was the strange decision not to provide an option to see ONLY unread items in a feed. The develop insists on leaving unread items that are still in the cache (eg, starred items, shared items in some cases) in the feed. The strange result was that you would have to scroll down past already read items to get to unread items.

I think you are probably right that the problem is that there are so many different workflows people develop for how to deal with RSS feeds that it is impossible to design an app that meeets every need. Still, I think there are some design decsions (like the one I just described — and to some, perhaps less, extent, the omission of folder reading in Feeddler) that, to me at least, cannot be explained on any rational basis. (From the NNW forums, it seems many users agree, and I cannot find anyone who defends this particular design decision.)

Ah, ok – I see what you're saying now on the folders and all unread. I used folders way back when with GReader but found it cumbersome and really don't anymore – so I'd never looked for or thought about that feature.

I can see how you might find this frustrating, but I think the 'glass half full' side is that there are a number of good choices for the iPhone when it comes to RSS apps – and which one works best for you, for me, for anyone often comes down to our own favorite ways of working with RSS in general and how closely one app or other matches those.

On NetNewsWire – I would not say it's terrible. It's a very nicely designed and capable app – but I do think it is way overrated and over-priced by now. It has also got a well-deserved bad reputation when it comes to app updates.

You can read *ALL* of the items in *ALL* feeds, but you cannot read all of the items in a particular folder. One of the powerful features of google reader is that you can group feeds into folders. I usually want to read a bunch of feeds in a "priority" folder on the go, but I do not want to read all the feeds in all folders. Virtually every other reader out there gives you this option, but I cannot find it in Feeddler. If I am missing something, I would greatly appreciate being corrected.

I don't mean to overstate all of this, but the whole rss reader situation on iPhone has been very frustrating. It seems like it should be easy, but it has taken a really, really long time for anyone to get it right. For example, NetNewsWire, which has a great reputation, is, in my humble opinion, terrible on both iPhone and iPad. I feel like Byline (new version) and Reeder are just about there now. In my view, Feeddler is at least a generation behind.

"This app has some decent features, but it is missing the most basic of all features — the ability to see all of the unread items in a folder at the same time. It's insane that you can't do that in here." – Yes you can. You can either use the Unread filter button (shown above) in individual feeds to see only unread items; or go to the All Items folder and apply the same filter to see unread items from all feeds. So, what is missing in this area?

I've used NewsRack on the iPad. It's a good app, as it is on the iPhone. I've mentioned both Byline and NewsRack in past articles covering good options for iPhone RSS apps – so I've hardly ignored them. In fact, NewsRack was my favorite on the iPhone for quite a while.

I'll have to agree to disagree on this app being mediocre. I like its UI that is so similar to GReader itself, and find it the best RSS app for iPad so far (and I've tried several). I've not used the latest version of Byline and it's been a while since I've seen Reeder, so I can't speak on which features Feeddler may have that those don't. I like the features I've mentioned in the post and find the overall experience with the app to work best for me. Others' mileage on this may vary of course.

There are millions of iPhone RSS readers that sync with Google reader. Some are terrible, but some are now amazing. Byline it is latest version (that came out last week) is virtually perfect. Amazingly fast, accurate sync, folder or feed support. Reeder is also terrific — and has been getting better and better. Both have iPad versions in the works. Frankly, even NewsRack for the iPad is better right now than Feeddler.

I think most of the recommendations and reviews on this site are spot on — it is very strange that you are so in love with this mediocre app. I challenge you to point to one single thing that this thing can do that Byline or Reeder cannot.