iPhone’s missing feed reader →

Shawn Blanc takes a look at the best RSS readers on the App Store, and comes home disappointed:

Up until today, all of my software reviews have been about programs which I find fantastic. But today I’m trying to get out there that I see a chance for improvement in the iPhone App market. But the only way I know how to pinpoint the opportunity is to highlight those who are trying to meet it, and (in my opinion) not quite hitting the mark. It’s not that I have only negative things to say about the following apps, it’s just not all moonbeams and rainbows. […]

My ideal feed reader app would look like some sort of marriage between Tweetie 2, Instapaper, and Reeder. It would have the sounds and UI elegance of Tweetie 2, the typographic and state saving bliss of Instapaper, and the uniqueness of Reeder. (For bonus points it would swipe the swipe-top-navigation-bar-to-go-home feature from Tweetie 2.)

I’d say that it’s not enough to just have the UI worked on—the app/service needs to be able to filter out junk, and emphasize what’s important as well—much like Fever does. No amount of UI polish would rid you of having to deal with 20+ stories on the latest iPhone OS update.

Personally, I’ve given up on RSS. At least as my primary news source. I hate unread counters, and RSS is one surefire way of having to deal with a whole lot of unread items. I’ve deleted all the popular news blogs from my Google Reader, which I know I’ll check daily using traditional bookmarks. I like reading content the way the content owners present it, instead of going through monotonous text and images. Besides, all the news hits twitter way before your RSS reader would beep. For opinionated pieces, half of the ‘respected nerds’ use Tumblr, so it’s hard to miss their posts on my dashboard (again, no unread counters there). I’ve only subscribed to those sites which are infrequently updated, unimportant, which I peruse through when I’m lazing around, using Reeder.