Filed under: Retail, Software, Internet Tools
NewsLife out of beta
ThinkMac has announced that their RSS newsreader, NewsLife, has hit 1.0 and come out of beta (and as you can see above, they couldn't have chosen a better site to show it off with, if I may say so myself).
David did a quick rundown on the app last week, and found it to be "a simple, streamlined app for reading your favorite news sites and blogs." There is a cool feature called the News Bin, which seems like an easy drag-and-drop clipping interface. The obvious comparison to NewsLife is NetNewsWire, of course, but NewsLIfe appears to be filling the role of the simpler, cheaper (€12, or about $16 US) alternative to that old favorite. You can pick the 1.0 release up right now from ThinkMac.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Devin Lussier said 6:49PM on 7-11-2007
It looks pretty much identical to NewsFire, which I used up until very recently. I've been using Vienna lately which is fantastic - so many more options and I really like the three column interface. The fact that it's free and open source pretty much seals the deal for me. I haven't started NewsFire once since I started using Vienna and I don't really see a reason to try Newslife.
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Mateo said 7:43PM on 7-11-2007
I prefer Google Reader.
I can read all my feed without update an installed news reader in my computers.
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WyldKard said 9:37PM on 7-11-2007
How is this, or programs like it, better than using Google Reader, which I can load up on every Internet-connected computer I come across?
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flec65 said 11:44PM on 7-11-2007
I tried Newslife at work for 2 days on my Power Mac G5. NewsLife is a really beautiful app with a lot of polish but it has some minor UI glitches. On several occasions I couldn't get rid of the green dot (unread indicator) for a last item on a feed even after it was clicked. Moreover, NewsLife leaks memory. After 12 hours of use and only 8 feeds, the used RAM raised from 27 Mb to 50 Mb and kept growing. During this time, NetNewsWire Lite footprint has been stable at around 28 Mb with the exact same feeds. I still prefer NetNewsWire Lite or NewsFire (my home reader) as streamlined readers. The preview of feeds on both are more enjoyable and navigating through feeds with the space bar is the killer feature for me.
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Chris said 2:00AM on 7-12-2007
I used to be a big Vienna fan but my iPhone has sent me back to Google Reader. Hard to picture why I would pay for a newsreader with both of those on
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Johan Nilsson said 4:17AM on 7-12-2007
Nice app, but I'll stick to NewsFire until they implement Smart feeds in NewsLife. But when that is done, I will concider a switch.
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Nicolas said 4:25AM on 7-12-2007
Hi Mike, I'm intending to contact you. How may I do?
Thanks,
Nicolas
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schroeter.david said 10:01AM on 7-12-2007
I honestly don't like any of the RSS options out there. I tried Google Reader, but it is just too slow and REALLY buggy. Ever have the problem of repeated articles? Or stories suddenly becoming unread even though they are over a week old? Not to mention slow-to-a-crawl scrolling.
Although I could see myself using NewsLife, I want to wait until something bigger/better comes along.
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Alexander said 11:03AM on 7-12-2007
What does this have over google reader?
1 word. Search.
Some irony in there as well. I wish this client supported syncing with google reader then i'd be set. Now im torn between an amazing online client (greader) or an awesome offline client (this) with no sync between then two :|
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mark said 12:23PM on 7-12-2007
To all you guys who are saying 'what does this have over google reader'.....
Do we want to support mac devs or not? Keep bitching and all you'll have is google apps, no competition, nothing. Google will make every app you ever need.
If you want google to be in every part of your computing life then keep talking.
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macboyinsf said 10:25PM on 7-12-2007
I totally agree with you, mark!
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WyldKard said 3:55AM on 8-10-2007
Whether or not we support Mac devs has no bearing in this conversation. Rather, we're discussing what offline news readers offer over Google's always-accessible version. It doesn't matter whether or not Google Reader is a Google product, or a third-party product from another Mac developer. What matters is that online readers are inherently more convenient, since they don't require installing a new application, and can be accessed wherever a user is.
The whole "Mac developer vs non-Mac developer" argument is infantile; there's absolutely no reason a current Mac developer couldn't create an online product better than Google Reader, and no one should care that it'd be non-exclusive to OS X.
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