Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software
NetNewsWire vs. Vienna
RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is becoming an ever more popular way to read online content quickly and without having to visit individual websites. As RSS feeds becomes more popular, so do the RSS readers that allow you to access the feeds. In my opinion, the two best RSS readers on the Mac are NetNewsWire and Vienna. Now that NetNewsWire costs the same as Vienna (i.e. nothing), what better time to take a look at what each has to offer?
NetNewsWire (Free, NewsGator)
NetNewsWire combines speed with ease of use (and of course, power). NNW boasts a clean user interface that's not unlike iTunes or Mail. You are able to create multiple folders to contain your RSS Feeds (for instance, I have a three folders: Technology, News, and Blogs -- this allows me to sort all of my RSS feeds into different categories). Two features set NetNewsWire apart from Vienna: feed syncing and website thumbnail views. Feed syncing allows you to synchronize your feeds with NewsGator servers, FTP, or .Mac. When you read your feeds on two or more Macs keeping all your feeds in sync is a nice feature to have. The thumbnail view allows you to see a current snapshot of the website whose feed you're reading; this allows you to keep up with the design of the site you're reading.
Pros: clean Apple-like user interface, feed syncing on multiple Macs or for backup purposes, thumbnail view, AppleScriptable, quickly refreshes feeds
Cons: feeds can only automatically be refreshed a minimum of once every 30 minutes
Vienna (Free, Open Community)
Vienna isn't too different from NetNewsWire; it includes a good user interface, smart folders, and built-in browsing abilities. One of the features that definitely sets Vienna apart from NetNewsWire is it's ability to refresh feeds with great frequency (every 5 minutes vs. every 30 minutes). This feature alone lets you get your news much more quickly, but can, often times, drain bandwidth. Even though you can refresh feeds more frequently, Vienna downloads these feeds slower than NNW.
Pros: ability to refresh feeds more frequently, feeds can automatically be refreshed once every 5 minutes
Cons: interface can sometimes be buggy, no feed syncing, no thumbnail view, slow to download feeds
Speed
Let's see how the speed of each stacks up. For this test, I imported a new OPML file into both NetNewsWire and Vienna; it contained 76 feeds. Below is the speed comparison of both news readers.
Vienna downloaded 1464 articles in 49.5 seconds.
NetNewsWire downloaded 1464 articles in 17.5 seconds.
As you can see, NetNewsWire was the fastest in downloading the articles.
Which is better?
If I had to chose, I would say, both! Since NetNewsWire and Vienna are both free, either one is a good option. Try out both, see which one you like better -- with both being free, you can't really go wrong, now can you?
[Update:] Many people in the comments were talking about NewsFire and some "reasons" why we didn't include it in the post. I would like to clarify on that topic. We abstained from including NewsFire simply because we wanted to compare two FREE feed readers.
Also, some people have pointed out Google Reader as another viable option for reading RSS feeds. Google Reader, when combined with Google Gears and Google Reader Notifier, can offer many of the advantages of a full-featured local application.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
brian Mita said 8:45PM on 1-10-2008
at least they ain't newsfire!
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drgardner said 9:19PM on 1-10-2008
What's the problem with NewsFire? I use it, and find it to be a great app.
Rebus said 11:36PM on 1-10-2008
The problem with Newsfire is that the developer doesn't believe in supporting his apps. Well, he believes in monitoring emails for genuine bugs, but he doesn't do what good developers do: Reply to every support request, no matter how much you think they're "wasting your time". At the end of the day, if you expect people to buy your app, someone needs to be there to help even the most annoying customers. Simple as that.
Victor Agreda Jr said 9:11PM on 1-10-2008
I use both as well-- one for sort of "personal" blogs (friends and such) and one for "professional" use. NNW = pro to me, in part because of the features around pruning feeds.
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mathrocks said 9:08PM on 1-10-2008
I had been using vienna for the past year or so but upon upgrading to Leopard vienna would quit whenever I was behind a proxy (at Uni/work). Just got netnewswire and have finally got my feeds back at uni, although that means I probably won't be as productive now :-(
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ennislaw said 9:14PM on 1-10-2008
Nah, the best RSS reader is NewFire, hands down!
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jtpoulin said 9:23PM on 1-10-2008
Hey I use Newsfire, and I think its awesome!
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Galley said 9:18AM on 1-11-2008
NewsFire is pretty much flawless, but I might check out NNW once I get my iPhone. Syncing feeds would be a great feature.
Galley said 9:39AM on 1-11-2008
OK, so I tried out NNW, and I hated it. I click on "New Items" in NewsFire, and then I use the arrow keys to navigate between them. I get to see the real story, not just some lousy text.
bookemdano said 9:12PM on 1-10-2008
ok, Google Reader user here. Why should I switch to a native app over Reader?
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Bryan said 9:20PM on 1-10-2008
Agreed. Why should I switch over from Google Reader?
fordred said 6:18AM on 1-11-2008
I also use reader because then I can check the feeds out on my iphone with the mobile readers clean and quick interface
Alahmnat said 9:33PM on 1-10-2008
I think it's just a question of what you prefer. I, personally, dislike using my browser for things other than just browsing the internet (and conversely, I dislike using websites for things like mail, RSS reading, and bookmark management, mainly because of their often-kludgy UIs). While I originally used Safari's RSS reader in Tiger, I rather quickly outgrew it and went looking for a better solution. Honestly, I never really liked Google Reader... its interface is just *too* spartan.
The biggest reason I prefer a desktop client is that it can (and in both of these cases, does) support Dock badging, so I can tell if I have new articles to read without having to stop what I'm doing to look at a different tab or window of my browser. The reason I prefer NNW over Vienna specifically is that NNW syncs with NewsGator's online service for free, and I can thus check up on my feeds at work using their browser-based client, and anything I read will still be read when I get home.
Ultimately, though, it's just personal preference, and I can certainly understand the convenience of using Google Reader as a universal, go-anywhere feed reader, in which case, you may not need a desktop client like NNW, Vienna, or NewsFire. :)
Sammy said 10:41PM on 1-10-2008
For offline reading? I'm not always connected when I'm out with my MBP but NNW has many feeds already downloaded for me. Some feeds aren't full articles, but many are.
Chris Brummel said 11:13PM on 1-10-2008
Why a desktop reader?:
http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/why-use-a-deskt.html
Mr. Dave said 9:41AM on 1-11-2008
Agreed - I use Google Reader now as well. Adding the OS X Style from Hicks Design (http://userstyles.org/styles/2318) really makes a difference. I don't know if I'll ever go back to a desktop reader.
Eli said 2:42PM on 1-11-2008
A few months ago I wrote the beginnings of a Core Data-based Cocoa client for Google Reader, hoping to have the best of both worlds. Sadly, I have not had the time to keep working on it. If anyone wants to work on it, I'm willing to pass along the source:
http://elidourado.wordpress.com/contact/
starwxrwx said 9:13PM on 1-10-2008
I've never found the interface of Vienna to be buggy, and I use it daily.
I much prefer the 'Condensed' 3-pane layout to that shown above, and you can customise how the articles are displayed (my favourite is the 'Tyger' style).
Also if you click the top left pill bubble, the search bar goes away and the Vienna interface becomes very sleek and attractive, maximum feed space!
Smart folders rock, too.
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Sidep said 9:20PM on 1-10-2008
can you add leopard's mail into the list?
pro: forwarding feeds to peers, you can now treat feeds like
webpages, and rather than find the share and fill out that garbage,
you can just forward it--its in your inbox! an extension of this
point is that its just once place to look for everything, quite nice.
cons: sometimes slow, sometimes clunky, but its still in its infancy,
apple will definitely beef up the interface probably smart folders
etc. the way they have all their other things; if there is such a
thing as the folders and i have overlooked it--even better.
just my $0.02
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Mikaelf said 9:29PM on 1-10-2008
I have a Newsfire license aswell. Can't someone find a way to make NNW update more often than 30 minutes? Must be an easy hack, maybe some plist-editing?
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