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 2 of 4)
jsilence said 2:49AM on 1-11-2008
Hammering on RSS Feeds is generally considered unfriendly behaviour. Watch the middle part of http://machinima.com/film/view&id=275 to get an idea.
There is a good reason for this limitation. And when this really impacts your life and your perception of the world, then it might be the right time to sit back, relax and think about your lifestyle in general.
'nuf said
-jsl
Thomas said 9:30PM on 1-10-2008
I'm using Vienna since about 2 years and was very lucky. Now I use NetNewsWire because of the beast feature Vienna never had. Syncing!
But after the new update NNW loses the possibilty to sync with FTP. The is very sad, 'cause I don't want to by .mac only for the feeds.
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umijin said 9:34PM on 1-10-2008
I used Vienna for about a year, then stopped altogether when I had to be on the road for a month. I realized I was using Vienna on multiple machines (and News Fire on one) - with no way to synchronize the feeds I read.
So, I started using NetVibes and haven't looked back since. NetVibes works well with Safari, plus I can also monitor my Hotmail and Gmail accounts. I can even use NetVibes on my iPod Touch, though it only remembers my subscriptions - not what I've marked read.
I tried Google Reader early on, and was bothered a bit by the interface. Perhaps it can do all that NetVibes can do, plus more, as it must have been updated since I tried it.
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Ethem Tolga said 9:47PM on 1-10-2008
I just use RSS Menu. Reading RSS has never been that easy.
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brian Mita said 9:50PM on 1-10-2008
NewsFire may be all well and good, but the developer, Mr. Watanabe, hasn't been too popular with some of tuaw's readers lately.
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/07/inquisitor-raises-some-questions/
I guess you have to wonder why it wasn't included in the comparo.
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tg said 1:16AM on 1-11-2008
Presumably because it isn't free?
Macskeeball said 9:51PM on 1-10-2008
I prefer the simplicity of RSS Menu to a full blown interface. It's similar to Livemarks in Firefox, but better.
Basically, it's a little icon that sits in your menubar. When you click on it you have feeds, folders, and separators. Each feed is a submenu of articles, and when you choose a title that seems interesting the web page opens in your default browser.
http://www.edot-studios.com/webgroups2/index.php?menu_item=212
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ME said 10:00PM on 1-10-2008
According to Mr. Wantanabe, as of lastnight in an email conversation, Newsfire is dead, and is no longer in development, probably due to Netnewswire becoming free!
This sucks for anyone like myself who paid for the license and lifetime upgrades! what a scam!
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Chris said 10:48PM on 1-10-2008
Well that stinks.... I really like NewFire as my default reader. I never really liked the "like Mail" way that most other apps worked. I just tried NNW again (I try it after every new version/beta) and it still isn't for me. Don't get me wrong, there are things I like sync, dead feed searching and speed. But I just really like how NF displays articles and feeds, just seems to get out of my way more.
Mark S said 11:57PM on 1-10-2008
That's interesting. I saw something on his blog not long ago about NewsFire 2 coming out soon. I guess it makes sense though. His main competitor is free now. NewsFire has always been competitively priced with NetNewsWire. I don't think he can compete anymore. It'll be interesting to see what happens now with some of the other paid RSS readers such as NewsLife.
artifex said 10:52AM on 1-11-2008
Put your thinking-cap on. :)
There's no scam unless he promised you upgrades for your lifetime, not the product's.
Xander said 10:09PM on 1-10-2008
I had used Vienna for the better part of a year, from the time when is was a very minimalist reader.
Through the updates it just seemed to be getting clunkier. The feed updating isn't only incredibly slow, the program freezes up when you do it.
When NetNewsWire turned freeware I downloaded it just to see what all the hype was about. Within five minutes Vienna had lost it's precious space in the dock (very valuable since I'm a huge Quicksilver user) and been replaced with NetNewsWire. I haven't even started Vienna since.
NNW all the way.
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Kilgore said 10:57PM on 1-10-2008
Xander, I agree with you totally.
I was happy with Vienna as a free project, but when I tried Net Newswire it instantly became my RSS reader. The ability to sync between all my machines, my Blackberry (using Newsgator Go!) and from any browser (using their web client) is the biggest difference. I had written a couple Automator actions to copy and retrieve Vienna's data file to my iDisk on launch and quit - but this is true syncing.
Also, registering with Newsgator is now free, so the lack of FTP syncing shouldn't be a problem.
I did launch Vienna once more - just to export my feeds.
Richard Neal said 10:31PM on 1-10-2008
The reason NetNewsWire only allows 30-minute or longer refresh intervals is because it's bad practice. Do you think people want their servers hammered every 5 minutes? I sure wouldn't. According to Brent Simmons, developer of NetNewsWire, the recommended minimal refresh rate is 1 hour, so even 30 minutes is cutting it. Is news really that important that you can't wait half an hour?
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artifex said 10:57AM on 1-11-2008
GMail suggests 10 minutes for RSS updates of mail. But I agree, otherwise. I saw one site yesterday say that they'd ban the IP of people going more quickly than 30. If you want faster refreshes, at least load the page itself (and turn off AdBlocker) so they can get some revenue off it. Bandwidth and cycles do cost.
Ken Villines said 11:34PM on 1-10-2008
I personally loved NewsMac back in the day (4 years ago). I also have used Vienna, NewsFire, and RSSOwl.
The Skinny on most mac readers:
Vienna - Free
RSSOwl - Free, Open Source, Linux, Mac, Windows
NewsLife (aka NewsMac) - Cheap, gr8 UI, gr8 workflow
NewsFire - Cheap, easy to use, standard mac UI
NetNewsWire - Free, Server backup, standard mac UI
Cheers...Ken
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mentalsticks said 10:44PM on 1-10-2008
Really, does nobody care at all about the NNW privacy issue, i.e. their collecting 'attention data'?
I do.
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Ian said 10:55PM on 1-10-2008
Odd question for anyone who has used both readers. I have used vienna for the last 6mo and like it.
I really like the fact that you can read a new article and delete it, no longer in the folder.
I am no noob, but I cannot seem to do this in NNW? I know you can read the articles and hide the read ones, but I want to have each feed as a seperate folder. I also don't want a folder where all the feeds go to and then I can search them. If I like the article, it can stay in the folder for reference, if I don't like it, it goes to the trash. Never to been seen again.
I also know that NNW allows you to have the article deleted when the blogger/whomever no longer publishes it. I don't want to be at their mercy.
This is my main reason for using vienna, but I want to use NNW for all the other reasons stated in the article and other reviews.
Any thoughts?
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Jonas said 12:44AM on 1-11-2008
two words: google reader
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Bryan Hughes said 10:55PM on 1-10-2008
I'm calling crap on this one. Granted, NewsFire isn't more popular than NetNewsWire, but its certainly more popular than Vienna and it deserves to be part of the discussion. I've used NNW and the synching feature is overrated when you consider that you're required to use the NewsGator website to read your feeds online. IMO, Google Reader is a much better solution, despite the lack of synching.
Long story short, to exclude it from the conversation is a questionable oversight. Is this TUAW rubbing its thumb in the eye of Dave Watanabe for the lame "controversy" about Inquisitor? If so, shame on you.
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