Filed under: Software, Freeware, Internet Tools
NewsFire goes free
Coming hot on the heels of the 1.5 release, Dave Watanabe's popular RSS reader, NewsFire is now free. David posted this on his blog:
"After much internal debate, I've made the decision that as of today, NewsFire is totally free. No feature restrictions, no ads, no cut-down 'lite' version... this is the real deal."
Newsfire is just the latest in the growing trend of free offline RSS readers available for the Mac. In January, leading reader app NetNewsWire became a free program, joining Vienna, Safari and even Mail.app as alternatives to the 800 lb gorilla known as Google Reader (also free).
Whether or not some of the other freeware alternatives will be able to sustain development without the support of a company like Newsgator (which owns NetNewsWire) remains to be seen, but in the meantime, I'm loving all these new RSS choices that don't deplete my wallet.
Although David Watanabe has been a controversial figure in the Mac community, he does make beautiful looking software. If you aren't already married to your RSS reader, or you have been waiting for NewsFire to have full Leopard support, now is your chance to try it out.
Thanks Carlo!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
mikelite said 10:52AM on 3-01-2008
"After much internal debate..." - how many personalities does this guy have?
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caixapostal said 10:20PM on 3-01-2008
Actually 3: the arrogant, the impatient and the jerk. On the other hand, he promised "lifetime of upgrades and updates for those who buy Acquisition" and now that v2 is out, he argues that "since v2 of Acquisition is whole new program, you can upgrade to it paying". He IS an ass.
ME said 11:00AM on 3-01-2008
http://www.midnightapps.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=341
It just got a whole lot worse with the "Donald Trump" feature!
You cant even make this stuff up it's so bad.
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jtpoulin said 11:31AM on 3-01-2008
I needed to renew my license in 5 days sweet!
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Ed said 11:00AM on 3-01-2008
I've tried NetNewsWire, Vienna, Safari and mail. I always end up going back to Google Reader, though. It's the simplest solution I've found to keep all my feeds in sync between multiple machines.
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Joppe said 3:26PM on 3-02-2008
Yeah, I wish one of the readers would allow me to sync with my Google reader account.
aleenm88 said 11:01AM on 3-01-2008
that mothefu... again!!! screws me!
I bought newsfire and now is free.
He is the least serious developer i have ever known
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Mark S said 6:08PM on 3-01-2008
I bought NetNewsWire and now it's free. What's your point? Neither would be free now without paying customers who enjoy using the software and wanted to support it at the time they made the purchase. You should feel good that your purchase allows even more people to enjoy using the software that I imagine you love.
Mark S said 6:08PM on 3-01-2008
I bought NetNewsWire and now it's free. What's your point? Neither would be free now without paying customers who enjoy using the software and wanted to support it at the time they made the purchase. You should feel good that your purchase allows even more people to enjoy using the software that I imagine you love.
ME said 11:02AM on 3-01-2008
Once again Dave screws over his paying customers!!!
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Jack said 11:05AM on 3-01-2008
You people who are complaining that you've already bought it and now its free, get over it! It's perfectly within the rights of any entity to make a product free without compensating paying customers. That's the risk that you take when you buy something.
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E.T.Cook said 11:06AM on 3-01-2008
The reason he decided to make it free is because it is vastly inferior to NetNewsWire which is also free.
Newsfire might be good for those individuals that subscribe to a handful of feeds, but starts showing its weakness quickly as your feed count raises.
Plus…the support is garbage.
NWW is the way to go, avoid this steaming pile at all costs…free or not.
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Dale Gardner said 11:44AM on 3-01-2008
Steaming pile? Seems pretty harsh. In response to your assertion that NewsFire is only good for a handful of feeds, that's certainly not my experience. I track 192 pretty active feeds, along with about half a dozen search feeds. No problems.
Frankly, one of the great things about Newsfire is that it allows me to process so many posts in a really rapid fire fashion - just bang on the space bar and I go through all new posts, with another keystroke to open interesting items. No need for poking around with a mouse, like I have to do with Google Reader.
scott said 11:56AM on 3-01-2008
um. you can just "bang on" the J key with google reader. and the V key opens it if you're interested.
Dale Gardner said 12:11PM on 3-01-2008
@scott So it does. Thanks for the tip.
E.T.Cook said 12:13PM on 3-01-2008
@Dale
NWW has this too, and could handle all 500 feeds that I threw at it. Newsfire on the other hand just hiccuped and crashed.
xtremesniper said 4:05PM on 3-01-2008
Steaming pile? Wow.. that IS harsh. It's not a bad program. In fact I used it for quite some time before I switched to NetNewsWire when it went free.
The only reason why he's making it free is because nobody would want to pay for it anymore now that almost every other RSS reader is free.
Daniel Tull said 4:39PM on 3-01-2008
Google Reader also has the little bookmarklet thing to go to the webpages of the articles in the feed. I cmd+1 (first bookmark in my bookmarks bar) in safari through my feeds and I get the original article pop up.
It is a little disorientating at first to jump from bbc to tuaw, engadget and such, but it works a treat. I hardly ever go to the Reader page actually.
Bill G said 11:20AM on 3-01-2008
I find Bloglines option to read an entire post [if the author allows] causes me to use it vs. Google Reader. However, Bloglines does suffer occasional, maddening outages, and Google Reader always seems to work.
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Beanie said 11:24AM on 3-01-2008
I don't think anything will be able to pull me from Google Reader. Especially not an app by Dave "ultracrippleware" Watanabe.
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