Yep. I don’t want to see Youtube videos or Podcasts in my reading app. Also, there are times where I won’t look at my Reeder app for a few days. When that happens, I typically just mark all as read and move on, especially for the sources that pump out 80 articles a day. How would I do this in the new app, just scroll through 1,000 items to get to the “end”?
I tried it, not for me. In a world where a lot of us are trying to minimize screen time and distractions, the always on firehose isn’t a welcome feature.
I admire the design. He may be onto something with the opinionated timeline scroll and feed search making a feed app more accessible. Same for it as a more accessible, casual listening third party podcast client.
So just continue using Reeder and even Netnewswire. There are a lot of apps serving the traditional way.
But I welcome his new idea while I am able to just simply ignore it and “make all as read”. I am the one who oppose YouTube but want to filter out the very few channels without any opinion because on YouTube I am always recommended by those opinion videos. I don’t mean I am tempted to click to watch but their appearance on my feed can waste my time and miss some of the contents from my favourite channels (even though YouTube has a section just showing my subscription).
Interestingly, the lack of read/unread status comes from a technical constraint. Via Reeder Help (emphasis added):
Why doesn’t Reeder sync everything?
Reeder syncs only what’s essential — your subscriptions, timeline position and tagged items — to ensure faster and more efficient syncing. Uploading every item fetched by Reeder to iCloud would unnecessarily slow down the process. This is also one of the reasons why there are no unread counts or read/unread states, as maintaining accurate counts across all devices would require full syncing.
I’ve messed around with it a bit today and it’s of no use to me without folders. If I could separate e.g., tech news from academic journals via folders, though, it might be a nice experience.
Yes! Why add three first-class tags with no additional affordances? And why not give users the ability to define tags for themselves? It is always aggravating when devs do this. “My view of the world must be everyone else’s, too.”
That’s true of many carefully crafted, highly paternalistic apps. They tend to develop small, passionate, and sometimes cultish fan bases that fully share their developers’ particular preferences.
A few more user-selectable options or extensions of existing features would make their apps appealing to more people, likely increase their sales and user bases, and wouldn’t tarnish their visions in any meaningful way, but they remain convinced that they and their rabid fans are the keepers of the one true vision and that those who mostly like their apps but want a few more toggles in the settings are ignorant philistines who just don’t get it. (Looking at you, iA Writer.)
At one point I had the notion that funneling all my reading (or watching or listening) into one app would help me get my reading (or watching or listening) done by reducing friction. It sure did reduce friction: the friction that keeps me from chasing squirrels. I’ve learned that my brain is no match for a firehose. If I want to read (or watch or listen) with intention, I have to make the conscious effort to build myself a walled garden and stay there until the intentional work is done.
Everything has its place. For instance, I’ve set up a space in Arc (the browser) for all of the publications I subscribe to, and that’s the only place I read them. If I find something there that I’ll need to take notes on, I add it to Reader and do my highlighting and note taking there and port the notes to Obsidian. If it’s an article that’s good for listening to while I take a walk or do some chores, I’ll send it to Omnivore. (And … Omnivore will send a markdown version of the article to Obsidian so I can refer to it if there’s something I need to capture, review, or look up.)
Note: I really like Omnivore. I’d likely use it instead of Reader if it handled epubs in addition to PDFs.
I always hope to have a news feed in which it doesn’t manipulate me like what Threads and Facebook are doing while I don’t want to feel like having a responsibility to read all of them. No matter if this new Reeder works for me, I am glad to see a RSS reader with different ways of doing.
For YouTube, you way want to try the new Unwatched app. (It has been discussed on AppStories and Connected.) It pulls the RSS feeds of YouTube channels and nothing else, with many options.
Reeder Classic will also remain a one-time purchase with no subscription required. Changing the business model for this existing app wouldn’t feel right and I have no plans to do so.
Unless I am mistaken, Reeder seems to do the same stuff as News Explorer, in so far as both save RSS/YouTube/Reddit feeds… Reeder has more social media options, but as I don’t do All That…
Not that I can find. The new Reeder is supposed to remember your position in the timeline when you return, but that isn’t well implemented IMO. I’m looking for more visual information on timeline position, the ability to “hide” something I’ve viewed. I go back many many years with RSS and I ended up with content going back thousands of days in the new Home view. It’s a lot like going back into the kitchen and seeing all of the food you’ve ever eaten with no method for visually identifying something that is already consumed other than examining it. It’s a rough metaphor, but hopefully clear. I expect Rizzi’s evolution of the app to resolve these issues, but for now it’s a tough sell to Reeder Classic fans. I subscribed to support Rizzi but I might go back to Reeder Classic for now.
