I'm a big fan of RSS (well, generally Atom, these days...) feeds, especially on the move. Brilliant for passing boring train journeys and so on.
Until recently, I've been using Google Reader for my mobile feed reading needs.
It's quite nice, but has a few quirks. It can be slow to load on a not-so-fast connection, especially EDGE, and navigation is slightly slow and clunky. And then, of course, if you're reading an article and click a link, it'll open a new browser window. This is generally fine, but if the new page happens to have lots of graphics, it'll tend to push Reader out of memory, causing it to reload disconcertingly upon return, losing my place in the article, and hiding it; after all, I looked at it, so it's read now! And, well, it just doesn't have that native feel.
I tried NetNewsWire for the iPhone, as I'd been pretty impressed with it on the desktop. It's generally nice, but slow, slow, slow. The UI is slow, syncing with Google Reader is slow (though the author is
doing something about this), and, unfortunately, this just makes it too much of a pain to use. It's probably fine on a 3GS, but I still have a lowly 3G.
Enter
Reeder. Reeder is in principle very much the same sort of thing as NetNewsWire; it's a phone-based client which syncs with Google Reader. The difference is, that where NetNewsWire is, on my older device, unusably slow, Reeder is perfectly fast and pleasant to use.
There are some quirks:
Note the thing at the top, where, by rights, the clock and network status things should live. This goes away when syncing is done, but it's very odd, and I can't help feeling that the traditional little spinning wheel would have been better. Speaking of the wheel, this is about the only iPhone app I have seen which uses the network where that wheel
doesn't put in an appearance; I was actually under the impression that a progress indicator of some sort was mandatory under the HIG, but Reeder doesn't use one when loading inline images, so presumably it must be allowed. Personally, I miss it.
Here's another oddity.
This is a webpage in the inevitable built-in browser. Now, the builtin browser is in many ways a good thing, as it saves you from having to go out to Mobile Safari, and come back again. This is why so many comms apps have it. This looks exactly like the browser in Meebo, Tweetie and countless other apps; it's just a UIWebView with some controls. But there's a difference. Note the button on the bottom right. In every other arrangement like this I've seen, that jumps out to Safari. Here...
It opens up a little window which allows you to share the link on Twitter, save it on various services, and so on. This is all very well, but sometimes I just want to see it in a proper browser; if nothing else UIWebViews embedded in apps can be slow, presumably due to memory starvation, and besides, it's sometimes nice to have multiple browser windows. You can't do that here. You
can, if you like, copy the link before you go to it, by holding down on it; you can then paste it in Mobile Safari. This seems overly awkward, though, and it's not like there isn't space for a button to open Safari on that view.
On a similar topic, what happens if you close the app while half-way through reading an item? In some apps, when you come back, the item will still be there; Apple recommends this approach where practical. This is even the case with the Google Reader webapp, as long as Safari doesn't take it into its head to kick it out of memory in the meantime. Here, however, you're back to the home screen, and, of course, because you looked at it, the feed item is deemed read, and is gone.
I sound like I'm complaining a lot, but really, this is a brilliant app, one of the best I've seen. It's certainly now my feedreader of choice. It's just that a few little touches could make it so much better...