Depending where you are in the world, iOS 9 may have just brought you Apple News: an app that gathers articles from your preferred news sources, and pops them into one handy app. It's good, we like it, and we like it so much that
MacNN has been part of it since day one -- but it isn't for people who read hundreds of articles or thousands of words a day:
Reeder 3.0 is. Actually, Reeder 2.0 was too, and even back in the Stone Age of Reeder 1.0, it was the newsreading app to beat.
Just to be clear on two things: starting with how plenty of other apps have tried to beat Reeder, and our belief that none have succeeded is based purely on subjective addiction to this software. Let that addition tell you something, though -- we're not so wedded to it that we don't try every single such new app the second it comes out. We seem to keep coming back to Reeder. Reeder 3.0 for OS X is the latest version of the newsreading app, and it brings new features to an old favorite.
The other thing to be clear about is that Reeder is a -- whisper it -- RSS app. There is something alchemic about RSS that draws some of us in, and repels others. If you have yet to succumb to RSS, then there's also a fair chance you've simply never heard of it. It stubbornly refuses to slip into the mainstream, yet what it does is so useful. Rather than you going to one, a dozen, 50 websites a day, RSS brings news and articles from all of them directly to you.
Every RSS app shows you the headlines and a few sentences; every RSS app can show you entire articles if the host website is happy with that, and every RSS app can take you through to the site if you want to read more.
What differentiates RSS apps is how easily you can add a new news source, how quickly you can get to the articles you want, and also just whether they look good. We'll always argue that software needs to look good because you're going to have your nose in it all day, but with reading, especially, a well-designed app stands out.
Reeder is quite minimalist and constrained, with few display options to fiddle with, and just a very good reading experience. Reeder 3.0 is redesigned for OS X El Capitan, but really the differences are so subtle we're not convinced they're there -- but we're okay with that. It looks great enough already.
What's visibly changed with Reeder 3.0 is that it now has support for sharing extensions. So, as well as getting all these news articles, it can now help you send them out too. File an article to Evernote, or send it to OmniFocus as a task, all with a tap or two.
It works with El Capitan's Split Screen mode, too, so if you are using it for research then it's handy having it alongside your notes. There have been bug fixes to do with Full Screen mode, too; Reeder 3.0 has a smaller, shrunken, even more minimalist option, and that now works with Apple's Full Screen.
Reeder keeps it as easy as it ever was to add a new news source -- it's harder than in Apple News or Clipboard, but it's about as quick as it can be in an RSS reader. Tap the plus button, and paste in a website URL; Reeder goes off to find whether that site supports RSS, and if so what the address is. You'll sometimes get offered the choice of adding an RSS or an Atom feed, and in the last 10 years of using this we have never bothered to find out what Atom means. Just click on RSS.
Sometimes, you also get offered several different news feeds from the same place. These can be different sections of a news site, such as the Sport or Technology areas, and your choice there is down to your personal taste. However, it's also common to be offered the chance to subscribe to the comments on a website. We just said the word "subscribe," but this is action of saying you want to always hear from that news site, it isn't in the sense of you having to pay.
This is starting to become a Hands On of RSS rather than specifically of Reeder, but we do seem to treat them as interchangeable. Reeder 3.0 for OS X still does not feel as fast and natural as Reeder for iOS does to us, but that's as likely to be down to how we read most news on the hoof. If you read news enough to find Apple News or Flipboard so busy with graphics and so light on the number of news sources available, go get into RSS -- and we'd say that means go get into Reeder 3.0.
Reeder 3.0 requires OS X 10.10 or later, and
costs $10 on the Mac App Store.
Who is Reeder 3.0 for:
You like news, whether keeping yourself up to date or researching specific topics, and the time it takes to find articles is a chore. This is for you. When we're boiling the kettle for tea, we're reading news on Reeder.
Who is Reeder 3.0 not for:
People do get put off the apparent technical complexity of RSS, and we wouldn't recommend you face your fears just to get this one app -- unless you are a news junkie, in which case you will thank us and your therapist.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
Readers: do you have an app that you'd like to see us review? Developers: do you want us to take a look at your app? Send your suggestions to our Tips email.
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