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BigMark · Mar 1, 2003, 06:12 PM

I've been trying out MT Newswatcher 3.2 for a while, seeing as I used to use it in OS 9.

I was wondering what news readers others use in OS X? I'm looking for a good Cocoa app which is fast, renders text well and is easy to use.
I'd prefer not to use Entourage, as I'm on a PowerBook G3/500, so the smaller the app, the better.

Any suggestions?

pobodysnerfect · Mar 1, 2003, 06:45 PM

Thoth.

ReggieX · Mar 2, 2003, 12:57 PM

Thoth, seconded. It's not Cocoa, but it's rock solid and easily handles groups with 10s of thousands of posts, like multimedia and MP3 groups. It's not free, but it's worth the cash.

Jerommeke · Mar 2, 2003, 01:41 PM

Thoth, thirded

I absolutely love it. It is what usenet is ment like, in my opinion, pure, reliable, and fast. Please have a look at it

milhouse · Mar 2, 2003, 02:59 PM

Me Likie Thoth. Thoth Gud.

engaged · Mar 2, 2003, 04:46 PM

Another vote for Thoth...

Dale Sorel · Mar 2, 2003, 05:39 PM

If you want something Cocoa, I'd give Halime a try.

mishap · Mar 2, 2003, 11:45 PM

I would keep MT-Newswatcher for mac, but i use NewsBin Pro for windows.

cutterjohn · Mar 5, 2003, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by mishap:
I would keep MT-Newswatcher for mac, but i use NewsBin Pro for windows.

alternatives:
1- Thoth, great for binaries, crap for text, the interface is a prime example of how NOT to implement one on a mac, crashes fairly frequently

2 - Netscape, sort of outlook expresslike in interface, not bad but a little slow

3 - Halime - promising, but tends to crash

4 - Pan(GTK based, requires X11) Outlook express like again, pretty good for an X11 app, tried it under YDL2.3 & OSX

5 - Macsoup(?) can;t say much about it though, never used it much

... there are a few more as well, but they're all shareware, and after I got burned by Thoth(no I do NOT like it, and I did NOT like YA-News(watcher, ripoff) either. (That being said Thoth is decent at handling binaries, but I absolutely hate it for anything else, which also makes it worthless to me as I rarely bother with binaries.)

...(2) oh yeah, there are also a slew of command line/UNIX newsreaders(rn, tin, slrn, etc), and you could use GNUs in XEmacs or Emacs, etc. I like slrn myself...

Frankly, I've used Newswatcher & MT-Newswatcher for years, and still prefer it to any other offering on OSX.

Nonsuch · Mar 6, 2003, 01:58 PM

Yet another shout-out for Thoth. It's tweakable out the ying-yang and rock-solid too.

tikki · Mar 6, 2003, 05:55 PM

Originally posted by Dale Sorel:
If you want something Cocoa, I'd give Halime a try.

Worst user experience I have ever had with an Application. Took way too long for me to even figure out how to add groups, etc.

engaged · Mar 6, 2003, 06:38 PM

There's also Hogwasher but it is $49. It looks good, and I considered it for a while after I ran out of patience with Halime, and before I settled happily for Thoth.

I'll agree that Thoth isn't the prettiest of apps, but it has never crashed on me.

velodev · Feb 5, 2004, 01:57 AM

Run, don't walk for Unison...

This is still 1.0 but I haven't had one issue with it. From the makers of Transmit, comes Unison.

Wow... I bought it almost on first sight.

And no, I don't even remember the name of the company at this time so I am not affiliated with them either.

crazyjohnson · Feb 5, 2004, 02:10 AM

Seriously consider each of these options. Pan rocks, and tin is nasty as well.

Originally posted by cutterjohn:

4 - Pan(GTK based, requires X11) Outlook express like again, pretty good for an X11 app, tried it under YDL2.3 & OSX

...(2) oh yeah, there are also a slew of command line/UNIX newsreaders(rn, tin, slrn, etc), and you could use GNUs in XEmacs or Emacs, etc. I like slrn myself...

ech0 · Feb 5, 2004, 07:41 AM

what about unison. its working great for me. i like the interface alot better than thoth. thoth does not look as good and there are too many windows all over the place. unison keeps it all togher. and it even has toolbars with icons

pliny · Feb 5, 2004, 08:43 AM

Unison-- superior to Thoth.

Cheaper too.

Gee4orce · Feb 5, 2004, 09:33 AM

Originally posted by pliny:
Unison-- superior to Thoth.

Cheaper too.

Well, depends what you want to do with it. For a lot of people that won't be true, because Unison (currently) lacks any kind of power features.

For me however, it's great ! Panic's NNTP service is also very very good (it's only another $4 for the first month when you register Unison).

Funnily enough, there's a thread about Unison on comp.sys.mac.apps - and Cabel from Panic has posted quite a lot in it.