14 DAY TRIAL // Reeder is the most appreciated RSS Feed reading app in the Mac and iOS community. The AppStore has plenty of apps, but no developer was able to match the design, simplicity and elegance of this one.
Everyone thought the developer had abandoned his project after Google Reader died, but his app is actually growing slow and steady.
Silvio Rizzi is an independent developer from Chur, Switzerland, and he is the creator of Reeder. His app got some design cues from Tweetie, the first Mac client for Twitter, designed by Loren Brichter of Atebits. With Reeder 2, Rizzi redesigned his app and has added some innovative features.
Reeder for iOS and Mac can currently support accounts from Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler and Fever. You can also add local feeds, but that will not give you the benefit of synchronized RSS streams. The developer has made it clear he will not add iCloud Sync, as well.
Reeder can also be used as a "Read Later" iOS and Mac client with syncing capabilities provided by Readability.
So far, the most popular syncing service for RSS Feeds has been Feedly, not only because it is free, but because the developers behind it make it easy to integrate with third-party apps and services.
However, Feedly went down three times during last month alone. Everyone who was using Reeder as their device client got an error message and no new articles in their apps.
Because the users didn't know the issue was caused by a non-working, DDOS attacked Feedly, they started looking for alternatives. Silvio Rizzi was bombarded with questions via Twitter and the only solution he could find was to add new services to his app.
Over the past weekend we have got some news regarding the named services. Silvio Rizzi posted on his twitter account that he is "Currently working on Newsblur" integration and he will add "The Old Reader" as a service.
Newsblur is one of those RSS services with a special monetization model. You can use it for free on the Web, iPhone, iPad and Android, but for $24 per year you can unlock a few extra features.
The free Newsblur account gives you access to only 64 sites and you can only download news from 5 sources at a time. You do not get instant access to download your feeds, nor any search capabilities.
However, if you are a casual user, instead of using no syncing, Newsblur sounds like a good choice.
The Old Reader was one of the first RSS readers to emerge before Google Reader's death. The developers have even borrowed some of the most loved features from the old giant.
The service is free for up to 100 feeds, but for $3/month you get up to 500 subscriptions, full text search and faster feeds refresh times.
For those of you who are already using the above-mentioned services, having them available in Reeder will be a pleasure.