NewsMac Pro reviewed by Ars
Thursday, September 22, 2005
I spotted that NewsMac Pro got included in a big group review of Mac RSS readers over at ArsTechnica that was published today. It's a little inch deep and mile wide unfortunately and appears to cover version 1.1 of NMP which is a bit 'old' now. They do level some valid criticism at the internal web browser, which I accept - it does need to be a bit more robust, and future versions will add stuff liked tab browsing. But then they throw out comments like saying NewsMac looks bland - even ignoring the fact that countless hours went into designing icons, themes and custom UI for NewsMac, everyone I've talked to or who I've seen talking about NewsMac has talked about how much they like the look of the UI. Now I realise people have different tastes, but I don't think bland is something you can level at NewsMac regardless of whether you like the way it looks or not. Anyway the whole review is rather superficial, so make of it what you will. Update - other Mac RSS developers chime in. Shrook's developer complains of the reviewer's bias towards NNW. PulpFiction's original author has this to say. PulpFiction's current owner's thoughts. As I said above and in the comments I accept some of the criticisms levelled against NMP in its current form and I'm working to improve things - what annoyed me and these other developers about this review is that the reviewer apparently only contacted Brent (NNW's author) and gave inconsistent, superficial and sometimes wrong information about the other RSS readers without declaring his bias towards NetNewsWire which apparently he's a long time user of.
posted by Rory Prior @ 9:39 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Just out of curiosity, if NM 1.1 is "a bit old now," why is it still available for download on the products page (and before NM 3.2)? Is there something I'm missing here?
You might want to take a step back and adopt a more objective viewpoint. The article explicitly states "[NewsMac] even offers a non-pro version free of charge that is quite nice in the class of free newsreaders..", thus they were only reviewing non-free readers. But, more importantly, the article levels a number of (in my opinion) far more damning criticisms than 'blandness'. For instance:
"It sports a four-pane interface. There are two ways to configure it: compact view and widescreen view. Neither seemed more compact, or wide, than the other."
"When you click a link from Safari that is a newsfeed, a window pops up in NewsMac Pro confirming the feed addition. You can do this as many times as you want with the same feed, and it subscribes you each time."
"This tabbed area is fairly nice, but the tabs themselves feel decidedly out of step with Mac UI conventions. NewsMac Pro also doesn't seem to use its space well..."
"The "Unread" tab area is slightly counterintuitive. When selecting it for a given feed, it displays—you guessed it—the unread items for that feed. However, just because you read through all those unread items at once, that doesn't mean that it changes the "read" status of those items. It just means... well ok it doesn't mean anything. There is no preference that lets you choose whether or not to mark items as read if you view them in the unread items tab. It's little things like that that give NewsMac Pro a slightly unfinished feel."
They also said some good things:
"After installation, NewsMac Pro preloads a ton of feeds for you. It comes with all the same ones Newsfire, Safari RSS, and NetNewsWire offer, and then adds a number of feeds on top of that. Consequently I had 909 feeds in my Library when I started it up. Fortunately, it doesn't auto-check the feeds in the Library."
"You can drag them to various folders that you create in the sidebar and then specify the auto-checking of those folders ... once you get used to it, it works fairly well."
"Enclosure support in NewsMac Pro is good. Well, make that "a little weird," but once you get used to it, I'm sure it's great. ... It's rather robust and, once you set it up, quite powerful."
"NewsMac has some interesting text-syncing features allowing you to sync headlines to both your iPod or Palm OS PDA. With the PDA syncing it will also sync the actual web page to which that headline links using iSilo support."
And the summation is positive:
"Although it feels slightly unfinished, overall NewsMac Pro is a good newsreader."
It's seems well balanced to me. (For an overview, which is what this article is. The point isn't to do in-depth reviews of each reader, it's to snapshot the available options. And I think it succeeded since it it covered a few readers I'd never herd of before.)
And, at the risk of offending, the amount of time spent in an endeavour does not directly correlate to the quality of the result. If it did, I'd have earned a Nobel Prize for the Calculus I did in University...
Just out of curiosity, if NM 1.1 is "a bit old now," why is it still available for download on the products page (and before NM 3.2)? Is there something I'm missing here?
1.1.3 is the most recent version, I don't denote the minor version number in too many places because it's a pain to have to go around all the places I might have mentioned it every couple of weeks to update it. 1.1 was released a month ago, there have been three updates since then. I put 'old' in quotes because obviously a month isn't that old, but the point was it's three releases behind current.
I'm happy to accept criticism where it's justified, I mentioned the browser needs some work, some of their other points also have some truth to them, although I don't think they are that big of a deal.
The blandness comment just got me because NewsMac Pro isn't bland, and since UI design is such a big deal for me it was a bit of a slap in the face. If I just threw the app out there with some icons pinched from Apple and without going to any effort to keep up with the current UI trends like so many other developers do then they could call it bland.
I actually felt the review was a little harsh on NewsMac Pro - and the blandness comment does seem especially at odds with my own impression.
The reviewer sounds unconvinced that he should like the app from the outset and his choice of language can be misleading. For example, here the lack of a feature sounds more like a bug report:
Dragging feed URLs to NewsMac Pro doesn't work as expected.
He doesn't like the browser, and is one of those people who shrinks their toolbars down to nothing, so he finds the navigation buttons bulky and the lack of tabs a problem. With that in mind, it's quite aggressive to say:
The user interface for the browser window is fairly tragic.
I think you can see the overall theme of his review where he was being dismissive of the Unread view, which is clearly meant to be a readable snapshot of unread news, not a filtered list of items. I think NewsMac has many unique features that go beyond the basics and offer a different approach, but the reviewer failed to see this, preferring another NetNewsWire clone.
While overall the review has some positive things to say and raises some valid points, you could miss both thanks to the negative tone, and that doesn't really help anyone.
Thanks for your thoughts Steve, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the review had a negative tone.
I've used NMP since it was in beta and before that I used NM 3, so I guess I'm pretty well acquainted with some of the recent changes that have gone into this product. From the first time I used the product, I really liked it and I know that Rory has put a lot of work into this product. I've gone back and forth with him several times on several different topics and I respect the work he's put in. Having said that, I do have a few comments to make on the article as well as the response to the article.
Let me start with what was said about the UI. I hardly think that NMP's UI is bland, far from it in fact. However, the article is correct that it does in fact break from many Apple conventions. I know that Rory has blogged about this previously and his feelings on the UI in Tiger, but regardless of that, Apple is the one that sets the standard for UI in their operating system and apps, and if a developer chooses to veer from those conventions, they are in fact breaking with what Apple has done. I do agree that the tabs in NMP are not like anything that Apple does. Is that a bad thing? No. Would I prefer to see something closer to the OS UI? Sure, but that's just my personal taste.
Another area where I agree with the article is that NMP does have a tendency to use more space than I would like. This is again, a personal taste, but I can see where the author of this article is coming from on this issue. Again, however, I would hardly call the UI bland or that it has the feeling of being unfinished. Unfortunately, I have to agree whole-heartedly with his assesment of the browser. I have used NNW before and feel that the tab implementation there is very well done. I'm not sure how to go about suggesting changes for this, but is definitely an area of NMP that I would love to see evolve further.
Next, I've checked out the RSS "market share" if you will and looked over those numbers. At the moment, Bloglines has the lead, but since that is a web-based aggregator, I'd just assume strike that right off the list. NetNewsWire got a very good rating from this article, and for good reason. I have noticed that there seems to be a tendency to come racing to the aid of NMP because of what was said in the article, and while some of the things may have been more negative than anyone would have liked to see, they can be seen in a far different light.
NetNewsWire is at the top of the RSS Aggregator market, and unfortunately, NMP isn't even on the list. I hate to say that, but that's the fact. That's not to say that it can't be, but right now, it isn't. I think that instead of looking at this as a bad thing, it can, in fact, be a very good thing. Why not go through these reviews and see what people liked and didn't like ... see what they liked and didn't like about NMP and seriously evaluate if that's something that needs to be looked at and fixed. Use this article as constructive criticism instead of an attack on the piece of software.
I don't know the first thing about developing software, but I do a lot of hardcore PHP programming with content management systems. I put a lot of time into designing what's behind the scenes as well as the UI, and there is always criticism. The only reason that the product has gotten better has been by taking that criticism and looking at it very carefully to see how we can improve the product. It's my hope that's what happens here and we see NMP 1.5 come flying out of the gates better than ever and ready to climb the market!
I reckon NewsMac Pro looks better than NetNewsWire. Well thanks my two bob's worth. Keep up the good work Rory.
David thanks for your thoughts, as I've said I'm working to improve the areas the reviewer outlined as weaknesses. NewsMac Pro has only been on the market for a little over four months though and these things do take time to both implement and get right.
With regards to the tabs, NetNewsWire uses non-standard tabs too for it's tabbed browsing interface, yet only NMP gets dinged for this in the review?
The problem with the standard OS X tabs is they suck for use in anything other than a dialog box - the design just doesn't work in a margin-less application window like NMPs or NNWs. Apple invents custom tab views all over the place because they seem to realise this too - take the tabs in Safari for example.
There is no denying that NNW is the market leader on the Mac and is the app to beat, I know that very well. Lousy reviews written by lazy/biased reviewers don't really help my cause though.
I agree with your criticisms of the review. You should have taken it to the reviewer in the discussion like Mr. Parks.
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