DrunkenBlog

RSS for Mac OS X Roundtable

I'm a big fan of RSS, and while ago I decided I wanted to do one of my chats with the author behind one of the RSS aggregators for Mac OS X, and hit a conundrum: there were too many cool apps to choose from. I know, I know, what a lovely conundrum as far as conundrums go.

To that end, I have an extra-special treat for my 13 loyal readers... the first DrunkenBlog Roundtable, with five of the best RSS aggregators available for Mac OS X.

To review a bit about RSS if you're unaware:
If you take a look to the left, you'll see a little box saying "Subscribe" and within it a link to an RSS feed. If you just click on the link, you'll see what appears to be gibberish.

But if you drag the link to an RSS news reader, or copy and paste the link to one, you'll be able to see when this site is updated with new content whenever it becomes available. Your news reader does all the heavy clicking for you at whatever timed interval you set it for, and then lets you know.

It may sound trivial, but keep in mind that the only difference between a Post-it Note and a piece of paper is a small strip of adhesive. Sometimes a small catalyst can make a big difference in how you use something, and many would argue RSS is seriously changing how people use the web.

With that out of the way, it's my turn to get out of the way and introduce you to those who graciously agreed to participate:

Brent Simmons
Brent hails from Seattle, and is the author of NetNewsWire and other great software through his company Ranchero Software with his wife, Sheila. Considered to be the godfather of RSS on the Mac.

David Watanabe
David hails from Australia, and is the author of NewsFire when he's not working towards a masters in environmental policy. It's known he's originally from Canada, but why he fled is not.

Rory Prior
Rory hails from the UK, and is the author of NewsMac. A Java programmer turned Cocoa fanatic, Rory has recently left his position with a UK firm to devote all of his energies behind his Mac software company.

Erik J. Barzeski
Erik recently returned to cold PA from Florida to marry his high school sweetheart, and as the owner and founder of Freshly Squeezed Software is responsible for PulpFiction and other great Mac-only software.

Graham Parks
Graham also hails from the UK, and is the author of Shrook. He's known to be a Cocoa maven, but little else is really known. I think he prefers it that way, and I'm not going to go fudging his mystique.

Without further ado...

Relative to its marketshare, Mac OS X has a disproportionately rich variety of RSS aggregators for users to choose from. Why do you think this is?



It's mostly because Mac users like to try cool, new, interesting things -- especially things that help them get more done in less time.

Windows users, it seems to me, have endless patience. They reboot their systems, run virus scanners, go nuts fixing weird conflicts. With that kind of patience, surfing in your browser from site to site isn't that bad. But Mac users want things to work, and they want their software to help them get things done, and they like trying new and different things.

Another reason it looks so disproportionate is that, to compare the relevant market share, you have to subtract all the Windows computers that are just cash registers.

For instance, there's a Windows machine at the front desk in my local car repair shop. It's not running an aggregator. It probably has a web browser, but only because it comes with the OS. Macs are rarely used for things like this. But there are seven trillion Windows machines living such sad lives.



I guess us Mac software developers are just cooler than the others. :) But really, I think it's just a matter of our platform being slightly ahead of the curve on this one. I'm sure some diversity will appear on the Windows side as adoption accelerates.



I think the Mac is the platform where the cutting edge stuff happens. RSS, Atom et al are definitely going to play a big part in the 'next big thing' that happens to the Internet so I guess it makes sense we have a healthy selection of aggregators.

It's also fun because it counters the myth that there is no software on the Mac, or very little choice.



I think the reason is twofold. Mac users are very forward-looking and Mac OS X provides a tremendous foundation for groundbreaking applications.

Mac users have always enjoyed a piece of tomorrow's technology today. We had desktop publishing, color screens, and icons before anyone else. We had CyberDog which, though it ultimately failed, reached into the future a bit. Heck, we had eWorld! Mac users are creative, brainy folks who like to reach, to push, to see how far they can drive themselves. Windows users are more the "pull me along, grudgingly" crowd. Of course, I'm generalizing, and not everyone fits that mold. After all, I'm still trying to get my dad to stop using Internet Explorer on his Mac…

Secondly, as I said, Mac OS X is itself a rich foundation. The Cocoa frameworks, which most RSS/Atom aggregators seem to use, are rich with features. WebKit was a great help in adding some pretty handy functionality. With the unix underpinnings, we can easily use frameworks and libraries that come with the system or have been developed by others. Geeks have flocked to Mac OS X, providing a wealth of tools not only to users but to other developers as well.



It's remarkably easy to build one: HTTP, XML and GUI libraries are all standard and easy to use, and it requires remarkably little glue between them to get a simple RSS reader working.

Combined with the lack of commercial competition, this makes them a very attractive project for a small shareware developer, and we all know the Mac has one of the healthiest shareware markets around.



Apple has announced that Mac OS 10.4 will include a version of Safari that includes RSS support. While this may raise awareness of RSS on the Mac, there's worry that they're cutting 3rd parties off at the knees. Do you feel Safari RSS allows room for 3rd parties to benefit from its technology and flourish?



If Safari RSS had a brilliant user interface, I might be concerned. Unlike the others, I entered the game fully aware of Safari RSS.

I developed NewsFire primarily to meet my own personal vision of what an RSS app should be like (not that it's there yet). If everyone abandons me when Safari RSS comes out, I'll still use my own software and be entirely content. Apple's going to be the one to bear the burden of educating the masses about RSS. That makes my life easier, and so good on 'em.



It will allow room for 3rd party clients, it should hopefully grow the RSS market too. I believe power users and those looking for specialised functions such as iPod and Palm integration will still be willing to pay to use 3rd party clients to get more features and a non-brushed metal interface!

I imagine there will probably be the same sort of slow upgrade cycle to Tiger as there has been to Panther, which means Jaguar and Panther users will still represent quite a large market and they will still need at least a basic RSS client for a while yet.



To borrow a phrase that's been said about this topic many times, a rising tide raises all boats. Safari RSS is not fully featured.

Many aggregators are available in "Lite" versions, and Safari RSS lacks many of the features found in those freeware aggregators. It offers in-browser support for RSS feeds, but us smaller developers have a large lead.

The rising tide, of course, in this case is user awareness. Geeks know about RSS - and I can somewhat explain it to my mother - but it's not a standard tool used by millions of people, the average computer users. They still have 732 bookmarks and they still visit 20 sites a day (instead of the 150 they could easily visit in the same time by aggregating syndicated content).

The only thing that concerns me about Safari's RSS implementation is that it looks as though it simply takes over "feed://" and offers no means for the user to choose an aggregator to handle feed: links.



I haven't used the preview, but it seems to be a viewer for RSS feeds. From what I've seen, it doesn't keep track of new items for you, and it doesn't look for new items automatically.

Really it's just another way to look at a site's front page, and can't be used like a news reader. That we're both getting our data from RSS feeds is all we have in common.



It's hard to predict the future. I don't know what will happen. It could be very, very bad for independent developers. But I don't think it will be -- I'm optimistic.

Here's why:

1. There will always be people who want more features or a different approach than Safari will provide. It doesn't have to be 50%, or even 25%, to make the aggregator market plenty large enough for small developers to do very, very well.
2. Safari/RSS will introduce millions of people to RSS. Going back to #1: if just some of them want more features, that's still a whole lot of people. Safari actually helps us by introducing people to RSS -- Apple uses its reach to do something we can't do ourselves.
3. If my guess is correct, Safari will allow you to specify your default aggregator. So it will make it easier to subscribe to feeds you find in Safari: there will be a nice connection between Safari and other aggregators, which is an improvement on what we have today. (I don't have inside knowledge of this, but I'd be shocked if it worked any other way.)

How have your users reacted to the Safari RSS announcement?



To be honest, I've not had any feedback regarding Safari RSS yet.





I think that users see the announcement for what it is: a way to spread the use of syndicated content (I use that phrase, because we do mean both RSS and Atom) to the people who don't already know about it.

Users who subscribe to syndicated content, I've found, usually go through the same curve: start with a few feeds. Add more. Add more. Add more. At some point, they're trying to juggle 100 feeds in a Lite app or, in the future, Safari RSS. That's where our apps step in, allowing users more features - scripting, flagging, labeling, storage, etc. - that they can't get elsewhere. Users choose applications that match their skill level. Apple tends to accommodate the "everyman."

Our users know that. Without getting into specifics, people will write in to say "I love feature X, it alone is a reason to use your product." Safari doesn't offer X, and it won't be offering H through Z either. I expect that Apple will add to the features in Safari RSS over time, but we're small and nimble. We'll be okay.



I've had surprisingly little email about it, now that you mention it. I get the odd word of encouragement or sympathy, but nothing really significant. There's still at least six months until its released though.



We get a lot of feedback telling us not to worry. Which is very encouraging.

Now and again people ask us what effect Safari/RSS will have on our software, and I answer pretty much as I did in question #2.



Not really applicable to me, since I had no users when Safari RSS was announced. :)





Easier subscription to feeds is a goal the community has been lurching towards for awhile now. This generally incorporates the idea of auto-discovery of feeds (your web browser finds the feed while rendering the page), which you might click, and then the seamless handing off of the feed to your reader of choice.

Why don't we have this now, and without hooks supplied by the browser makers themselves are we likely to ever have it?



I don't know - you'll have to ask their developers. OmniWeb has its own lame RSS system (when judged against the feature sets of the aggregators). Safari does. FireFox does (there's an extension for FireFox that lets your feed aggregator take over, at least).

The aggregators are standing out in the field saying "Hey, I'm open, throw me the ball!" But every browser seems to think he's Michael Vick. Instead of throwing the 40-yard pass, they scramble for three yards on the ground.

Until someone develops a full-featured browser - one that matches the feature set of Safari, OmniWeb, etc. - and a full-featured aggregator, the aggregators are just going to be standing in the field, waiting for the ball to be given to them. We're open. Just chuck us the pigskin.



The current one-click mechanisms are a bit hacky, leading to a lack of enthusiasm on both sides.

The other problem is that OS, browser and aggregator all have to be configured correctly to make it work, so most don't bother. I think we'll be cutting and pasting URLs for a long time to come.



I think we'll see this in Safari RSS.

Getting this into other browsers is just a matter of doing the work -- talking to developers, explaining the need, figuring out some conventions, getting code written and tested. It's not easy, because it means many different people have to do different parts of the puzzle, but it's do-able. (If things like this weren't do-able, we wouldn't have the Internet at all. We wouldn't have cars and electricity and running water either.)

A simpler example of something like was the external weblog editor interface. Different aggregator and weblog editor developers had to do a little work -- and now you can mix-and-match aggregators and weblog editors, and that's a very cool thing.

Getting browsers to make subscribing easier is a similar though somewhat larger challenge.



There's a FireFox extension that hijacks the 'RSS' badge, so rather than going through FireFox's internal RSS system, it launches the user's chosen RSS app.

When Safari 2.0 comes out, I'd bet someone writes something to do the same thing. These things are good. Obviously browser-makers have their own agendas to push and aren't going to bother... unless users start demanding it... which they really should (*nudge*).



Ultimately I think the web browser will be taken out of the equation, news aggregators will provide their own means for finding feeds that will surpass having to look for little orange buttons buried at the bottom on web pages.

Also increasingly I think we will see search facilities built into aggregators that search on-line repositories for RSS feeds.




For those who haven't followed what's going on with RSS, there's a bit of a format war brewing. Syndicators and subscribers can choose from RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, the Atom format and maybe, just maybe, a possible 'unification' of RSS 2.0 and Atom sometime in the future.

Both sides have heavy backing, and both sides seem to feel their format has been ordained. How do you see the formats eventually shaking out and do you have a preference?



Atom looks to be so much more reliable and usable than any version of RSS. Once v1.0 is published next year, I imagine there will be few new implementations of RSS.

Of course, it will still be around and readers will still have to understand it, but it won't be able to compete with the IETF-backed Atom spec.



My preference is for quality feeds: I don't lean toward RSS or Atom. The main things I want as an aggregator developer is for feeds to be well-formed XML, to be valid, and to use unique IDs.

I often think of RSS as being like the Grateful Dead -- democratic, easy-to-get-into, improvised. Atom is more like Sting -- composed, produced, more complex.

These are very different approaches, and different people like different things, and I'm not going to try to convince anybody to use one over the other. My sole interest is in quality feeds rather than a specific format.



Honestly, I'm entirely indifferent. Supporting feed formats is a pretty trivial job for me.

Getting websites to adhere sensibly to their format of choice, so that their feeds actually validate, is more of a pain for me.



As long as it's all open and documented so I can support it I really don't mind which format(s) ultimately win.

Probably like with HTML we will end up with people using all kinds of different versions, some perfectly formatted others a right mess, that just seems to be the nature of the Internet.



Technology evens itself out and the winner 'wins'. These are both freely available formats, so any arguments about how better technologies have, in the past, been suppressed are constrained by that. DOS machines were cheaper and more widely available than Macs. People don't have to pay to use Atom or RSS, so the winner should be decided on technical merit alone.

The Atom spec, of course, includes not only a syndication format but a method for communication. I haven't seen this implemented by anyone yet, but it's at least a bit further reaching than RSS. Perhaps it's reaching too far, diversifying itself too much. We shall see.

I - and I'm sure the others will say this as well - will attempt to best support whatever's out there.




If a site has a lot of readers and doesn't have RSS feeds, chances are that site is being hounded for them. Yet a lot of the web business models are advertising based, and most of the current advertising schemes have gone beyond slapping generic ads over content. Advertisers want context, relevancy and tracking.

These site owners are feeling an RSS-Squeeze: their users are demanding something that completely breaks their business model, yet they want to have happy users. What would you say to site owners feeling squeezed?



I'd tell them that they can use RSS to bring more traffic to their site and make more money. Here's what to do:

Create a feed that has titles and at least a few sentences of description -- enough so that somebody reading an item can tell if they want to read more. (It's important not to skimp on the description, because it's not enough merely to intrigue: people want to have a strong sense that an article is worth reading.)

When a person wants to read more, they'll open that page in their browser -- and, there you go, they're visiting your site, ads and everything. If a site doesn't have an RSS feed, it's missing out on traffic from smart, early-adopter types, the kind of people that advertisers love.

As an example, I don't go to CNN's website anymore, but I go to the New York Times and BBC and others -- because they have feeds and CNN doesn't. The key is that I actually go to their sites in my browser. They're not losing traffic: they're *gaining* traffic.

So: what's the problem? No problem. It's just a matter of learning that RSS can work for you instead of against you.



I don't agree that it breaks their business model. A site can easily attract more traffic to their website via RSS adoption. It's all in whether they play their cards correctly.

The smart ones who learn to intelligently adopt new technologies will do well. The laggards will suffer. This applies to any new technology, I suppose.



There is no reason why content providers can't take advantage of RSS as a new advertising stream. There is nothing stopping anyone putting a banner ad in the content or summary of a headline, or god forbid a few ad links thrown in amongst headlines.

I remember MacMinute briefly started putting a text link ad at the bottom of headline summaries in their RSS feeds but that didn't last long, I assume through user's complaining, though maybe it was just an experiment on their part.

The threat RSS does have in my opinion is that it levels the playing field for all content providers big and small - I can read a headline from CNN along side a headline from some obscure news site which I would never have dreamt of going to before.



Figure out a way to satisfy your users and your stockholders. The free market is a large playground and a skinned knee never stopped me from enjoying recess.

I don't envy their position (except, of course, that it would be nice to have some of their bank accounts), but I don't want to listen to them whining either. User demand here is pretty clear, typically. Look at NetFlix's recent decision to add RSS feeds.

An interesting side effect of the "big media" failing to offer up feeds as commonly as bloggers do is that a bit of the power has shifted from "big media" to the folks in pajamas. Not a lot of power, mind you, but some.

Whether you fund bandwidth by considering syndicated content "advertising" or whether you simply charge $4.95/year for a membership, companies will do what they think is right, and their users will sit around and do what is best for the user.



RSS feeds make users very loyal. They will visit a site every day instead of each time they remember the site exists.




A hot topic at the moment is how well RSS scales, both in terms of bandwidth used and overhead on a server from clients polling for updated feeds.

Do you believe this is a real problem facing RSS, and if so will the solution be found on the client side, the server side, or a combination?



I'm pretty sure it's not an issue. There are existing strategies (compressing content, sending HTTP 304 responses when the feed has not changed) that really minimize bandwidth consumption.

Yes, you can do things the wrong way and have a really inefficient feed, but if you do things the right way you can easily avoid the issue. It all comes down to proper implementation (by the websites).

I mean, the issue kind of came up because Microsoft was making noise. And us Mac users all have faith in Microsoft to implement things properly and efficiently, right?



It may be a problem in the short term as RSS gains popularity, but most problems have solutions, be it through mirroring, smart servers that let aggregators know when new content has been posted, compressing feeds and so on.



I think that a good client respects 304 codes. A good client supports gzip if possible. A good client limits users to setting schedules of checking no more often than every 30 minutes or so. If a user really wants to check their subscriptions more frequently than that, they can click 'Get Articles' or write an AppleScript to do it for them or something.

I think it's a problem, but it's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity for a company to make a compelling case, it's an opportunity for a new standard within RSS or Atom.

Besides, there are a number of things you can do to alleviate the strain. Here is just one of many articles talking about what can be done now, with today's technology, to alleviate the strain and burden.



RSS scales very well - its cost is almost directly proportional to the number of subscribers. The people who've had problems are always the ones that want to do it for free. The reality is that serving hundreds or thousands or millions of users up-to-date data costs real money, however you do it.

In terms of solutions, most of those on the table so far will only reduce bandwidth consumption to a half or maybe a quarter of what it is today, which doesn't really change the economics. What you can do is move the cost to other parts of the system, for example by setting up proxies.

Alternatively, in a few years bandwidth will be so much cheaper we won't have to worry about this.



There will be several solutions -- integration with services such as Bloglines, specialized RSS proxies, Jabber/XMMP, and so on.

Some parts of the solution don't require anything new. For instance, lots of servers don't support conditional GET, which is the single best thing a server can do to reduce syndication bandwidth use. Gzip compression is even less widely used.

Another side of things is the user side. Do you really need your baseball feeds checked every hour during December? Probably not. My hope is that as the novelty wears off and as the software matures we'll get smarter about how often we poll our feeds.

So, yes, this is a problem -- but it's a problem with lots of solutions on the way, and even with some existing solutions that just aren't being used everywhere.




RSS has made a mindshare Blitzkrieg on the web, and it's hard to turn around on some sites without having XML badges thrown at you. Websites that break down every 15 minutes, but yet deal with RSS, have started drawing in venture capital. Is RSS being over-hyped?



It's pretty hard to have any wizzy new technology that's associated with the Internet in some way and not have quite a bit of hype. RSS really does deserve it's time in the media spotlight though, it really has the potential to change the way we get our news, and it can help deliver on some of the promises originally made of the web which fell somewhat short.

It's also fair to say that we are at a point in history where we really need the kind of independent news outlets that technologies like RSS and Atom help popularise. I don't know if blogging is the future or journalism or not, but either way the more heads that can be turned away from the constant stream of infotainment dressed up as factual, unbaised news the better.



By some. The vast majority, I think, see it for what it is: a great way to get back to pure information. You're talking to people that build applications that make use of RSS and Atom. Part of me wants to say that it can't be over-hyped enough. :-)



Most of the hype comes from the press, but I've been shocked at the lack of shame some people have about exploiting it. RSS does nothing new, it's just marginally more convenient than browsing the websites manually. It's like getting VC for browser bookmarks.



RSS has dramatically changed the way many people use the web. You can't say that about every technology.

I don't know if it's over-hyped or not. On one hand, my grandmother, an OS X user and librarian, doesn't really know about it yet. On the other hand you hear lots of hyperbole about what syndication can and will do, stuff that even this aggregator developer considers far out.

But then recall how the Web was hyped in a huge way, and look at how rapidly and completely it has become an indispensable part of the everyday world. RSS isn't as big a deal as the Web itself, but it's nevertheless true that some things live up to or even exceed their hype.

However, now and again I want to ask people to relax a little about it. It's not quite on a par with the invention of the wheel.



Yah, I don't really have an answer to that. I deliberately keep myself out of the loop. It's probably a bit peculiar given what I do, but the technology industry often bores me (especially the business/marketing side), so I don't follow what's happening.




In the spirit of the site, what's your spirit of choice?



Disaronno Amaretto.







Rum and coke.







Single-malt scotch. But I'm flexible. I also like Bloody Marys -- they're not just for breakfast anymore.

I rarely drink alcohol, though, since even one cocktail disrupts my short-term memory enough so that I can't work. And I love my work.



A nice cold pint of Carlton Draught (Aussie beer) works for me.





I'm not a big fan of spirits but I do enjoy a good beer. Miller is my current favourite but I also really like Checz Budwesier which comes in reassuringly large bottles in the UK!



drunkenbatman Addendum:

If you have a Mac, and you aren't using an RSS reader yet, now is probably a really good time to see what all the fuss is about. The apps from above are linked below, and now you have an idea of who is behind them.

They all come with a selection of news feeds built-in and ready to be checked out, and your collections of feeds can be transferred easily between them. One size doesn't fit all, and I'd encourage you to download them all and see what clicks with you. They're all solid apps, and all have something to offer.

Lastly, this isn't the kind of thing you see every day. Long story short, all these guys took a hop of faith by agreeing to participate. Thanks again.

PulpFiction
Leveraging Mail's familiar interface and ease of use, PulpFiction throws some serious muscle behind your news reading. Powerful, flexible filters move, mark, and process articles.

Shrook 2
Shrook 2 is a next-generation news reader that offers advanced features with a clean interface modeled after iTunes and the Address Book. It supports all versions of RSS, as well as the current draft of Atom.

NetNewsWire
NetNewsWire features a familiar three-paned, Aqua interface similar to Apple Mail and Outlook Express, keeping you up-to-date from thousands of sites with less wear and tear on your browser.

NewsFire
NewsFire constantly checks for freshly published news from your list of news feeds and notifies you. NewsFire's list of news feeds is animated just like iChat, so feeds swoop around as news is discovered.

NewsMac
NewsMac is a versatile RSS news aggregator that lets you view news headlines and story descriptions before you have to even touch your web browser from over 120 built-in news feeds.