Check Your Feeds! (Issues With NetNewsWire and Other Mac RSS Readers)

I actually really like NetNewsWire. It is the most beautifully designed newsreader for the Mac, IMHO. Unfortunately it has some severe flaws in its basic features. I missed some news entries recently just because for some feeds …

… NetNewsWire is not able to update the feed correctly, so it won’t show the latest entries.

For one feed NetNewsWire even claimed the latest entry to be about a year old, while the feed actually was up-to-date.

This kind of behaviour of course renders the app almost completely useless. The whole point of an RSS reader is to get the latest news. So I can’t but call this a catastrophic bug (for a newsreader, that is).

I have switched to Vienna for the moment. It is a pretty good replacement (and free).

Update:
It is even worse. Although Vienna (unlike NNW) gets the latest feed entries, both apps – NNW and Vienna – sometimes do not load updates to feed entries. So if a blog entry gets changed, you won’t notice unless you visit the blog website. That is totally inacceptable! I am currently evaluating NewsFire.

Update 2:
Though NewsFire does not notify you of changes (like the other apps) it at least gives you the correct (i.e. updated) text when you read an entry. So I am sticking with NewsFire!

Safari does not update rss entries as well. Maybe it is PubSubAgent that sucks and all three apps (NNW, Vienna, Safari) rely on it. I do not know but it is bad! Luckily there is at least one working newsreader left.

Update 3:
Well at least the Safari issue almost certainly has something to do with PubSubAgent. If the feed is bookmarked entries will not get updated. If the feed is just reloaded it is completely refreshed, including any changes to feed entries. So, Safari users, don’t bookmark your RSS feeds or you might read outdated news!

Update 4:
NewsFire has two minor flaws. Firstly it does not notify changes of entries. Secondly it was not able to load one feed I had on my list. So, unfortunately I had to conclude that it was very difficult to find any fully functional RSS reader for the Mac. Fortunately I found the following listing: »Top 9 Mac RSS News Feed Readers and News Aggregators« and right the first entry is a hit: »Shrook«. It is not a beauty and has a funny name, but it does it all: find new items, notify changes and — most importantly — display the up-to-date version. It even keeps a change log. I guess my RSS nightmare is over.

Update 5:
Vienna is actually capable of checking for updated feed entries but it is an option that needs to be set. To enable the function do the following:

1. Quit Vienna.
2. Open Terminal.
3. Enter the following command:
   

   defaults write uk.co.opencommunity.vienna2 CheckForUpdatedArticles -bool yes