A few quick notes on NetNewsWire 4

September 6, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Software

I’ve been trying out the freshly-released NetNewsWire 4 for three days now. I was excited when Black Pixel announced it, and I respect all the work that’s been done on it since version 3, but so far I’m rather unimpressed. I haven’t checked out the iPhone app because frankly I’m an enthusiastic user of Unread and it’s unlikely I’ll change RSS reader on my iOS devices anytime soon. Since there isn’t an Unread for Mac (but there should be), on the Mac I’m a bit more flexible. I’ve actually been a NetNewsWire user since the early days, and on my vintage Macs I still use version 2.x and 3.x. My current RSS reader for Mac is Reeder and I also bought ReadKit sometime ago. But I really, really like Reeder. It’s fast, it has a good set of features, it shows a thoughtful design and UI. Other RSS readers I have on my Mac are Vienna, Pulp, and of course I downloaded NetNewsWire Lite as soon as Brent Simmons released it on the Mac App Store in March 2011.

Speaking of NetNewsWire Lite, here’s its interface:

NetNewsWire Lite 2011

And here’s NetNewsWire 4’s interface:

NetNewsWire 4 2015

They’re quite similar. One can argue that basically all RSS readers out there have similar layouts because how else are you expected to present news and articles? Pulp for Mac tried the newspaper metaphor and associated skeuomorphism, and it’s indeed a fun UI, but this one is more practical for long reading sessions. 

Still, four years have passed between NetNewsWire Lite and this new NetNewsWire 4, and while I’m sure that a lot of work was carried out behind the scenes (a new iOS version and the NetNewsWire Cloud Sync service have been released simultaneously), and that there may have been periods without development, the fact is that, when compared to NetNewsWire Lite, NetNewsWire 4 doesn’t really feel the “Pro” version of the same software. It feels like a minor update of NetNewsWire Lite, with a few refinements here and there, and little else.

After the discontinuation of Google Reader, a few alternative RSS services appeared, such as Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, Newsblur and Feedly. I found particularly easy to transition to Feedly by associating the same Google account I used to fetch RSS feeds. Readers like Unread, ReadKit and Reeder can handle accounts created with those alternative services, so it’s easy to set them up, and I can use any RSS reader on Mac OS X and iOS that’ll handle my Feedly account, and all the blogs and sites I follow, and the articles I’ve read or yet to read will be kept in sync. As I suspected, given that NetNewsWire has its own sync service, when it was time to set up NetNewsWire 4 I could not just add my Feedly account, but had to either add feeds manually or import an OPML file generated from another reader. Not a really big deal: I exported my subscription as an OPML file from Reeder, and NetNewsWire 4 imported everything very quickly and without troubles. But I was annoyed that the unread articles count was not maintained after the import: all subscriptions were imported with the last 30–40 articles marked as unread[1].

Feature-wise, NetNewsWire 4 has the essential functionality to get the job done and that’s it. I agree with Michael Tsai:

It still has the “lite” feature set, nothing like my beloved NetNewsWire 3. There are no smart folders. There’s no meaningful AppleScript support. It doesn’t support the system share menu.

and with John Gruber’s response:

One can argue that most people don’t use smart folders, and few people script apps with AppleScript — but that’s exactly why there’s an opportunity for a paid app that does support such things. This is why BBEdit has so many esoteric features. This is why apps from Omni and Panic have esoteric features, and in Omni’s case lots of customization options.

When I’m in NetNewsWire 4, the feeling I get is to be using a built-in Mac OS X RSS reader, if Apple had one. An adequate, honest app for the average user, no more no less. A system tool with not a very distinctive personality, so to speak.

 

 

The new NetNewsWire is presented as an ecosystem: there’s the Mac OS X app, the Cloud Sync service, and the iOS app. It’s both its strong and weak point. I think that to get the most out of NetNewsWire, you have to go all-in and get the whole package. This way you get a coherent experience across your Apple devices. Taken as an ecosystem, NetNewsWire works well and is a decent, inexpensive offering. But if you already have a favourite RSS reader either on iOS or Mac OS X, and you’re just interested in using NetNewsWire 4 for Mac or NetNewsWire iOS, then the single apps, taken alone, aren’t quite as strong. Further, if it’s synchronisation you’re after (and who isn’t, with RSS readers nowadays?), getting either NetNewsWire 4 for Mac OS X or NetNewsWire iOS doesn’t make much sense, because they won’t sync with that other RSS reader you have on either platform. In other words, if I switch to NetNewsWire 4 on my Mac as primary reader, but keep Unread as my reader of choice on my iPhone and iPad, I won’t be able to keep the two in sync because they rely on different services.

I understand the benefits of having a seamless ecosystem, but at this point asking people to ditch both their RSS reader of choice on Mac OS X and iOS is a bit too much to swallow, especially because apps like Reeder on both platforms and Unread on iOS represent very strong competition. Let’s just focus on Reeder for a moment, which is the best example for a comparison since it too is available for iOS and Mac OS X. Reeder apps are perfectly independent. They don’t rely on a proprietary sync service, so you can simply choose to buy Reeder for Mac or Reeder for iOS, use another RSS reader on either platform, and always have your feeds in sync. Or, if you like the Reeder experience, and want a familiar interface on both platforms, you can go on and buy the two apps. The full Reeder package (iOS + OS X) will cost you $4.99 + $9.99, only $1 more than the whole NetNewsWire package, so there’s not much difference. But the fact that the two Reeder apps can stand each on their own feet makes Reeder a more compelling alternative than NetNewsWire, in my opinion. You don’t need both apps to appreciate Reeder’s strength and usefulness, but it’s likely that you’ll end up getting the two of them anyway. Instead, to fully appreciate NetNewsWire, you’ll have to purchase both the OS X and iOS apps.

 

  • 1. To be fair, that’s not a specific fault of NetNewsWire 4; importing the file in another reader would have had the same effect, but still I found this step annoying because with other RSS readers I’m just accustomed to just enter the credentials of my Feedly account and have everything in sync on the fly. ↩

 

→ There is just one Internet

September 5, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Briefly

Speaking of Benedict Evans, his latest article, Forget about the mobile Internet is indeed quite interesting, and I generally agree with his assessment. However, I’m not sure I agree with how the main stance is worded:

For as long as the idea of the ‘mobile internet’ has been around, we’ve thought of it a cut-down subset of the ‘real’ Internet. I’d suggest it’s time to invert that — to think about mobile as the real internet and the desktop as the limited, cut-down version.

When it comes to pure Web browsing, I consider the experience with my iPhone 5 and the experience with my 15-inch MacBook Pro, and I have a hard time thinking of ‘desktop Internet’ as the “limited, cut-down version” of the Internet. I understand the point Evans is making — it’s time to think mobile-first, desktop-later, but I also believe it’s time to think about better tailoring the internet experience for all devices, mobile and desktop together, without relegating either to a second-class element. Sure, mobile has grown at an incredible pace and it’s now become ‘more important’ than desktop computing thanks to its inherent portability and ubiquitousness:

Mobile is not a subset of the internet anymore, that you use only if you’re waiting for a coffee or don’t have a PC in front of you — it’s becoming the main way that people use the internet. It’s not mobile that’s limited to a certain set of locations and use cases — it’s the PC, that can only do the web (and yes, legacy desktop apps, if you care, and consumers don’t) and only be used sitting down. It’s time to invert that mental model — there is not the ‘mobile internet’ and the internet. Rather, if anything, it’s the internet and the ‘desktop internet’

But that distinction — the internet and the ‘desktop internet’ — sounds a bit unfair as it sounds unfair to consider the ‘mobile internet’ as a cut-down subset of the ‘real’ internet. A lot of people still use laptops and desktops to browse the Web and carry out Internet-related activities. I’ve already seen the effects of putting mobile first in certain areas of Web development, and the result is extremely sparse websites design-wise, which may look cool and functional on a phone, but become horribly bland experiences on a computer with a bigger screen. Computers may be more stationary tools than mobile devices, and mobile devices may now be the first point of internet access today, but that doesn’t mean that the ‘desktop internet’ should now become a second-class experience. The real internet is everywhere, through every device.

→ Not the same photos

September 5, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Benedict Evans has done some calculations and estimates, and his conclusion is that all the digital photos shared this year are going to be more than all the photos taken on film in the entire history of the film camera business:

Hence, at least 2 trillion photos will be shared this year, and possibly 3 trillion or more. Spread across roughly 2bn smartphone users, that’s only 2–3 photos per day per person, which is not so extraordinary, and of course use is not actually spread evenly, so there’s room in that number for some people to be sharing lots and others none. 

That’s just how many photos were shared, though. How many more were taken and not shared? Again, there’s no solid data for this (though Apple and Google probably have some). Some image sharing is probably 1:1 for taken:shared (Snapchat, perhaps) but other people on other services will take hundreds and share only a few. So it could be double the number of photos shared or it could be 10x. Meanwhile, estimates of the total number of photos ever taken on film range from 2.5–3.5 trillion. That in turn would suggest that more photos will be taken this year than were taken on film in the entire history of the analogue camera business. 

Apart from being the classic bit of trivia that makes you go, Huh, who would have thought? I struggle to find this comparison meaningful. The context around the act of taking a photo and sharing it has changed dramatically over time. It has changed within the history of film photography (before and after the revolution introduced by the 35mm format, for example), and of course it has changed after the shift to digital photography and after smartphones have become ubiquitous photographic tools always connected to the Internet.

Before, the average person didn’t carry a camera with them all the time. Taking photos was usually an activity planned in advance: you brought your film camera with you on trips and holidays, or at gatherings such as weddings, and at certain parties and dinners. The photo enthusiasts would bring their cameras to photo-walks, too. Sharing photos was always a delayed activity (you had to finish a roll of photos, then go to a photo lab to have it developed and the photos printed). With slides, there was the typical, often boring occasion of gathering around the slide projector in a darkened room to see dozens of holiday pictures at a time. Instant photography meant Polaroids, but given that packs of Polaroids have always been expensive, and more expensive than a regular 35mm film roll, instant sharing with film wasn’t even remotely comparable to the instant sharing we carry out today with smartphones and global connectivity.

Before, fewer people owned cameras. I’m thinking about my family, but I believe it was common in many other households. There was one ‘serious’ camera in my household, that belonged to my father. He took photos at birthdays, during Christmastime, sometimes brought the camera with us during Sunday walks at the park or around the city we lived in, and during extended excursions or trips. I had a less sophisticated camera he passed to me, but used it rarely and wasn’t particularly fun to use either. Today, when I happen to see a family of tourists, everyone has a camera or a photo-taking device. Today I see 10-year-olds with low-end smartphones taking photos of everything that surrounds them. They probably take more photos than I did even in my most trigger-happy film photography phase, when I went through a disposable camera after another. 

Today, the convenience and ubiquitousness of connected smartphones, and the fact that snapping a photo virtually costs nothing, make more people shoot more photos, also with an unprecedented level of compulsion I may add. In 1990, you didn’t see people in a cafeteria or restaurant snapping photos at their food before eating. Photography was a purposeful activity with higher associated costs. You generally thought twice or thrice before wasting a shot when you loaded your camera with 24- or 36-exposure rolls. Today there’s plenty of room for very spur-of-the-moment pictures, especially because the sharing part of the process has gained much more weight than in the analogue photography days — you can share your photos with the world now, not just with your circle of friends — so every moment, every situation in your waking hours has the potential of getting photographed, documented, shared. 

So yes, the amount of photos taken and shared has increased exponentially, but so have changed the tools, the technology, the habits, the culture and the whole context behind photography. That’s why it shouldn’t be surprising that today the whole world is taking and sharing a crapload of photos all the time. And that’s why a comparison between the current digital+connected scenario and traditional film photography makes little sense to me in this regard.

On Spotify's updated privacy policy

September 2, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

(Please note: I’m not affiliated with Spotify in any way. I’m just trying to offer a more balanced view on the matter.)

I first learnt about the new Spotify privacy policy when I read this article by Kirk McElhearn, titled Spotify’s New Privacy Policy Is Downright Invasive (But They’re Sorry). The potential invasiveness of said privacy policy must have triggered quite the uproar because, shortly after, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote an apology and explanation on Spotify’s official blog. It is important to read Ek’s post to fully understand the nature of the policy changes. And one aspect in particular — you won’t be forced to share personal information you don’t want to share. Ek states:

In our new privacy policy, we indicated that we may ask your permission to access new types of information, including photos, mobile device location, voice controls, and your contacts. Let me be crystal clear here: If you don’t want to share this kind of information, you don’t have to. We will ask for your express permission before accessing any of this data – and we will only use it for specific purposes that will allow you to customize your Spotify experience.

He then proceeds to explain how the information you choose to share will be used. Read the post in full before rage-quitting Spotify.

It’s true, Spotify should have better clarified its new privacy policy terms from the start. Did the company try to pull a sneaky move? Who knows, but as a long-time Spotify subscriber, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. So far, I’ve never received spam or an excessive amount of notifications from Spotify, despite having a lot of entries ticked in the Notification Settings of my account:

Spotify notification settings

And (for now, at least) there’s a lot of personal information that’s still pretty optional: Spotify doesn’t know what type of mobile phone I have, nor my phone number. And there’s a specific setting for sharing my account information with third-party providers which is deselected by default:

Spotify marketing

I always keep a close eye on privacy policies and I’ll certainly review my account settings carefully in the future. If I notice any kind of abuse, or if the new privacy policy terms work in different ways from what has been explained in Ek’s post, I’ll also consider deleting my Spotify account, eventually. In the meantime, please, take some time to read Daniel Ek’s clarification (and even the previous post in Spotify’s blog). Don’t just voice your shock for these new terms, urging people to pre-emptively move away from Spotify, and generally spreading FUD. A few people and friends contacted me, doing exactly that, and the real irony is that they’re all avid Facebook users…

→ Art of the Title: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

September 1, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Briefly

#alttext#

 

#alttext#

 

While finally catching up with a lot of unread RSS feeds after the summer holiday, I was quite happy to see that one of my favourite sites, Art of the Title, has covered one of my favourite Steve McQueen’s movies, The Thomas Crown Affair.

The Art of the Title’s article focuses on the multi-screen technique of designer Pablo Ferro, who created the movie’s opening titles and some key montages within the movie.

So impressed were Jewison and Ashby by Ferro’s efforts, that one multiple screen sequence soon became another and another and another. The technique was used alternatively to draw attention to small details and to build suspense, revealing the intricacies of Crown’s masterfully staged heists from every possible angle. “In the three to four minutes of multiple image time, audiences had really been exposed to close to 15 minutes of straight-cut film,” Jewison said of the sequences.

In the film’s title sequence, Ferro’s multi-screen technique creates a layout not unlike a moving magazine spread, an effect that would not look out of place on a modern tablet computer. Unlike the subsequent multi-screen sequences, the title sequence features no actual footage from the film. Not wanting to spoil the movie in its opening moments, Ferro suggested assembling the titles out of publicity stills and other behind-the-scenes photos from the production.

If you love this movie, you’ll enjoy the full article. And please support Art of the Title, it’s an awesome site featuring excellent-quality content.