While putting off real work, I took a couple minutes to look at what, if anything new on the OS X RSS reader front, taking a look at the latest version of NetNewsWire, Shrook, and Pulp Fiction, and Newsfire. Conclusions? They all still suck.

• the last thing I need is an another icon on my dock telling me how behind I am, RSS readers need to be stream-based, the e-mail model is retarded
• every single one of these apps offer smart lists for items, but none of them offer a way to have a way to tag/facet feeds (NetNewsWire, Shrook, and NewsFire have the ability to ‘Group’ feeds, but not to put feeds in multiple groups, or if they do, they’re treated as separate sources, so changes to one doesn’t reflect in the other)
• Not one of them has an ‘blog’ view like online aggregegators (NetNewsWire and Pulp Fiction are three-paned, w/ Pulp Fiction taking the email metaphor way too far, Shrook uses a column-style view, NewsFire uses a two-pane view)
• Tags would be nice (and solve the grouping problem)
• None of them offer useful views, like identifying top links in your feeds, tracking usage patterns, etc (the only thing I’ve seen that even begins to touch on this stuff is Chameleon). There’s so much implicit metadata to extract (but I’d settle for something that’s just has a humane UI)
• NNW doesn’t keep items indefinitely? wtf?

See also:

• ponyboy’s rant on Glassdog last year
• lmorchard’s thoughts/improvements
• jveen’s system for trying to make the best of a bad situation
  

  “I feel like I make things un-bold for a living now.”
  — Lane Becker