Show HN: iPad RSS Reader App I spent 7 months on

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/read/id448477454?ls=1&mt=8

by mmackh • 15 years ago

69 29 15 years ago

itunes.apple.com

This was my first attempt of making something truly appealing and useful. I've learned a lot and I'm pretty happy with the result. What do you think?

robmcm2• 15 years ago

Can't seem to get it in the UK store...

mmackh13• 15 years ago

It just passed through Apple's review. It should be going through the App Store today, but there's always a delay...

robmcm2• 15 years ago

I personally use byline, but like to try other.

foobarbazetc• 15 years ago

Dude, why rip off Instapaper for?

thomasfl• 15 years ago

The iPad is all about user experience. I like the design,typ and details like the dingbats in the title field. Keep up the good work.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

Thank you!

brackin• 15 years ago

Nice icon and name but not a fan of the typography. Where do the articles come from? I don't know where this fits in my life.

I love Reeder, it's a great app. I also enjoy Zite and Flipboard for taking the news posted on twitter.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

Thank you - I've gone through seven revisions until I finally came up with this one. The standard user interface font is TimesNewRomanPSMT, but you can change the reading font to: Baskerville, Palatino, Optima or GillSans.

The articles come from standard RSS feeds. Clear Read is a term I coined for downloading and de-cluttering the full article - it's very similar to Readability in Reeder.

Swizec• 15 years ago

I was working on something like this last year. Took ages and eventually didn't work out.

How did you do the scraping?

Congratz on launching!

mmackh13• 15 years ago

Thanks! When you tap Clear Read, the article's link is sent off to a server, which then returns the article's body in XML + formatting and images.

Terretta• 15 years ago

So you have to see the gunk page first, and then the clean version after?

I'm looking for an RSS reader that defaults to the "Reader" or "Readability" type view without the extra click.

Currently, I use Reeder.

alpb• 15 years ago

I am personally using Reeder on my Mac. http://reederapp.com/ and planning to buy its iPad app when I get my iPad. It is because it integrates with Google Reader very well.

The reason I use it is, Google is doing RSS aggregation really well. It is robust, fast and gets the pubsubhubbub pushes really quick so that I can see new stuff in seconds.

I think this app can be great with Google Reader integration, because it has a better UI than Reeder for iPad. But I think many people don't trust adding hundreds of RSS feeds to a mobile device instead of a cloud-hosted service (Google Reader).

Good app, you're doing good.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

I really like Reeder for iPad - it's certainly one of the best solutions is you want to follow your suscriptions from Google Reader. But Read is something that is more relaxed - more casual. There's no unread counter, you just pick it up and find interesting content. And there's the fact that their API is still unofficial. I did consider it for a long time, but in the end, I decided against it.

Gring• 15 years ago

Please reconsider. Being able to sync my feeds with other apps is very valuable to me.

terhechte2• 15 years ago

Looks promising. How did you get the name? I'd expect after millions of apps, a name like 'Read' would already be taken.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

Pure luck - I registered it back in July, and somehow I managed to send it off in time.

terhechte2• 15 years ago

Haha ok, congrats :)

thom• 15 years ago

This looks good, congrats on getting it out there!

Does it autodiscover feeds on sites you visit? Can you subscribe in-app? Those are the things that I've yet to find in an iOS feed reader - I seem to have a very old-fashioned "if someone's interesting subscribe to them" workflow, instead of this new-fangled "if something's interesting, send it to instalaterous" thing that is everywhere now.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

There was a beta test over the past month - I should have included you. They are both very interesting features and I'm going to take a crack on trying to implement them in the next releases.

dougaitken• 15 years ago

The icon looks practically idential to PlainText, the text editor for iPad but with a thin black bar top & bottom.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

I had no idea - I use that Pilcrow sign everywhere. I plan to update the icon in future revisions though

mmackh13• 15 years ago

I just wanted to thank everyone for the compliments. In case anyone is unable to buy or is really curious about the app, send me a tweet @mmackh and I'll provide you with a promo code - as long as I have any left

stevenp• 15 years ago

I highly recommend that you consider having a designer (or a different designer) take a stab at your icon. It's the first thing people notice when looking at your app, and right now it's pretty unappealing. The app itself and your website look a lot better -- bring the icon up to that level and I think you'll do much better.

mmackh13• 15 years ago

I would love to, but I'm all out. If the app is successful, I'll certainly change a few things and amongst those, is the icon top priority.

Zev• 15 years ago

My thought on the icon: Get rid of the paragraph symbol and keep the rest, maybe add two more lines of text to the page behind the paragraph symbol, to make the top/bottom border slightly thinner. At least, for now, until you get a designer to make you a new icon.

Other than that, the app looks nice, and its on my list of apps to play around with over the weekend!

Show HN: iPad RSS Reader App I spent 7 months on

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