I thought I was done with feeds readers for iPhone. I switched from Netnewswire to Byline, from Byline to Newsstand, from Newsstand to Reeder, and I’m currently using Silvio Rizzi’s elegant and minimal app as my only one RSS reader. So, I thought I was done with this kind of apps, as Reeder was (still is) the best and aggregator I’ve tried so far. Then, an icon showed up on Ember app’s image stream: it was wooden, with a newspaper delivering a..rss icon. It was beautiful, and the title was “Newsprint”.
I started searching for this new app, I was later invited to the beta testing and here I am now, giving you a sneak preview of this new RSS app for iPhone.
As the website says “Newsprint is a professional grade feeds reader, it gives you the simplicity that you love in iPhone apps, while not forgetting about power users”. Interesting. I have a working RC build of the app right here on my iPhone, so I can give you a brief preview of what you should expect from this new application.
Newsprint is based on Google Reader, pretty much like every other app nowadays. The app is fast, though it’s not the final release yet; the developers have done a great job in optimizing the sync process for the iPhone, with many options for saving bandwith and thus making the process even faster.
Another cool thing about Newsprint (there are many actually, I just can’t spoil everything yet) is the swipe on feed to reveal additional options save share and save to. Similar to Tweetie 2, but thinner and with a different style overall. If this is becoming a standard and, most of all, it works - I’m happy with it.
Newsprint is a very rich application, built for people (power users) who want to do a lot of things with a feeds reader and require a lot of customization to optimize the reading experience on a mobile device. Also, there will be some cool options for people who are new to RSS feeds.
Newsprint will hopefully be submitted to Apple in matter of a few weeks, as soon as the latest glitches and bugs will be fixed. Be sure to follow @newsprintapp on Twitter to stay updated.
I’m looking forward to it.
