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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

The relatively new iOS app for NetNewsWire is very good (and free!)

What is a good use case of such "free" mobile app if the sync feature is behind a third party paid service? Am I expected to always check my feeds only on my mobile? How useful is that?

As much as I would use NNW right away but it isn't really a useful service at this point in time.

There's in-progress work on supporting other sync services. Most relevantly, there's work on using a CloudKit backend[1], which would effectively be a NetNewsWire-only feed syncer service.

[1]: https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire/issues/491

Hmm? The iOS app can be backed by Feedly, which is free. (supposedly that functionality will go to the desktop version soon.)

Feedly is limited with free account. The point I'm making is that NNW should be using its own service to maintain user's "read" states between its desktop and mobile apps.

I'm not a big innoreader fan but their mobile app is decent and their online service is synced together. In this case, I never have to worry about my "read" states getting out of sync.

When it comes to RSS adoption, the read-state needs to be seamless across all platforms.

It seems like you are saying, you should get this great use case handled for you, and not have to pay for anything: not for the app or for the service.

Is that what you read in two of my messages above? Interesting!

BTW, NNW is not charging as of yet. What I was talking about in two of my messages above, is the adoption issue with disparate platforms without the availability of read-state feature. If I use NNW mobile, I'm bound to using it all the time (which is not practical). If I use it's desktop app, I'm bound to using it on my Mac all the time (again, not practical). Anyone with more than hundred or more feeds, would find issues adopting such service. I am not here to defend my likeness of NNW so I won't say anything in this regard.

Yeah your comments were not clear. But the reply comment to you made a great point (that you actually acknowledged, but don't seem to understand underlies why your point is problematic): NNW is free (in both senses of the word) and open source software. Brent and the team are not being paid to work on it. They are using a third party service (Feedly) as a backing store. You have the option of paying for it, or you have the option of not paying for it. Either way, if your argument is that NNW lacks a syncing feature you are wrong. And if your argument is that the syncing feature (Feedly) should be free, then your argument effectively boils down to "hey people who did this awesome free software, please make more free software for me." Which is not a strong argument.

Here, someone left this(1) link above. This is a better practical response than just trying to win an argument for the sake of winning an argument.

https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire/issues/491

It’s very useful to me! The only computer I have is the one I use at work. All iPad at home and NNW is great!

I mainly use RSS on my phone, it's useful.

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