On NetNewsWire for iPhone ⇥ buildingtwenty.net

Michael Anderson is lukewarm on the iPhone version of NetNewsWire. He raises a lot of good points, but one in particular stood out to me:

The iOS 8 share sheet isn’t integrated so you’re limited as to which services you can share to.

You can, in fact, bring up the system sharing sheet from the custom sheet by tapping the AirDrop icon. This isn’t to say Anderson is wrong; rather, it’s to point out how dated this app’s philosophy is.

We’re on the cusp of the launch of iOS 9, and NetNewsWire still has a custom share sheet. Why? All of the functions that are provided by the custom one are either provided by the system, or things I don’t use (it has App.net integration). Add to that a lack of its own extension and no background refresh, and it seems clear that this app began development pre-iOS 8.

I really like the team at Black Pixel, but NetNewsWire has a very specific audience, and I don’t think this new version really appeals to them on either iOS or the Mac. In that sense, it comes across as confused. Both are adequate RSS readers, but I don’t think the word “adequate” is how NetNewsWire has ever been described.