Yet Another Tiger Review

It seems like everyone is posting about their experiences with, likes, and dislikes with Mac OS X Tiger, so I figure I’ll jump on the bandwagon now that I’ve been using it for a few days.

My initial “Wow, this is so cool and pretty too look at” impression has already been hampered by another state of mind: “Yeah, but how do all these things really help me be more efficient in life and work?”. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer to that question yet, so here are my initial thoughts on some of the new features.

First Up, Safari RSS

So far, I like the look and basic functionality of Safari’s RSS reader, but in the end it doesn’t stack up to NetNewsWire for my power-user needs.

I like the ability to filter articles by dates, feeds, etc. and Safari’s tight integration of Spotlight and Google directly into its contextual menu is very useful for finding related information either locally or on the web (although these two should be integrated, imho, see below), although I noticed today that NetNewsWire has the same items in its contextual menu.

So far, I have three real problems with Safari RSS that will most likely keep me from switching to it as my primary RSS reader.

1. Organization

   NetNewsWire allows organization of feeds into folders, and has smart folders. These two things are key for me in managing a large number of feeds. Sometimes I just want to see software updates from the various update sites, or I just want to quickly read articles about mobile technology. NNW lets me organize those feeds into a folder so I can read them in a single list. As useful as NNW’s folders are for aggregating similar feeds, the smart folders are equally useful for extracting specific types of articles from one or more feeds. For example, at Tomo Software, we use Trac to manage our code, wiki, and bug tracking, and I use a smart folder to extract relevant bug tracking tickets from the main Trac feed.

2. Speed

   NetNewsWire is fast. I never feel like I am waiting for it, even when using the space bar to speed through articles just to mark them as read.

   Safari RSS, on the other hand, seems to have just enough lag to annoy me now that I have been spoiled by NNW. It seems to take some noticeable number of milliseconds after command-clicking an article title for the new tab to even appear, and then more time for the actual content to load. Then, when closing the new tab, it seems to lag for another noticeable number of milliseconds after clicking the tab close button to actually close the tab and return to the RSS tab.

3. Usability

   There is just too much mousing and scrolling involved in reading articles. When my list of new articles is long, which it usually is in the mornings, this becomes almost unbearable when coupled with the speed issue. I have been using Safari’s combined RSS view, listing all new articles by date, and only 4-5 articles fit into the visible space of the window at a time. I must visually scan these to see if any are worth reading fully, then target and click on the title or “Read More” to jump out to the actual article–and I must command-click if I want the article to appear in a new tab. After reading, I must then jump back to Safari’s RSS view. Then, I must scroll down, via scroll wheel or buttons/scrollbar drag to see more articles.

   In contrast, NetNewsWire, using its three-column view allows me to see approximately 15-20 articles at a time in the center column, and shows the full body of the article (or as much as is provided with the feed) in the right column. This allows me to scan many more article titles without scrolling. Also, I can jump through new articles quickly using the space bar if I want to scan their bodies as well. If I want to open a browser to the full article (an integrated NNW browser tab, that is), all I have to do is press Enter/Return–no mouse targeting required, so my hands never leave the critical keys on the keyboard.

In general, I find that I can burn through articles much more quickly in NNW than I can in Safari. So for now I am sticking with NNW, but it will be interesting to see how Apple evolves Safari RSS now that they’ve gotten it into their users’ hands.

Tags: briancavalier | osx | reviews