During the last couple of months I’ve been working on a new take on the RSS Reader.
With so many options out there (NetNewsWire, Unread, Reeder….), why would I go and develop another one?
The main reason is I wanted to create an RSS reader that would be extremely accessible to use for the average user. I had many ideas on how that could be approached, but in the end I settled on the following four principles:
-Easy subscription to feeds thanks to a growing searchable directory.
-One unified chronological twitter style timeline for posts.
-Private tokens to identify users, effectively making all users anonymous.
-A central server to allow syncing, reduce data consumption and backup all information.
Here’s the first conceptualization of what would become the new app, things have changed here and there but it’s incredible how many similarities the final app has with the original concept:
One of the decisions I struggled the most with was the business model, in the end -considering also the ongoing server costs- I settled with:
1. One time in app purchase that creates the user token and gives them 30 days to try the app with all features. This is not a subscription and therefore will not auto-renew.
2. After 30 days they may decide to (ideally) subscribe for a $ 19.9 / year or use the app for free in “Basic Mode” -limiting daily fetches to 3 and disabling bookmark & position sync between devices-.
As for the App Icon, I decided to go with an “in house” option and -depending on the app reception- hire a designer to improve it.
That’s the story of NewsWave, you can grab it from the app store and find its website here.
How is the app doing? I’ll post shortly about that.
Comments / questions? I’m at @MarcMasVi
Marc