For the past year and a half, Dustin Macdonald has been working of his “super-secret” new RSS reader called Times. The idea itself is very interesting. Imagine picking up a newspaper and instead of reading about EVERYTHING thats going on in the world, you get to read the RSS feeds of your choice. Dustin has tried to create this experience with Times. Times tries to simulate an actually newspaper with pages, columns and stories just like you would see in and actual newspaper.
The best way to use Times is to set it up exactly how you want it. You should create 3-5 pages/categories that you are interested in and fill each one if 3 RSS feeds. For me, I would use 4 pages: iPhone, Apple, Web, Sports and Media. I think times does a really good job of allowing you to organize your RSS feeds. Instead of all of them just pilled up, I feel a sense of categorization. I like this a lot. At the same time, Times has some really cool effects such as when moving around the pages. It makes reading your RSS feeds really refreshing and fun.
This is one of those apps that has so much potential… Times could possibly be a great app, but it just is not. After all the great things I have said about it, Times fails to make my list of good apps. This is because of a few things.
1) It is $30. How can you price an RSS reader at $30 when the two most popular are free (NewsFire and NetNewsWire). I mean, if your smart, the highest you would price it is $15. You cannot expect people to buy a product just because the developer put a lot of work into it and it is a good idea. In order for an app to be $30, it really needs to shine. Times is enough better than the competition to be priced at $30.
2) Times is a crashing machine! I cannot keep it open for more than a minute! If it is not crashing for you, try deleting a page and you will know what I mean. You cannot release an app without significant testing. You have to release it for beta testing and make sure it works fine on all machines before your start selling it! This is not acceptable and no one should buy this app until it is fixed
I am a little mad at this developer because I know that this app could be so good. It is a brilliant idea and has so much potential. Dustin should try to push out an update a quick as possible getting rid of as many bugs as possible. He should also lower the price by half.
As of now, Times is just not worth the $30.
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May 4th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I love Times. After 15 minutes of use, I knew it was worth the $30 for me. I think (and I hope I’m right) that we’ll be seeing machines continue to get better and better at serving our needs, and our needs are hugely wide-varying and personal. The one-size-fits-all tools will always be around, but we should be seeing more and more diversity around approaches to implementing any given set of functionality. Current ideas around personalizable web sites and portals barely skim the surface of what I mean.
Thank you Dustin for this great approach. I want the precious 30 or so minutes I allow myself each morning for news reading to be highly enjoyable, efficient, and “just right,” and only with Times do I get a sense that that very personal and vague obstacle has been broached.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I think you’ve missed bringing out what a paradigm-buster this app is. For the first time, I feel like RSS feeds might actually be helpful to me, instead of another kind of deluged “in box” like e-mail. He’ll work through the crash issues, I imagine. I’ve rarely seen an app that makes me more inclined to pony up $30 (and to be fair, I haven’t yet done so, but I plan to
)
May 6th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
@PK, I think once he works through the crashes, this app will be great. It really depends on how much you value the “newspaper look and feel.” For me, its really cool, but not worth $30 when I can get a great RSS reader like newsfire for free.