Introducing Times
After over a year of development, we've finally launched our first product: Times. Times is a new type of newsreader for Mac OS X, created by drastically rethinking the way you read news.
There are lots of so-called news readers on the Mac. Many, if not all of them, treat news like e-mail - a paradigm that the developers of these apps swear by. With these apps, every article is filtered into a long list as an email would, each bearing an 'unread' marker, to remind you to read it.
While this works great for a few blogs you want to catch up with, it is completely the wrong model for actual news, and makes reading the news a chore rather than an enjoyable experience. There are three big problems with it:
- One does not read every news article published, making unread markers harmful to an enjoyable experience
- Discovering news to read is hard to do with only a long list of headlines
- You can usually only see articles from one feed or source at a time
So what's wrong with websites? After all, a lot of people don't even use news readers. Visiting the actual websites you want to read is usually a better experience, for the reasons listed above. But it's not perfect. There's lots of overhead, advertisements, you have to constantly refresh, and it's tough to keep track of many sites at once.
Times solves all of these problems and more. Instead of treating news like e-mail, Times presents articles on a newspaper-esque page, rich with headlines, descriptions, and photos. Pages in Times are divided into sections of varied importance, each showing one or more feeds. This interface lets you easily scan through your news, and discover articles that you want to read.
With Times, keeping up with news is now both feasible and enjoyable. Be sure to try it out for yourself!
50 Comments:
Looks great a real nice take on RSS feeds. I have a couple requests though for a future build. I was going to suggest a clear indication of what was new and unread but then mine updated and looks awesome. My one request would be to remove the shadow in the top left scrollable pane. Seems unnecessary when there isn't one anywhere else. Looks great though. Going to have a fun time customizing it up.
looks amazing, really interested in trying it, but the one thing holding me back is synchronization. I use NetNewsWire now becuase I can keep a running count of things I have already read and clipped for later on my MacBook, work PC and iPhone. If you could add syncing to a web service (NewsGator, Google Reader, etc.) so it works across all my devices I'll drop the coin
looks great and pretty user friendly, but i think 30 dollars is a bit overpriced for a RSS feeds reader..20 dollars is a bit more justified in terms of the actual value of the program. I think this program will be much more attractive if its in the 20 dollars range. All in all, a nice addition to mac.
A great job i think. I haven't OSx: there is a Win and Linux version for the future?
Wow, that looks really, really good. Congratulations on release. Unlike a.i, I think what you are charging hits it right on the head -- not too cheap, not too expensive.
Looks very nice! Only problem I've found is that the page curl hides the end of long articles - is it possible to add a bit of blank space at the end so you can scroll down just that little but further?
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This is huge. For the first time, the promise offered by RSS long ago looks like it could become a possibility. This is the RSS app I would have expected Apple to produce, and yet they never did.
Don't lower the price. This app stands head and shoulders above every other RSS reader out there, nay it stands on a completely different level. It is a bargain at $30.
The beauty of RSS is that it provides the perfect complement to email. All email messages must be at least processed, because important information gets sent through that channel. Newspapers (in print or online) provide greats pools of information that can be checked when there is time and ignored when there isn't time. RSS lets every reader also be the editor, choosing what content fills each section of their own newspaper- this app means that RSS finally has genuine advantage over simple subscribing to an email list of the updates.
Here's hoping to you not caving in to any of the pressure to add features making it more like every other annoying RSS reader that don't do anything a Mail client doesn't do.
Synchronization is really only needed if you are trying to stay on top of every single article, and in that case, better to just subscribe to a mailing list of the content. Even if there isn't such a list, Mail.app in Leopard will treat an RSS feed basically as Mail source, delivering articles to the inbox.
These are really just two completely different paradigms of communication- must read email (letters) and read only if you get the chance rss (daily news). Maintaining the distinction is essential to RSS being truly useful as more than a novel protocol, and is the only way RSS will every catch on outside of the geek community. (How many users from the general Mac population [which is itself not at all general] actually use the RSS features that have been present in Safari for so long? Not many, because normal people just can't understand what it is for.)
This app actually has a clear purpose and that is exciting.
Pretty nice. It's the kind of thing that futurists used to always predict as the future of newspapers.
It is fairly easy to peruse multiple feeds in most popular readers, though. Folders and groups.
I like how your program gets rid of the read/unread notion. Thus, no real need for multi-Mac syncing. An online/iPhone version would still be nice-- I'm pretty addicted to NewsGator mobile-- as well as an in-reader browser (like NNW).
Neat app. I think we've all had the idea for this application but you're the first to actually put it into practice.
One idea I'd like you to steal from me is the front page and templates.
I'd like to be able to limit (in preferences) the number post titles displayed so I can crowd the right hand area and see with a quick glance how many new posts are available from all the feeds I watch instead of having to scroll down.
You're newspaper analogy is incomplete. I want to be able to make a quick survey of the news and choose what I want to read first. You need a front page. It would obviously have to be different template with enough areas to equal the number of sections you have (world, sports,etc). Each area would feature the latest item in large text as a headline with some text from the post and then a list of post titles like you have in the top area(the section on the top left) in your current sections. Clicking anywhere in the area would move you to the section proper.
I think this would provide the overview that's missing and let the user decide which section they want to jump to first based on what seems the most interesting rather than having to go stepwise, left to right through the sections.
The lack of a front page is the one thing holding my back my $30.
Again, great work so far.
This is a very refreshing concept to reading RSS...I've just licensed my copy.
At first I was a little confused/put-off by the way unread items was handled, but I fully understand why the approach taken is great for this app. I do believe it would be handy to limit the number of items that are displayed on a feed-by-feed basis, though.
Anyways, looking forward to seeing where this application goes in the future!
Ok so I thought about my request for syncing, and after reading some other peoples comments and suggestions I have revised the idea.
Front page is a great idea. Maybe you could designate which article tags come up on the front page. A good example applies Engadget and Gizmodo. I read them for reviews, business news, rumors, Apple news, HDTV information and random funny things; I could care less about every damn digital camera that comes out and USB drives that look like Japanese cartoon characters. Front page would work if I could tell it what I think is important and then those stories are more prominently displayed. Everything else could go to another page; I could fly through headlines and pictures and then click “all read”.
I still think syncing is nice, to my iPhone for example. I understand the e-mail analogy, but it’s analogous to the difference between POP and IMAP. In the summer/fall when Gmail was only POP, it was a tremendous hassle to delete and email from both my phone and desktop mail client, and sifting the same feeds twice would be the same. My point is, if I have already deemed it unimportant or finsihed, I don’t want to see it again.
As for the price, I feel like $30 is steep in its current incarnation. Stacked against (free) NetNewsWire, it’s just not bringing teh features, just a (very) pretty face. Either lower the price if it’s to remain a minimalist RSS client, or really flesh out the “your own personal newspaper” potential that it has, setting it apart from the pack and legitimizing its worth.
No offense, I am sure you worked hard on this, but it's just not usable right. Let alone worth $30 bucks.
Almost every action has a delay from a few seconds to almost constantly seeing the pinwheel when opening articles.
Many things, like Import from NNW, simply don't work at all. They just silently fail.
The Shelf UI is just downright broken due to lack of visual queues. Also, the page curl... Not only is it a performance killer it covers the content you are trying to get to. Seriously... Your UI fluff is covering content. That's just broken. You might want to seriously sit back and consider not just how something looks but how it actually affects usability.
At the moment you have an app that takes a pretty screenshot and not much else. This wreaks of early beta quality not an application worth paying for. Certainly not worth the price you are asking in a market dominated by free applications. Price aside however this simply is not a good application as it stands.
Right now this ranks a solid "Disco-esque" on the review scale.
I'm giving it a spin right now.
Old stuff is not going away. New stuff is not coming to the top. It's a little un-weildy.
I was kinda hoping for the app to have a list of all of my unread posts :(. You should add an option, so that all of the previous news can be read.
And the app is pretty unstable. At the beginning it worked great, but after adding 30+ feeds, it keeps crashing every 2,3 minutes.
Nice first version, an interesting take on rss, and i like the fact there is no number of unread news.
Thsi is what I want to make me use this:
Cheaper, way too expensive when there are great fre ones.
sync, i want to sync my feeds over my different macs, when i read something, i want it to vanish on the other devices.
An iPhone app! I want to carry my same feeds around on a native iPhone app, I want these feeds to sync with the desktop app.
A basic version of the same feeds on a web interface for looking at from a windows box
The option of moving the layout around
Option to email an article
post to my weblog
I think it's a pretty neat app. Although it is quite slow and the articles won't scroll when an arrow is pressed and hold (little bug, I think), I think this is a great way of approaching feeds.
just got an error "disk image unrecognized" when I downloaded it :( really want to write up a review!
Ok, got this figured out. Not gonna work. I was willing to pay far more than $30 for this if it worked for me but you need some disclaimer or something saying this is not for heavy feed reading. OPML import is weak, there's no river of news option, this is just eye candy for very casual feed readers. I have 1500+ subscriptions and there is no way this is going to work for me, at least as far as I can tell. When I want to read just a handful of feeds I go to Netvibes. Sorry and good luck.
Freezes computer!
I just tried out the demo. Upon startup, your program freezes my entire computer. After restarting my computer, I tried again. Same thing.
1.8 GHz PowerPC G5
1.25 GB RAM
OS X 10.5.2
Strangely enough I have the exact same computer as vudicarus:
> Freezes computer!
> I just tried out the demo. Upon startup, your program freezes my entire computer. After restarting my computer, I tried again. Same thing.
> 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5
> 1.25 GB RAM
> OS X 10.5.2
And alas I had the exact same problem. Never seen an OS X app crash the entire system on launch but it happened to me.
The Good.
Utterly amazing concept.
Pretty interface.
Neat Typography.
The Bad
A few usability issues.
Sparse on features.
For a 1.0 release though, totally understandable and forgivable.
The Ugly
What isn't forgivable is performance: trying to open feed items or importing feeds is absolutely abysmal.
Conclusion
Really neat concept that's a few updates away from being worthy of serious consideration.
If you can patch up a few of the mentioned issues, I'd probably use this over Newsfire or Google Reader or any other option.
Certainly has the potential to become the best news reader. Fix a few of the problems as previously mentioned, like the page curl.
Almost perfect for me at 30 feeds, no loading or performance issues, however, when there are new articles I haven't read, they become marked as read when quitting and restarting.
Also need a "mark all as read" option so you don't have to click on all the articles to mark them as read.
this is a definitely a cool app. i don't know if i'd use it as my default rss reader for all my feeds, as i can't sync it with a iphone web service(critical). but i'll definitely think about using it as a way to get my news on a daily basis.
one thing that would be cool is marrying the look and feel of the app with techmeme.com and it's family of websites. i could definitely see using this interface as a specialized app for those sites.
anyway, very cool app -- i love the look and feel, great use of core animation. as it stands right now, not sure i'd pay $30 for it, but with iphone syncing, and a configuration for a river of news layout, i'd definitely be willing to buy.
kyle
Looks amazing. It would be really cool if you can import an OPML file and convert each group to a page. How will it work with over a hundred feeds? It looks like it's for a small number of feeds.
You need to enter it for an Apple Design Award - it's a shoe-in to win best use of Leopard technologies.
Absolutely fantastic first release, congratulations! I love the interface and presentation but i'd love to see some additional keyboard shortcuts and visual cues to make it useable as replacement for my current news reader.
Keyboard shortcuts
--------------------
Tab - move between 'blocks' of feeds in the page view
Up/Down arrow - move between articles in each block of feeds in the page view
Return - opens the currently selected article
Left/Right arrow - move between articles in each block of feeds in the article view
Visual Changes
----------------
Read articles are grayed out
Indication on the 'page' labels on unread count
Way to mark articles read by keyboard/clicking on icon in page and article view
Indication in feed view as to which feeds are being used and which tab.
Great job! It certainly adds 'feel' to reading my feeds...
Are there any plans to release an iPhone version sometime soon?
$30 is cheap for all the obvious effort that has gone into times. I bought it because I enjoy RSS feeds and now I can enjoy reading them. Nice app.
Nice first version. BUT....
This is hardly a version 1.0. More like a 0.9 beta.
I love the layout. It is a nicer version of "Great News" on the windows platform. But it would be nice with more layout templates. A frontpage as mentioned by others would be good too.
The curl problem needs to be fixed too.
But the main issue is the stability. The program needs to be made faster and MUCH more stable. When setting up feeds in the various pages I have never been able to run the program more than 5 min at a time. And after crash the program looses all tracking of what I did before so all but the first page is blank.
This software has HUGE potential. it is nice looking and clearly a step in the right direction. But it is not finnished by far and at this stage not worth registring (and the price of 30 USD is a bit much even if it worked perfectly).
I will however keep an eye on this one and I hope future versions will correct all minor and major issues and bugs. If that happens I'm the first to hand over the cash to register this cool app.
Over and out from Sweden.
MacBook 2.2 C2Duo, 2GB mem.
Leopard 10.5.2
looks great, but got a Quit in 10 minutes. unstable at the moment. sorry. hope it will be fixed soon. also the Pages are showing no buttons.
This is absolutely incredible. I think I'll drop the $30. I had an absolutely terrible crash the first time I ran it, but since then it's been flawless.
Just one criticism: please don't make your app pop up every half hour or whatever to ask me to buy it. I know I haven't paid for it yet, and the time before I'm going to whip out my credit card is the time you want to be impressing me, not annoying me. The only time you should ask me to buy it is when the trial is about to run out... that's the time I'm hooked and will have no other option but to pay.
Other than that, it's f-ing awesome. I don't think that the page curl is a usability issue, the content isn't covered, you just have to scroll to view. Maybe make it a little less obtrusive by folding it further down, but otherwise I love the idea. This type of functional eye candy that makes me smile is what causes people to fall in love with an app.
Improve performance and stability (although things weren't slow for me I have to say, but I'm running a MacBook Pro with 4GB memory) and you're on to a winner.
Also, $30 really isn't that much. Run the occasional $10 off promotion, but don't make it any cheaper.
Also, I don't like the zooming in effect when the app loads. I'd quite like it to be instant. Don't bother with an option though, just get rid of it, is my opinion.
The other thought if the shelf... can't we go for more of a hardwood? It would look much better.
:) Thanks.
Did totaly freeze my computer, too. Had to shut down manually. Happens every time I try to start the program.
Very annoying if you have unsafed work in some other program.
My setting:
PowerBook G4, 1GHz
768 MB RAM
Mac OS X 10.5.2
Please fix this! Or at least provide a warning.
Awesome app! Support for showing flash and also a feature to "mix" different feeds would make it even more perfect.
Yeah I like this app. There is a glitch when you pull up "page setup" but I guess this is known.
Would love a little more control over the page layout.
But would really love to be able to set keywords or phrases and associate a color. Then when a feed article contains that keyword or phrase to have it highlight. Now that would be NEAT.
Amazing app! You really nailed the newspaper design. Great to see a new app from you. Keep up the great work.
wish there was a version avialable for those with Tiger OSX instead of Leopard
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Couldn't be more impressed, honestly. Yes, there are rough patches and things yet to do -- but this is a paradigm-buster. For the first time, I might start reading RSS feeds in large numbers. This fulfills the promise of RSS. Keep polishing.
Looks great, and with many nice features. What I miss is a couple of more hot keys: skip to next/previous article, and mark all articles as read.
Pretty cool app. But, it keeps crashing!!
I'm trying to go through the initial list of crapware feeds so I can bring in my own. I get about 3 to 5 items deleted, then kaboom! Happened twice so far... :(
Also, it won't let me add more than one RSS feed at a time. I have 141 feeds that I currently, happily, read using Safari. If I try to drag them all in, it only adds the first one and ignores the rest, even though the mouse has a little Red splat with the number 141 in it!
Hope you can resolve... :)
Piko
Brilliant. I wish I thought of it first. You're certainly on to something.
I've made a little video about Times (in french, sorry) on Ka2
The app is very nice. But it is also very chashy! In just half an hour of playing with it, I've crashed no less than half a dozen times, specifically in trying to delete the default pages, visit browser links, or if the app is just sitting idly in the background for awhile.
This is version 1.0.3. Clean up the bugs, and this will seriously be worth the purchase!
This is a great take on news feeds. You really captured the essence of at-a-glance news delivery. My solution for a "front page" was to use my aggregated feeds via yahoo pipes to provide top news items of my most interested topic areas.
I'm not seeing the difficulties comments are describing. I'm running Leopard on a MacBook Pro. I had it crash about twice in two days of use but this was while I was trying to perform multiple operations at one time...not during normal use/reading. For my purposes, it's stable for daily use and well worth supporting the developer.
Great app! Nicely done.
Computing progresses via paradigm shifts and this is the big shift for newsreaders. I have been looking for something that could genuinely replace newspapers; definitively. I think you have gone over the 'tipping point' here. The only thing I am worried about is that old news stories seem to just hang about forever. How do we trash old stories without going into Library and manually emptying the cache? When I open Times every day, I'd like a brand new newspaper, not one that combines yesterday's old news with the new stories. Won't the cache just keep on getting bigger and bigger to infinity?? Fix this and you will have done 'IT'. Thanks for thinking differently.
A great app. You said it does a little trick to download entire pages without ads when the RSS is poor in content. Well, a lot of feeds are still only 2 lines of text. I don't know if this is a limitation of Times or it can be resolved.
I love this app, your sense of design is flawless! It has been stable for me for a few days. However I cannot bring myself to drop $30 to aggregate data that I can surf to for free.
Kudos for the design however!
Times gets me less lacy to open my unread RSS feeds. Anyway i thik should be in beta phase... I've got several unexpected quits. I'm agree with those who argue that Times is overprized. 18$ will be OK.
Well, after my initial enthusiasm (see my previous comment), I still haven't ponied up the $$$, so the app no longer works for me. My concerns? Stale content (! in RSS-land? How could that be?), stability, and lack of recent updates. Developer is still at 1.0.4. Given the issues, I would have expected another release in the last month.
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