This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Every RSS Reader, Reviewed. Additional details may be found in the original article.
Taking nearly half a minute from launch to actually open and become usable (if it doesn’t crash beforehand, as it did for us more than 50% of the time), iRSS ($5) provides users with an early taste of the shortcomings they’ll find within. The app comes pre-loaded with a modest list of Mac- and Apple-oriented feeds, including iLounge, each listed in the main view with the title, a blue bubble containing the unread count, the time of the most recent update, and the feed URL, an unnecessary addition, in our view.
A button for adding a feed takes the user to a rather unattractive page where they can enter a description, the feed URL (no auto-discovery here), and select how many lines of preview text to show and how many items to store. Tapping on a feed takes users to a list of entries, with a refresh button at the bottom and buttons for deletion of items and marking all as read at the top.
Selecting an entry takes users to a somewhat ugly individual item view, with a too-small trash icon to delete the entry, a button to mark the item unread, an “enclosure” compass button that did absolutely nothing in our testing, and an action button that automatically sends the user to a new email populated by the summary of the entry, but astoundingly, no link to the article, and no mention of what site it came from — not even the title. Likewise, for sites that don’t provide an extra link to the story in the summary of their feed, there is no way to view the item outside of the summary view — tapping on the title does nothing, and there is no other option for opening the item in Safari, meaning that iRSS is only good for reading the information found inside the feed itself.
We could go into further detail on iRSS’ shortcomings, but frankly, there’s no need. For free, this app wouldn’t be worth the download, but it instead sells for $5, making it the worst value of any reader app. iLounge Rating: F.
Our Rating
Company and Price
Company: Boris Klaydman
Website: N/A
Title: iRSS
Price: $5
Compatible: iPhones, iPod touches
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