Anyone here using a Mac? I'd like a decent news reader, but can't see
an obvious winner. Thunderbird can do it, but I'm using it for mail, so
would prefer to keep it separate. Suggestions?

(I'm moving to all dev being in VMWare virtual machines, including EWB
coding.)

--

Matthew Jones

Matthew,

<< Anyone here using a Mac? I'd like a decent news reader, but can't see an obvious winner. Thunderbird can do it, but I'm using it for mail, so would prefer to keep it separate. Suggestions? >>

I've given up on newsreaders, and now I'm doing the support forums in the browser.  So, look for the quality of the support forums to start increasing....

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hi Matthew,

<< Anyone here using a Mac? I'd like a decent news reader, but can't see
an obvious winner. Thunderbird can do it, but I'm using it for mail, so
would prefer to keep it separate. Suggestions?

(I'm moving to all dev being in VMWare virtual machines, including EWB
coding.)  >>

I use a Mac.  Perhaps Reeder 2, but I haven't tried it myself.

= Steve

Steve Gill wrote:

> I use a Mac.  Perhaps Reeder 2, but I haven't tried it myself.

Thanks, but that seems to be an RSS reader, rather than NNTP. NNTP
seems to be dying, but it is a really handy way to get stuff. Perhaps
I'll run XanaNews in a VM instead...

--

Matthew Jones

Matthew


>NNTP
>seems to be dying,

Its a great shame but I think you're right. After all why keep a local copy in case the server fails (I'm looking at you Embarcadero) and to be able to use off-line since we're all on line always these days, or keep your own personalised copy of the posts you find interesting. Its much better to have everything on line, with all the latest editing features and the ability to have rich graphics and possibly advertising.

You may get the impression I like NNTP

Roy

Roy,

<< You may get the impression I like NNTP >>

There was an article about this linked to from Hacker News not too long ago:

http://jacquesmattheij.com/aol-20

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim

><< You may get the impression I like NNTP >>
>
>There was an article about this linked to from Hacker News not too long ago:
>
>http://jacquesmattheij.com/aol-20


Interesting,and correct in many ways, but I have a slightly different take on it - its more to do with the commoditisation of computing & the internet and the move to the marketing department rather than the technical department running things.

Roy

Roy,

<< Interesting,and correct in many ways, but I have a slightly different take on it - its more to do with the commoditisation of computing & the internet and the move to the marketing department rather than the technical department running things. >>

I'm sure that's a large part of it.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Roy Lambert wrote:

> Interesting,and correct in many ways, but I have a slightly different
> take on it - its more to do with the commoditisation of computing &
> the internet and the move to the marketing department rather than the
> technical department running things.

Hmm, not sure if I agree. As I was reading the article, I wanted to say
"firewalls", and indeed it then mentions it. The internet grew up, and
firewalls became an important part of things. HTTP was the way that you
could get through the firewall without anyone having to give
permission. It was a big push at the time, and once you have HTTP as
the transport layer instead of TCP/IP, you then have an easier time.
Since AJAX then became a thing, you could do any data transfer you
wanted, and in a sensible form. Why invent a new protocol when you can
use an existing flexible one?

But that doesn't really change a lot in the NNTP stakes, the key is
that it is the text based clients that are dying, and not the
mechanism. I use another system that is using REST or similar for their
new API for a text based system, but such systems are not popular.

The question, I guess, is whether the web interfaces can give the same
benefits, like a quick skip to the next unread message, and
highlighting the topics with new messages, etc. And not assuming you
have read everything when you visited today, and discard the new when
you come again tomorrow. Ah well.

--

Matthew Jones

Matthew


>But that doesn't really change a lot in the NNTP stakes, the key is
>that it is the text based clients that are dying, and not the
>mechanism.

That is mainly why I think its the marketing people. OK techies will always want to play with the latest toys but I've dropped a number of forums because I got fed up of the side ads. A lot of my opinions were formed when I had dial up. When I wrote my own new/mail client I was influenced by a Yahoo mail list (mailing list sort of work, but they're a bit clumsy, however, I still have a couple of those on the go) which wanted to download a new ad each time I looked at the message.


Roy