NewsFire is Free

IconWhen opening NewsFire to read my feeds this morning I was notified of an update. As usual, I immediatley downloaded and installed the update. When I took a look at the release notes, I noticed that NewsFire is now free!

NewsFire is a great RSS reader and I have always highly recommended it. NewsFire has a clean interface, doesn’t take away space from the feeds with extra windows, and even has smart feeds. We have reviewed NewsFire in the past if you want a more detailed overview of the app.

NewsFire is Free!

Now that it is free, you have an excuse to start using NewsFire for all your feed reading needs. NewsFire can be downloaded here.

Comments

12 Responses to “NewsFire is Free”

  1. wphj on March 1st, 2008 11:58 am

    Very nice, I use NewsFire every day.

    Does anyone know how to get the “New Items” option at the top of your source list? It shows it in the screenshot on the site but I can’t find it in the preferences.

  2. E.T.Cook on March 1st, 2008 12:04 pm

    The reason he decided to make it free is because it is vastly inferior to NetNewsWire which is also free.

    Newsfire might be good for those individuals that subscribe to a handful of feeds, but starts showing its weakness quickly as your feed count raises.

    Plus…the support is garbage.

    NWW is the way to go, avoid this steaming pile at all costs…free or not.

  3. Jim on March 1st, 2008 12:41 pm

    As E.T. Cook stated, this is more of a “I surrender” type of move. With NNW going free, pretty much all RSS readers will have to go free, because ALL of them are years behind NNW in features and support.

    Newsfire in particular is another half-baked app by the “Delicious Generation” that started out fine, but he obviously gave up well before half-way through. At least he was nice enough to move it to a freebie, rather than just letting it sit on the site at cost and never sell anything. Of course, now he’ll have to listen to all the “I want my money back” complaints.

  4. mark on March 1st, 2008 12:43 pm

    wphj:

    it’s not in the prefs. you can create a smart feed entitled “New Items” quite easily though.

  5. Mark Milian on March 1st, 2008 1:36 pm

    This would have been great news a year ago, but I’ve since found Safari RSS and Mail in Leopard work well enough for me.

  6. Look on March 1st, 2008 2:49 pm

    Endo & NewsFire are now free and “unsupported”. Both readers didn’t see a real upgrade since the beginning of 2007. Until yesterday, NewsFire was unusable (10.5)..and Endo is just full of bugs.

    NNW – is an ugly workhorse.
    NewsFire – fast and beautiful.
    Endo – is the smart one.

    In the end, we lose.

  7. Lee on March 1st, 2008 3:52 pm

    I’m still waiting to be convinced away from the quite-sufficient-and-accessible-anywhere Google Reader. Am I just a dolt?

  8. Jim on March 2nd, 2008 1:26 pm

    Google Reader is fine if you’re never at the same computer but still need to have your feeds. But Google Reader is virtually void of features found in any desktop apps – NetNewsWire in particular.

  9. ErichD on March 2nd, 2008 9:23 pm

    Hey, you failed to mention that, lie his other offerings, NewsFire adds a little of Watanabe to itself unknown to the user, and the user is unable to delete this bit of “spying.”

    So far, it’s been uncovered that if you install this “free” version of NewsFire, you have Watanbe’s blog feed installed by default, and cannot, under any circumstance, delete the feed and still run NewsFire. This may not be a problem if you upgrade from a previously licensed version.

    And yes, it remains clunky and slow as all get-out.

    What other bits of spyware this thing installs are unknown at this time.

  10. Dan on March 3rd, 2008 7:49 am

    I’ve been using it for a while now, and while it isn’t nearly as powerful as nnw, I like the very mac-like interface

  11. Insomnic on March 3rd, 2008 11:41 am

    After Watanabe’s Inquisitor mess (the unpublished “favoristism” to his Amazon Affiliates account and some other little sneakiness – some quick searches should find that info for you) I pretty much avoid all things Watanabe.
    AcidSearch instead of Inquisitor for Safari searches (use the beta for Leopard). For me, Vienna has been an excellent, always free, desktop RSS client.

  12. Google Reader Gets Some AIR with ReadAir | MacApper on May 23rd, 2008 12:42 pm

    [...] For awhile now, it has been relatively safe to crown Google as the king of web-based feed readers. The ability to access favorite feeds anywhere through the everyone-and-their-dog-has-one Google account has been indispensable to news-addicts such as myself. Google Reader’s interface (while excellent for a web-based solution) can often leave something to be desired, and still doesn’t quite live up to competitive desktop-based newsreaders. [...]

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