“Cutting out the RSS middleman”

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

Way back when Google Reader went the way of all Google products (RIP), I ended up switching to Feedly, a web-based RSS service that had good integration with third-party clients.

…

That seemed silly to me: I only subscribe to thirty-some feeds, probably about half of which are actually updated regularly, and I’d prefer for the control over when I get my items delivered to be in my own hands, not that of a middleman.

I went through a very similar path to Moren, and ended in a similar place: with my feeds being updated directly from the source, and synced to my various devices in iCloud. I’m fine with it, since I’m all-in on Apple devices, although I see how not everyone can do this. I used Feedbin as a syncing service for quite a while, and was happy with it for a cross-platform solution, but this feels better, and eliminates a subscription fee (albeit a small one, for a well-run service).

For reading, I’m using NetNewsWire and it’s great. It’s a real, honest-to-goodness Mac app—a “Mac-assed Mac app”, even—which is great, as that’s where I do the majority of my reading. But it’s also a truly native iOS and iPadOS app as well. And if you use a keyboard on the iPad (and I presume the iPhone), it has the same keyboard shortcuts as it does on the Mac. I really don’t understand why more apps don’t do that (I’m looking particularly at you, Spark).