Only 37 betas later, Brent Simmons, now of NewsGator, has released the next dot-release of the Mac’s best feed reader, NetNewsWire.
Highlights of this release
- NewsGator syncing
- Universal binary
- Performance enhancements
- Print command
- Post to del.icio.us command
- Email-link and email-contents commands
- Sorting subscriptions by attention
- User interface changes
- Bug fixes
I’ve been using all the betas and love it just as much as ever — totally solid feed reading. Would love to see support for microformats like Endo but there’s always 2.2…
Factory Joe 
Excellent – and kinda funny that I read this in NetNewsWire 2.1b37!
Looks good, too bad I’m stuck with my windows pc for a while yet.
I wasn’t down with having to create a NewsGator account in order to re-authorize NNW. If it’s so important to have everyone in the NewsGator fold, they could have migrated the data instead of requiring me to re-register the product that I bought and paid for. NNW is awesome, but my experience with 2.1 was tainted from the get go.
Todd — we could have migrated the data, I suppose, but we couldn’t have known who already had NewsGator accounts, and you would not have had your choice of username and password. You’re just asked for name and email (and to pick a username/password).
Warning: If you upgrade, not only will NNW ask for your licence number but for the username and email you originally registered with. If you don’t have that, you will be blocked from reading feeds, halfway through an installation, unable to go back: in short, Installation Hell.
Upgrade Not Recommended.
I also am not down with having to create a newsGator account in order to re-authorize, since in my case it didn’t recognize my name/email, resulting in my being stuck between versions, unable to read feeds.
The response team was pretty quick to respond, and they were able to help, but then again I (unfairly?) said I was a reporter, and got a couple of folks on the phone right away. Appreciated, and helpful, but would the “average” user get this fast of a response? I hope so.
I was told that since my “key” was a special one (for reporters) it may not have been correctly tracked/migrated (not sure exactly where the problem occurred) and that more normal accounts shouldn’t have the problem I had. That’s fair, no system is perfect, and the real question is how many other folks will have similar problems to mine.
Conclusion? The response team seems to be doing a good job monitoring the blogosphere and help email, but I think I was silly to try upgrading in the middle of a business day. I’d recommend caution to the rest of you–be smarter than I was, upgrade when you’re not working (with seventy zillion browser and aplication windows open and afraid of a crash!)
Yeah, the whole NewsGator thing is a bit spammy — but that’s what happens when apps get bought. I guess it’s a small price to pay if Brent’s able to focus on app development full time and less on sales — but I don’t find the NewsGator integration particularly helpful. At least it’s free for two years!