Immunization

Before every major release I like to try and think of everything mean that people might say about the app. It’s fun!

So we just went through this exercise on the NetNewsWire Slack group. Here’s a taste:

• This took five years? I could write an RSS parser in a weekend.
• Can’t get my Twitter and Facebook feeds. Whatever.
• Doesn’t work with my Usenet host.
• The information density of the timeline is… lacking. What the hell.
• Not truly open source since it’s on a Mac.
• Not truly open source since it’s not GPL.
• No vim keys. Why bother.
• Regular people will never use an RSS reader. What’s the point?
• Brent’s last good idea was in 2002. Consider this a textbook case of coasting.
• Great app. Too bad RSS died with Google Reader.
• It totally didn’t pick up my subscriptions from the earlier version. How is this an upgrade?
• When does a 5.0 have fewer features than a 3.0? When it’s NetNewsWire.
• The echo chamber will love this app. They always do.
• Free app. Continues the race to the bottom. Pour one out for Silvio Rizzi.
• No way to send to Instapaper. Fuck it.
• Brent Simmons can’t stop pursuing a technology that even Google famously admitted was not worth bothering with.
• If this app took five years, imagine how long it will take before it will actually sync with Feedly.
• Sure it’s free, but I bet the Feedbin people paid them off, because the only way to sync is to pay money to Feedbin.
• No iCloud sync? Jerks.
• No iOS app. The revolution happened on mobile, Brant. What the actual fuck.
• Shoulda been Catalyst. Dinosaurs wrote this app.
• Not on the Mac App Store? I guess they don’t want users.
• I would totally use this if it had just this one [feature x], which I can’t believe they shipped without. (Multiply this comment by 100, with a different feature x each time.)
• Area Man Can’t Let RSS Go

Some feedback will be factually inaccurate, but we like to imagine that too:

• I remember using NetNewsWire on OS 9, and it hasn’t really improved since then. They should make it a Cocoa app.
• Doesn’t work with web comics. POS
• Doesn’t support 10.5.
• It should be free.
• You’d think they would have updated the design — but it looks exactly like NetNewsWire of old.
• Why the hell would they build on that aging code base from Black Pixel? I heard it doesn’t even use ARC.
• No way to sync? What’s their actual problem?

See? The actual feedback will be nicer than the stuff we thought up. This provides a bit of immunization. :)

But, also, there will be negative feedback we didn’t imagine. That’s the gold!

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Bonus from Daniel Jalkut, but not actually a criticism:

Can’t innovate, my RSS.