Google Reader for iPhone gripes
I love Google reader for the iPhone, its simplicity makes it fantastic and fast. Unfortunately, I think they streamlined it a little too much. It’s an 9 out of 10, but with these pretty minor nits, it could go to 11!
Gripe #1 - Why is there no way to read already read posts? True most of the time I want to get the new stuff, but there’s more than a few times where I’d like to check out something I’ve already seen. They did fix this for starred items, which is great - so you can view all your starred posts read or not. Unfortunately other tags are essentially useless since you can’t go back and look them over. Nor can you go into a particular feed and read old ones. It really needs a way to show you already read posts, just a simple toggle would do.
Gripe #2 - For gods sake why is there no count of how many are left? Clearly this is something people are interested in since they recently changed the max number they show on the full client from 100 to 1000, why don’t they have this ok the iPhone version? Criminy, it is just a nit but it does annoy me. I know, I used the C word, sorry for the harsh language.
Gripe #3 - I wish that they would have the star/unstar button right on the list view. Like in the regular reader - sometimes I just want to plow through a list of stuff and I know I want to save something for later, but I can’t read it at that instant - now I have to click into the piece, click star and then back twice. If they just had a star on the list view I could do it in one shot bringing me right back to the same page. Even better if they ajaxed it.
Pie in the Sky #1 - If I had a Google Reader wish granting Genie (I mean, if I had a more general purpose wish granting Genie, I probably wouldn’t make this wish…) I’d wish for a true offline client. Something that worked like an IMAP client for my Reader feeds - it would look and smell just like Reader, but it’d update every so often automatically and keep all that stuff local. Then I when I found myself offline (say in the train…) I could happily read my feeds secure in the knowledge that when I re-emerged into the day it would sync up all the read/starred flags with Google.
Thats pretty much it. Honestly, the iPhone client is super cool the interface is just right for the screen and bandwidth. Do you use it? Or what do you use for RSS on the go?
And to bring it all back to my kindle obsession. Be honest with me. Do you really want to read an entire book on the iPhone? On that small screen projecting light right into your eyes? I mean, if you increased the font size on that you’d get like what, a dozen words per page? And then to change pages you’d need two hands to swipe? I love the iPhone as much, or possibly more, than the next guy, but all of this “iPhone could be the best e-book reader” seems like a big fat load of crazy talk to me.
November 29th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I’ve read >10,000 pages on: A Palm Pilot Pro, m100, Palm V, Handpring Edge, Treo 600, Treo 650, Nokia E62 and now my Blackberry.
I love reading books on the small screen. My eyes and hands stay stationary, so it is good for the train and for bed (where the lit screen comes in handy as well.)
I think that the Kindle is too big, honestly. If I was going to make that kind of commitment I’d bring a real book.
What I’d like to see is a similarly sized device that has something like my DevonThink database in it where I can view pdfs, texts, web archives and the lot offline all the while making notes. Something like that + the Fujitsu ScanSnap 510 would be amazing. I could easily scan everything in large batches and then read and search on it all offline. Compared to that offline RSS reading seems like a timewaster.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Yowch. I guess that’s why it’s Diff’rent Strokes for different folks. I tried reading a book on my Treo one time and don’t care to repeat the brain busting experience. Even on my iPhone if read GReader for too long, especially in a dark room, I get that dry eyes wide open feeling and general brain pain. As cheesy as Amazon’s implenentation is, I think the external light on the thing is much easier on my baby eyes.
For me, the only showstopper with the Kindle is that it doesn’t have the content I want. I can live, however unhappily, with the DRM - I just don’t have that many PDF’s I want to view on the go. I understand the generalized problem with that, but goddamit, I want to get rid of the half dozen tech books I am constantly referencing and stash them in a 10oz searchable device.
You could, technically, view your pdf’s and texts on the kindle for the reading and searching. You just need that mobipocket converter so you can work over the pdfs. Scanner would be cool, although I don’t know what all this paper is that you’re scanning!
Offline RSS reading is a time waster compared to anything! :)
November 29th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
book + professional grade papercutter + duplexing sheet feeding scanner with automatic OCR == what I’m talking about. I’ve been trying it out a little, cutting the bindings of magazines to scan the articles, but there are a lot of folks doing this with books.
I’m working towards a situation where I retain no books or paper for anything.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
That’s like the most hardest core thing I’ve read all day. For realz. I have only my jealousy to keep me warm, now. Thanks.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:43 am
[...] annoying thing is that I could not find where to set up the profile. Fortunately, because the iPhone Reader interface has the “share” link very close to the “star” link, I [...]
May 12th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
[...] sure what it is, but it definitely spends a lot of time on Reader. You may recall, that I had some gripes with Reader for the iPhone. This beta addresses most of them, a few niceties that I didn’t mention but falls just shy of [...]
June 6th, 2008 at 6:22 am
[...] simplicity makes it … for the train and for bed where the lit screen comes in handy as well. …http://comments.deasil.com/2007/11/29/google-reader-iphone/lixlpixel Mac news - search for lit readerResults for lit reader from various Apple news sites - [...]