I want to thank everyone who helped make the Unread 2 launch successful. Leading up to the release, I had beta testers who provided great suggestions and bug reports. I also appreciate the offers from others even though I could not accomodate more testers. Several writers reported on the release, some writing in-depth reviews. I believe there are more reviews coming over the next few weeks. Many downloaded and tried Unread. Some subscribed immediately, some are still trying the new app, and some sent me suggestions that I am considering. Many retweeted my announcement or tweeted nice things about Unread.
At MacStories, Ryan Christoffel wrote:
Perhaps the biggest headline feature of Unread 2 is something that, if it works right, you won’t even know it exists: automatic webpage text. This enables Unread to pull in the full contents of an article even if the RSS feed only includes the article summary. The app does this by default, ensuring you won’t have to do the dance of opening an article, finding it truncated, then loading the full article in Safari or Safari View Controller.
I am particularly proud of this aspect of the webpage text feature: it just figures out whether a feed is summary-only and displays the webpage text when that is the case. You rarely need to think about summary-only feeds.
Matt Birchler wrote a detailed review in which he reasonably concluded that Unread is not the app for him, but he acknowledges many good things about it:
Unread hides 90% of it’s interactions behind non-standard gestures, and for me that’s not a good design choice. The app looks amazing, and when I’m casually browsing a few items, it’s really delightful, but the choices they made don’t line up with what I need from an RSS reader.
I appreciate his thoughtful take on Unread. I accept that Unread will never appeal to every RSS user. It has very strong appeal to many, and that works for me.
I am delighted that AppleVis, a site focused on apps accessible to blind and low-vision users, noted the release and Unread’s continued attention to accessibility.
Federico Viticci also mentioned Unread 2 in the most recent episode of The Talk Show.
These are some other thoughtful articles:
In French: Unread 2 cède à son tour aux sirènes de l’abonnement
by Nicolas Furno at iGeneration
In German: RSS-Reader Upgrade: Unread 2
by Frank Stohl at stohl.de
In Chinese: 老牌 RSS 阅读器大版本升级，Unread 2 更新详解
by Tp at sspai.com
I got a few bug reports and suggestions that I am considering. I expect to release a bug fix update within the next week or two that addresses some issues that were reported. I am considering other suggestions for subsequent versions of Unread. I have enjoyed the past few weeks of updating the website and managing the launch, and I have particularly enjoyed the increase in interaction with my customers over the past few days, but I am also excited to focus again on further improvements to Unread.
Thank you.
