Times: Looks Aren’t Everything
May 3rd, 2008 (8:01am) Mike Gunderloy 5 Comments
There’s a new desktop RSS reader in town for the Mac crowd: Times, from Acrylic Software. Like many OS X apps, it concentrates on looking pretty. Your RSS feeds are presented as a newspaper with sections, rather than in an interface resembling an e-mail application. The typesetting is lovely, and the program automatically pulls pictures to place alongside stories. The layout is quite sexy, and when you click a headline, the front page folds down in an animated fashion to show you the details.
Unfortunately, this eye candy comes at a cost: the program is somewhat slow to display story details, and there’s no way to get an overview of everything that’s new in your feeds at one time. Those who - like many web workers - power through hundreds of feeds a day will do better to stick with a more compact, if less sexy, reader. Times is worth looking at, though, if you’re trying to gently introduce someone new to a few RSS feeds.
5 Comments Post your own comment
tommyl says: May 3rd, 2008 8:48am
I agree that Times isn’t for the heavy RSS user. But it’s so gorgeous, especially on a 24″ iMac. Thinking of using it as a secondary reader for stuff I really want to keep track of.
Jordan Sherer says: May 3rd, 2008 9:10am
I was very excited to check this out, but disappointed when I actually did. Sure, the eye candy is great, but Times lost me when it failed to read a group of feeds that I rely on.
Farfield says: May 4th, 2008 6:07am
Hmm I guess I will stick to NewsFire after reading this. It sure looks slick, but functionality is equally important I think.
Aardvark says: May 5th, 2008 5:04am
I agree with the others–it sure is purdy.
However, I think the dark gray text on a light gray background would be irritating to the eyes, diminishing its usability.
andrew says: May 5th, 2008 6:20am
I doubt it will take long for somebody to marry the ‘eye candy’ of Times with the functionality required by heavy RSS consumers.