FAQ: Syncing & PodcastingFeature requests are often repetitive, so I thought I would address two common requests, if only to cut my inbox some slack.
Syncing (ie. syncing of feeds/articles/etc. between different Macs/devices): In short, yes, but not until syncing is built into the OS. I haven’t looked into the implementation details yet, but I’m presuming that these mechanisms in Tiger will suffice for our purposes.
Podcasting: I have a more meandering answer. To a reasonable extent, NewsFire already supports podcasts. NewsFire recognizes audio enclosures and it does display them. If an article has audio content, that content appears when you view the article. I think this user interface makes sense. It’s simple, easily understood by the user, and fits well within the NewsFire interaction style. Moreover, I think it is sufficient for most users.
I presume when people ask for podcast support they want non-interactive preloading of audio content and importing of this content into iTunes. My gut reaction to this is that if podcasting is essentially about importing audio content into iTunes, then the proper place for podcast support is in iTunes itself. I mean, Apple already supports streaming radio in iTunes. Insofar as podcasting is a new type of web radio, it makes sense that it should take its place alongside streaming radio inside iTunes.
Of course, getting podcasting into iTunes ultimately isn’t up to us. In the meantime we’re left with two classes of applications that do podcasting: dedicated podcasting apps and RSS readers that have hacked on podcasting features. In principle, there is nothing wrong with dedicated podcasting applications. However, most of the feedback I get is that these podcasting apps are just not good. That’s not to say the idea of a dedicated podcasting app is wrong – I think it’s very right – it’s just that the implementation thus far has not lived up to expectations. The failure of these applications to deliver compelling user interfaces should not reflect poorly on the idea.
Desperately trying to play hero to podcast fans have been RSS readers that think that since news syndication and podcasting use the same data format, you should have one huge app that does it all. My major concern with this is that you are mixing interface metaphors. The metaphor behind podcasting is radio. The metaphor behind RSS readers is the newspaper. Different metaphors demand different interaction designs and this demands different user interfaces. Fusing two fundamentally different interaction designs muddles the final design.
As a matter of personal taste, I despise bloat – I like my applications tight, lean and focused. I think the user experience is better when you have applications that do a specific task and do it really well. I would love for a really great dedicated podcasting application to emerge. Who knows, if no one else steps up to the plate, maybe I’ll have to write one myself.
What does this mean for NewsFire? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve stated my dislike of bloat. However, I don’t want to rule out anything – every time I say “no” to a feature, I end up changing my mind 6 months down the road. In fact, the quicker I dismiss an idea, the better that idea probably is. I certainly am interested in what people think on this matter (that’s partly the reason for this post). My assumptions about how people interact with podcasts might be wrong. I am reasonably convinced, however, that if either iTunes adopts podcasting support (unlikely) or a really stellar dedicated podcasting application emerges (I sure hope so), the demand for heavy-duty podcasting features in news reading apps will fade.
David,
On the whole podcasting front I agree that the metaphors don’t mix. Maybe someday someone will integrate something into iTunes, or make decent dedicated application for it.
Though I don’t think the metaphor is complete to compare RSS Feeds as Newspapers, and RSS audio enclosure as the radio. RSS and the scheduler/poler in NewsFire is the “paper boy” for the newspaper, and the “ether” for the radio.
Newsfire renders the paper as best as any other newsreader I have used, and to add some kind of audio/radio paradigm would not be desirable. Though you could leverage the power NewsFire’s poler/scheduler/retreival and provide a hand off to another application. This would not pollute the design.
At the most basic, say on enclosure download -> run user program X with arguments a and b (a being the filename and location, b being the xml metadata for the enclosure.
I could write a suitable script in python in minutes to do all the magic i desire for podcasts with this interface. You could also then create another application to do the same thing with a bit more UI elegance.
On a side note, this enclosure hand off could be a nice place to integrate say an elegant Bitorrent client to auto download .torrents that are served in RSS. That would extend the “ether” metaphor to delivering “television”.