Marco.org

Dear David Watanabe (for whom I cannot find a direct email address),

I’m a huge fan of your NewsFire RSS client, as discussed here, here, and here. I even got a second NewsFire license in a MacZot bundle. For an application that served me so well for so long, it has proved to be a far higher value than the nominal price you charge for it.

But recently, I became a two-Mac user for the first time, and if I want to use NewsFire as my RSS reader on both, it has no way to synchronize my feeds and “read/unread” item status. NetNewsWire offers this, and having just made their software free, I switched to it a few weeks ago solely for the synchronization feature.

But NetNewsWire is completely inferior to your excellent NewsFire. I don’t know why the vocal Mac community is so fond of NNW — maybe they’re still thinking like Windows users. NNW sucks. You know this, too, which is probably why NewsFire exists and is so good. And web-based RSS readers can’t even compare.

Maybe you’re discouraged because NewsFire isn’t the dominant RSS reader. I hope not, because Apple isn’t the dominant computer manufacturer either, and they still find it worthwhile to produce high-quality products for the people who value quality and great design.

Please develop and release an update to NewsFire that synchronizes between multiple computers.

• I’d pay $45 for the complete lifetime family license for both computers.
• I’d also pay a monthly fee, maybe $5-10, for the synchronization service.
• I’d even buy .Mac if NewsFire synchronization required it.
• I’d be willing to write and host the web-based back-end if you can’t.

Thank you for your consideration.

— Marco Arment

(If anyone has his contact info, please pass this along or give me his email address.)