Safari RSS and PulpFiction
Posted June 28th, 2004 @ 05:01pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Many people IMed me shortly after Safari RSS was announced. "What about PulpFiction?" or "Guess this means the end of PulpFiction?" The answer is rather simple: this is a good thing for PulpFiction.
Safari RSS* will get people interested in syndication. Those users will graduate to a higher level and look for a more advanced reader. PulpFiction Lite aims to do the same things, though clearly not with the same reach as Apple is capable of providing.
I've long said that Apple is not really "squashing" us "poor" third-party developers so long as they stick to the low end of the markets they choose to enter. iPhoto has sold more copies of Photoshop Elements than you could ever imagine. Rock Star relies on the popularity of iTunes. PulpFiction offers so many more features over Safari RSS today that we can't help but be pleased. Where will PulpFiction be in a year when Tiger actually ships? Even better.
Brent echoes many of the same thoughts on his own blog.
* I hope "Safari RSS" is not the final name. Also, why call it that when it supports Atom as well?
Donate Life
Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:31pm #
Great perspective and one that I agree with. Apple is raising the bar for the minimum expectations in many areas. At the same time, they usually provide the technology as a framework for use in development or make the application accessible via plug-ins so that developers can make value-added extensions that are worth paying for.
Ideally, The RSS stuff will be a framework so that you can base future versions of RSS of that basic functionality and then add all the great stuff that makes PulpFiction stand out from the crowd. I look forward to seeing it. BTW one of those stand out features that would be great to see is integration with the new search capabilities that Apple is touting for Tiger.
Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 5:39pm #
Yes, we'll be supporting Spotlight, but that's pretty far away. We'll be on PF 1.3 or 2.0 by then, I imagine!
Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 8:36pm #
I wasn't alarmed by Safari RSS. Even if it becomes more than a 'lite' feature built into Safari later on, it will only be one way to view and keep up with information. There are so many different kinds of news aggregators available for Windows and Mac OS X and the majority of them have unique methods of presentation. Both PulpFiction and NetNewsWire are incredibly high quality aggregators and yet extremely different. No matter how each improve over time, it'll be the individual users that have to decide which methods they prefer. I really liked Feed Demon before I gave up Windows. I immediately enjoyed NetNewsWire when I first downloaded the demo on my new Mac. But upon trying PulpFiction, I was truly impressed. PulpFiction's design is what suits me and how I prefer to work the best-- it's just more in sync with how my brain works than any of the others. I don't have to dig or work to figure it out, everything just flows (I'm speaking of the design, the speed in 1.0 left much to desire).
Dashboard is what shocked me.
Posted 28 Jun 2004 at 10:54pm #
It can only help other products by bringing RSS into the mainstream. A lot of people have never heard of RSS, but after they get a taste of it in Safari, they'll start looking for a more advanced reader.