David Watanabe, creator of the popular NewsFire RSS reader, has announced a new iPhone application called Ski Lodge ( iTunes Link). The application shows off his talent of making bold, sharp design choices, also seen in his other applications, Xtorrent, Acquisition, and Inquisitor.
NewsFire, while now free on the Mac, is expected to show up in the App Store at some point, based on a single teaser Watanabe posted on Flickr. Comments on the image show a strong desire among users:
rksprst: I second the sync function. Also “free” otherwise google reader’s iphone web interface still can’t be beat.
kommen: Had to switch to NetNewsWire because it was the only news reader I could find which syncs. I’d really love to be able to switch back to NewsFire!
blackplastic: And just when I’d given up on News Fire and headed to the dark side because syncing was no longer just ‘nice to have’…
lantrix: Yeah I would go back to newsfire if sync was in place. I’m all over netnewswire now due to multiplatform sync capabilities (OSX, iPhone and god forbid win32). As an original paid up newsfire user I would still be happy to pay a reasonable amount for the iphone app (say $AU2.99) :-)
lance.white: I will go back to newsfire as well if sync is added. Even though I prefer it over NetNewsWire syncing is it’s only plus.
I strongly agree. When I bought my first iPhone, I switched to Google Reader to have my items synced between my Macs and my iPhone, and now use ByLine to access Reader on my phone, but NewsFire would offer (based on Watanabe’s other work) a far smoother, more polished experience.
The issue is, of course, the logistics of syncing. ByLine piggybacks on Googles Reader’s APIs and NetNewsWire uses NewsGator’s sync engine. In the past, indie developers have tapped into MobileMe’s iDisk feature to offer syncing to customers. Would a iPhone version of NewsFire tap into iDisk via WebDAV to sync items? Would it allow not only iPhone <–> Mac syncing, but syncing between multiple Macs? Time will tell, but if done correctly, I think Watanabe’s RSS reader would be the favorite of many, many people.