Who needs Feedly?! Check out Lire

By Dave Nason, 11 April, 2013

Forum

iOS and iPadOS

Admitedly I am new to RSS, I just never bothered with it before. But the fuss over Google Reader made me decide to take a look. I know there has been a lot of talk about Feedly, and I don't want to undermine the Campaign of the Month in any way, but I really do want to recommend Lire. It seems very full featured and is incredibly simple to use. Also, the developer is very committed to VoiceOver support, just take a look at the release notes for the latest update to see that. It's not free unfortunately, but if you're looking for a new RSS reader, I doubt you'll be disappointed with Lire.

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Comments

Some things to be aware of

Firstly, Lire is actually really accessible , though it does have a couple of problems and one specific irritation related to subscription: 1. As noted in this forum post, it isn't free, a subscription is required to access the ability to read more than 15 articles per feed. This, in itself isn't the problem. My main issue here is that if you purchase the iPad version, you are expected to pay twice. I'm certainly not. I bought the subscription on the iPhone and refuse to bother. I dislike developers who pull stunts like this. 2. The article parsing can be a bit wacky at times. I've opened an article I wanted to read based on it's title, and had a completely different article be reflected. For instance, there was an article on managing emails, so once I opened it, the title was fine but the content was about iPad cases. I'm not sure about it, it is still a new app and all the accessibility efforts can't be overlooked. As an example of how to implement best-in-class support, it is superb. It's just not superb that iPad users have to pay twice for both an iPhone and an iPad subscription. Yes, it is cheap enough, but principles and all that jazz. Either way, it is an app to monitor and support.

Subsitution

I must concur. This has some very good potential of being my to go RSS Reader app. I have been in touch with the developer on this app. We were able to define in where we can improve on the accessibility on the app. With the newest release today. We now have the specific VO options with in the Settings. I will certainly pass along any concerns you have had with this app. The subscription I wanted to mention is a one time purchase. So it isn't a monthly subscription. With the Google Reader going away. I fear and have a feeling that most RSS Reader will have you pay for using their services. We have gotten so used to the FREE service that Google had given us. There are some really great features he is planning on implementing in future releases. So I can't wait for it.

Hi, I don't begrudge paying

Hi, I don't begrudge paying for it once, but I do think it should be one-time, not per device as it seems to be now. It is a good app for what it is, but perhaps my needs are changing a bit as I am now using twitter to open links directly.

Lire is good, but

Hello, I have Lire too. I am using it and I am satisfied of it, but I found some disadvantages, which must be considered before buying it. Consideration depends on everyone's needs, but for now Lire is the most accessible alternative I think. 1. the refreshing process is a bit slow. if you have many feeds you may wait also 3 or 4 minutes before finishing refresh and cache. Of course it depends on your connection's speed. 2. if you have lots of feeds (at the beginning i had 111 sites i followed) it may not complete refreshing operation and crashes; don't know if this problem has been solved! Now I have 54 feeds and it works. 3. you can only import google reader's feeds one by one 4. there is no synchronization at all! iCloud could be a good thing. If you have 2 iDevices, such as an iPhone and an iPad, you must re-import feed by feed and it may be a loss of patience. 5. no category organization. Google reader could separate feeds in folders. technology rather then newspapers or "blind related". and you could have different folders so that if you wanted to read just technology-related articles you clicked on technology and you had no risk to find politics inside :) 6. last but not least, Lire for iPad is different from Lire for iPhone so you have to pay twice if you want to have it on both iDevices. Of course, except for the last one, the fact of paying, the other points are just my personal opinions. My needs are my needs, and no one is obliged to have the same needs of others! For the rest, I find Lire a very good product and use it often, especially because it allows me to read the article without having annoying links, ads, frames and so on. It does not take the entire web page but extracts the article and you just obtain the text. the only appearing hyperlinks are the ones referring to external resources needed for the article, and this is a good idea. bye

I'm really happy to have

I'm really happy to have found an app that give us the opportunity to read feeds in this simple manner. I agree with most concepts written here, the app is still at the beginning and we should wait for the development of it. I still have the problem that sometimes the article is not cached, or, if cached, the language is absolutely unreadable. The author told me that there are some problems with the server that cache the articles, so I hope this bug will be solved. The capability of decide what elements voiceover should read in the list of articles was the first feature I asked to the developer, and I am really happy that it was committed in 4 days!

the developer will work on folders too

hi, i talked to the developer of Lire app and he clarified some points for me. First of all, the fact of paying twice for an iPhone and an iPad. The 2 apps have different code each other, so, lire cannot be an universal app, it has not been projected as universal from the beginning, his first intentions were to develop just an iPhone app. Then, apple does not allow to share in-app purchases between 2 different apps, so we have to pay premium twice if we need premium. Then i suggested him to allow Lire to manage xml and OPML files, so that if he does not find any synchronization solution (to have the same feeds in many devices), feeds can be exported into XML or OPML and saved into dropbox, sent via e-mail or other external storage services, so that they can be used as solution. Or, just save OPML from our used computer client and then manage it via dropbox adding feeds to Lire from there He's also going to work on folder management. He did not know ezfeeds or feeddler pro, the apps managing folders in google reader accounts and he is going to study them to create a proper folder management system so, we just have to wait Lire will become better and better i think i have no reason not to trust him