Shaun Inman:
As of today I’m officially suspending sales and support of Mint and Fever. But! As self-hosted software, absolutely nothing changes and you can continue using both Mint and Fever as you were yesterday.
[…]
These things were not distractions. The baby and the new game and my next are where I will be focusing my energy going forward.
Michael Rockwell:
I reviewed Mint and Fever around the time I first installed them and they’ve been my favorite web analytics and RSS syncing services ever since. But the writing’s been on the wall for both of them for quite some time — development has drastically slowed over the past two years. I expect I’ll continue using them for a while, but eventually I’ll have to migrate to something else.
I gave up Mint some years ago for a faster, more customizable homegrown solution. But I still really like Fever and am not looking forward to having to find a replacement.
The writing also seems to be on the wall for ReadKit, my current Mac RSS reader of choice. It still works, but development has slowed, bugs have gone unfixed, and e-mails remain unanswered.
So I’ll be looking for both a new RSS server and client. For clients, I found this roundup helpful, but so far I’m not enthused about any of the options. Except for Vienna, the apps seem underpowered and overly iOS-like, and Vienna doesn’t have many syncing options. Syncing aside, I don’t see anything to rival NetNewsWire 3.
As to the servers, it’s exciting how many options there are now, but it is not easy to compare them. I want to know how often they fetch and how they handle updates, deletions, and retention. I guess I’ll need to make a bunch of test accounts.
Update (2017-01-03): John Gruber:
R.I.P. Mint, the best simple web stats tool I’ve ever seen.
Would love to find a replacement with similar design.
A new version of ReadKit was just released, and the developer responded to my bug report and said it will be fixed soon.
Fever Mac Mac App macOS 10.12 Sierra Mint NetNewsWire ReadKit RSS Sunset Vienna RSS Web
Riccardo Mori:
I have a hard time believing it, but for the sake of argument, let’s say the Mac has reached the end of the line. Let’s say there’s little room left to innovate on the hardware side, and just room for small refinements and life-support maintenance on the software side. Let’s say Apple is not entirely wrong in choosing to neglect the Mac. Let’s say iOS is really the future and the right bet.
How is iOS supposed to evolve to become as mature and versatile a platform as the Mac?
[…]
If touch remains the only input method in iOS, how can the user interface and the user interaction be kept ‘simple’ when future iOS devices need to connect and interact with other peripherals?
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When I walk down this hypothetical path, what I see in iOS’s trajectory, more than sheer innovation, is a reinvention of the wheel.
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A Post-PC era where we should eventually get rid of traditional computers to switch to devices and an operating system that will have to behave more like traditional computers to provide a similar level of versatility. And we will have gone through the effort to reach a similar level of productivity as we have now on the Mac because…? Because iOS is nicer and feels fresher? And for how long will iOS keep feeling nicer and fresher?
Previously: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists, Understanding Apple’s Marginalization of the Mac, iOS Lacks a Document Filing System.
Update (2016-12-28): Jason Brennan:
Can you imagine doing anything even remotely like that even on a big ass iPad with a keyboard? I’ve waited for years to see something great like this, like “hanging out” and mucking around on an iOS device, but I’m still waiting.
A lie I keep telling myself is multi-touch is so fantastic. It’s amazing, right? You can use all your fingers (and then some!), to uhm, touch your screen. To do what, I still don’t know. Almost ten years of iOS and about the best multitouch app I can think of is Maps: it’s got two-finger-gestures!
After all this time, after all this waiting and lying to myself, I think multi-touch has been a big red herring. I’ve always looked at it and seen potential, like, this is the year of the multitouch desktop but it’s never materialized. iOS has always felt incredibly stunted to me, but I kept telling myself, we just need time to re-imagine software, we’re all just stuck in the desktop mindset, it’ll come.
iOS iOS 10 Mac macOS 10.12 Sierra
