Then, of course, there’s the option of reading RSS feeds inside a browser, especially if you don’t follow a large number of feeds. You read me right: it’s not necessary to set up email accounts in Thunderbird to use it as a RSS reader, you just create a new RSS ‘profile’ and add your favourite feeds or import them from another RSS reader in OPML format. I hadn’t even thought about Thunderbird because after attempting to use it as an email client when version 2 debuted, I was disappointed and underwhelmed by its performance, so I deleted it and forgot about it entirely. I also received a nice tip on Twitter, from my friend Grant Hutchinson: you can also use Thunderbird as a standalone RSS reader. I haven’t tested either, but from the screenshots and the information available on their sites, they don’t look so bad. The first is shareware (£7.50 / €10 / $12), the second is free. I use the former on my blueberry clamshell iBook G3/300 and it works fine.Ī couple of RSS readers that are still under active development and support Mac OS X 10.4 are NewsLife and Shrook. are the versions you have to look for, respectively. Similarly, you can also use an older (pre‑2.4) version of Vienna - see here for a list of downloadable versions.Ī nod to those who still use Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: NetNewsWire 2.1.5 and Vienna 2. Although it isn’t developed anymore, it’s stable, free, without ads, and runs smoothly on my Cube (a G4/450MHz machine). The last version supporting Tiger is 3.1.7 (you can download it here). If you’re not interested in syncing your feeds with Google Reader, then in my opinion and experience your best option is to use an older version of NetNewsWire. Another well-known RSS reader which has gone Mac OS X 10.5 or higher is NewsFire. It’s wrong, they won’t even open under Tiger. If you search for them in other Mac software download websites, you may encounter misleading pieces of information, for example that they require “Mac OS X 10.4 or higher”. Therefore, it makes sense for me - and for other people who use a similar setup - to worry about Mac OS X 10.4 support in the third-party applications I use.īack to RSS readers, my two favourite ones, NetNewsWire and Vienna have both dropped support for Mac OS X 10.4 in their latest versions (3.2.7 and 2.5.x respectively), and now they require at least Mac OS X 10.5 to run. I also use it to check a couple of low-traffic email accounts to open additional browser windows in Safari when the browsers I have open on my main MacBook Pro get too crowded to listen to music (I have a separate iTunes library on the Cube entirely dedicated to classical music) and of course to check my Twitter stream and the RSS feeds. With the vintage but still beautiful acrylic 22-inch Cinema Display attached to it, the Cube is perfect for displaying information I want to glance at while I work. I have a few of these Macs in my home network, and they still serve me well, especially the PowerMac G4 Cube at my side. Typically these Macs are old PowerPC G4s which do not support Mac OS X 10.5 or, when they meet the minimum requirements for running Mac OS X 10.5, they do so at the price of poor, disappointing performance. I know, some people’s reaction may be Who cares about Mac OS X 10.4? Upgrade your Mac, already! It’s not a matter of upgrading: for instance, my main machine is only one year old and fully upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6, but there are many Mac users who have slightly older machines that aren’t obsolete yet and can still perform a lot of other duties. Are there still standalone applications supporting Tiger for RSS feed management? Recently, on Twitter, my friend Brando asked about the state of RSS readers on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
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