My personal favorite newsreader since I stopped reading feeds in Safari has to be NetNewsWire. For a few years I’ve enjoyed the Lite version of NetNewsWire, which has some features removed from the full version, yet was free. I was considering purchasing the full version of NetNewsWire, though with today’s annoucements that NetNewsWire is now at version 3.1 and completely free, I’m super happy. NewsGator, parent company of NetNewsWire also made some of their other products, FeedDemon, NewsGator Inbox, and NewsGator Go! free as well.
Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire sums it up on his blog,
Why go free? Nick Bradbury and Greg Reinacker explain it better than I would, but it boils down to this: the software is great marketing for our enterprise software; and the more users we have, the better able we are to calculate relevance and importance.
I dream of being able to make it so you spend less time reading stuff you don’t care about—I want the important news to go right to the top.
As a fan of independent developers, I’m glad to hear they’re doing well enough with their enterprise level software to give away their consumer one. As a consumer, I’m glad I saved $30 and get to use a great product.
Shawn Blanc did an awesome, in depth review of NNW a few weeks ago.

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