Feed readers for OSX

It’s been a week since I bought my first Mac, and i’m starting to install software that I knew I could only manage a week without – the first of which is a feedreader.

I use Newsgator online and therefore have a paid FeedDemon install on my Dell laptop, as these synchronise. This means I can read stuff in FeedDemon when i’m at my desk and Newsgator when i’m not without having to read the same items twice over.

This presents an obvious choice for a Mac feedreader – NetNewsWire (Lite). This also synchronises with Newsgator and so will save me a lot of time and effort during the daily catch-up.

I feel though that as Newsgator brought in each component, they have done the bare minimum to integrate it into the brand. Neither of the application-based readers under the Newsgator umbrella do any more than synch with Newsgator. Surely it would make more sense to have them support the same features and synchronise settings (ie flagged items, watch lists) with Newsgator instead of simply synchronising subscriptions. One step further would be to bring the same look and feel to both feedreaders – if iTunes can look the same on both Windows and Mac, then FeedDemon and NetNewsWire can.

RSS is a technology that is begging to be jumped on by the uneducated masses – as shown by the inclusion of feed readers in IE7 – but Newsgator don’t seem to have spotted this potential yet.

Windows-based Macs without OSX

I was reading an article by Sam Gerstenzang entitled ‘Why Boot Camp is the Beginning of the End for Windows‘ (ok, so i’m four months behind on my feed-reading) and mostly I agree with his conclusion, that although Boot Camp enables more of the market to run Windows, it will eventually cause the downfall of Windows itsself.

One thing that occurred to me is that even when (if?) Boot Camp is to be included in the upcoming OSX Leopard, users still need to run the program within OSX to install Windows on a Mac.

If I were Steve Jobs, I’d plan to integrate Boot Camp into the wizard that OSX launches (to configure the machine) when a new Mac is first used by the end user. If the options available were…

1. Customise OSX
2. Customise OSX and install Windows
3. Just install Windows, and set it as the startup

…Apple would be able to catch the market of users who will never want to leave Windows but do want a reliable and stylish machine. This wouldn’t necessarily speed up the downfall of Windows, but would bring Apple some of the market share currently owned by Dell, Lenovo and other large scale hardware manufacturers.

Robert Capa

Born in Budapest in 1913, Robert Capa was probably the most important war photographer of the 20th century. He covered five wars; the Spanish Civil War, the First Sino-Japanese War, the Second World War, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War.

Capas’ striking image entitled Death of a Soldier is one of his more famous, partly due to arguments in recent years over its’ authenticity. The image was lauded for capturing what became known as the ‘point of death’, but the photographers’ closeness to the subject and unbelievable timing caused some to suggest the image was staged. However, the identity of the soldier (and therefore the authenticity of the photograph) was uncovered in 2002 in an investigation largely funded by Robert Capas’ brother Cornell, who is known for vehemently protecting his brothers’ reputation.

During the Second World War, Capa took his camera on assignment to London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris. At Normandy, Capa reached the shore with the first wave of American soldiers and took 108 photos using two Contax II cameras with 50mm lenses. On his return to London from Omaha Beach, an employee of Life magazine made a mistake while hurrying to develop the images and melted all but eleven.

After the war, Capa returned to New York and co-founded Magnum Photo with several other war photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson. The co-operative is still in operation, with offices in New York, Tokyo and London and is still owned wholly by the photographers who contribute.

In 1954, Capa was covering the First Indochina War, which would later evolve into the Vietnam War. While photographing a French patrol on May 25th, Capa stepped on a land mine and died shortly after.