Unlike the previous rumor I mentioned, this one turns out to be true: NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire, the leading RSS reader for the Mac. Brent Simmons, NetNewsWire's creator, has joined us as a product architect.
The addition of NetNewsWire extends NewsGator's reach to the Mac desktop, enabling synchronization between Windows, the Web, mobile devices and now the Mac.
I'm very excited to be able to work with Brent - he's a developer I really respect and admire, and we've had a number of great email conversations over the past few years. In fact, the first time I emailed Brent, I mentioned that whenever someone asked for a Mac version of FeedDemon, I'd point them to NetNewsWire. He replied that he did the same thing - he pointed Windows users to FeedDemon! More recently we both admitted to copying features from each other, so it's nice that we can now do this without the guilt :)
Brent, let me officially welcome you on board - I really look forward to working with you.
Update: Here's what Brent has to say about the acquisition, and here's Greg Reinacker's take.
Update 2: JB Holston and Brad Feld give their views on the acquisition.
That's great news. Now, when will NetNewsWire be available to FeedDemon customers :)
Posted by: Josh | Tuesday, October 04, 2005 at 04:38 PM
I've always used NNW when on my mum's mac, it's nice to see the two best desktop aggregators have joined forces to make life better for us all :)
Posted by: Andrew Herron | Tuesday, October 04, 2005 at 06:06 PM
Heh. NOW the G4 Powerbook prize for the Newsgator API contest makes sense...:)
Posted by: critter42 | Tuesday, October 04, 2005 at 09:06 PM
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me that we will get NetNewsWire free.
I have just bought a mac (arives tomorrow!) and will be selling my laptop (so no Windows = no FeedDemon).
Will I be able to use NetNewsWire on my mac as I can no longer use FeedDemon? I really hope he answer is yes :)
Posted by: Morgan Pugh | Wednesday, October 05, 2005 at 05:07 AM
Hot damn, I had secretly been hoping for something like this to happen. Things are starting to look really interesting for us OS X/Windows hybrid users.
Posted by: Jakob S | Wednesday, October 05, 2005 at 05:43 AM
Awesome. I took a look at the NetNewsWire site for the first time today. I really like the idea of HTML Differences ( http://ranchero.com/images/nnw2/htmlDifferences.png ). Any chance we'll see that in a future version of FeedDemon? I hate having multiple news items of the same post, or worse, not receiving changed posts.
Posted by: OSUKid7 | Wednesday, October 05, 2005 at 04:38 PM