I posted yesterday that Mr. Reader on the iPad was my new favorite RSS reader. A bunch of folks had a bunch of questions as to why, so I thought I’d take the time to explain it more clearly. The basic interface is quite straightforward:
Once you read an article, if in the settings you’ve chosen a Read stamp, you know what you’ve been looking at:
But here’s the killer feature for me. How often, when you’re reading blogs, do you see a post like this? (usually with a “Click here to continue reading link”)
See those buttons up top? Touch Instapaper, Readability, or Pocket, and right in the window, you magically sidestep the content gate by using one of those rendering engines (which is designed to drive traffic back to the website and advertisers, presumably, and not just to be pointlessly annoying):
Ta da! This is why Mr. Reader has taken first place for me on the iPad for blog surfing. There are plenty of other features that are nice, like Offline, Offline Sync, themed layouts, etc. but my biggest obstacle when I’m reading for #the5 and general research is the use of that “click to read more” gate. Mr. Reader busts down that door, and the time it will save in aggregate is worth far more than the $4 the app costs.
It’s worth noting that you do not need to have an account with Instapaper or Readability – Mr. Reader simply uses their rendering engine.
Mr. Reader is $4 in the App Store.
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