All of a sudden there was a flurry of news about Pulse, the RSS reader that Steve Jobs had used during his iPad demo, and the NY Times fallout therein. Pulse was brought to my attention and I was more than intrigued, “I must try this” I said to myself. And then then said it in email form to the good folks at Alphonzo Labs and they graced me with a promo code.

Unfortunately I couldn’t just dive-in, as Pulse was still very much a work in progress, and did not yet have two of the most important features I need in an RSS App – Google Reader support and offline caching. The second was particularly important to me on the iPad as I have a wifi only version. So i waited patiently for the next update, which promised these features.

In the meantime I was simply itching to try the iPad version of the iPhone App that won the original search into the ideal RSS reader for me – Mobile RSS, who launched their own iPad App, a bigger ‘HD’ version even. However getting in touch with the developers turned into a harrowing experience eventually i did get in touch with them and they were gracious enough to also provide me with a promo copy.

Pulse was updated, boasting of my long awaited favorite features, and the showdown could begin.

(How’s THAT for a preamble to an App Review!)

For the record I did try a couple other Reader Apps, but none came close to being a good as these two, for me. So while you might love Feedler, or NetnewsWire or what have you, I simply didn’t. These are my two top picks, and I’ll tell you why:

Reading

The most important feature of any RSS Reader is the ease and comfort of actually reading your articles. Pulse wins at this. It was specifically designed by people who obviously know how people use the iPad, and how important layout and comfort work together to make a great reading experience. While MobileRSS is just fine I prefer the One-Stop-Shopping as it were of Pulse, having all of my feeds on the left and my current article on the right. With that said – MobileRSS has the built-in ability to flick-scroll between articles from within the article, and I really love that too – so it makes it a much better reading experience in Portrait, while in Pulse you need to bring up your current feed menu to choose the next article.

Winner: Pulse (Landscape), MobileRSS (Portrait).

Subscribing to Feeds

I suppose I’ve always taken for granted that I use Google Reader. I just assume everybody does. However if you don’t then, clearly, Pulse is better for you. While, yes, Pulse did recently add the ability to import your Google Reader Feeds (individually mind you), it’s by and large for users who subscribe to independent feeds – and it makes searching for, finding, and subscribing to feeds super easy with built-in Search. It’s a fantastic stand-alone reader/subscriber. You simply do not have the option to add new feeds from within MobileRSS.

Winner: Pulse.

Google Reader Integration

MobileRSS is, by definition, a Google Reader App, and it’s great at that. Not only does it import and sync all your feeds, it also keeps them categorized by your folders, Giving you the ablity to read an entire folder, or just one feed. It also imports your “Who you’re Following” Folder so you can read your friend’s shared feed items on the go. Pulse only adds your feeds individually and the Google integration ends there.

Winner: MobileRSS

Sharing

Half the fun of reading is sharing, I think everyone can agree. While lots of Apps add Social Media Integration for the sake of Social Media Integration I think that it’s always going to be a necessary component of RSS readers because if the nature of the content itself. It’s simply Sharable.

When it comes to articles Pulse lets you Post to Twitter, Facebook, Email or Instapaper. But that’s not exactly where it’s sharing features end.. if you have Bump you can share your RSS feeds with another iPhone/iPad user via Bump and vise versa.

MobileRSS has a lot more built-in sharing options for your articles, including all of the ones Pulse has, I’ll let you see from the screenshot below, but it’s very unlikely that you’ll be without the ability to post to whatever Social Media site you prefer. In addition, you can always add anything to your Google Reader Shared Feed, which, again is another huge draw for Google Reader users.

Winner: MobileRSS

Now comes the deal-breaker feature for me. While it was important on the iPhone, it’s simply imperative on my wifi only iPad (and I think lots of you who are in the same boat as me will agree);

Offline Reading/Caching

For those of us with wifi only iPads, saving my feeds to read on my daily commute to work is simply mandatory. The reason I’m writing this article now, and not two weeks ago when I first downloaded Pulse, is because I was waiting for its most recent update that claimed to include better offline caching of articles.

While, yes, yes it does cache the articles it does not do one thing, one very important thing (especially for my webcomic feeds). Cache Pictures. This is the exact same issue I came across when trying to find the perfect iPhone RSS reader and I couldn’t be more heartbroken by this. Sure, Pulse may not have the same sharablity factor that Mobile RSS does, but the layout/design and easy of readability was so impressive that I was really hoping to use this as my everyday RSS Reader. Sadly, Mobile RSS Has it beat.

MobileRSS loads and caches all unread articles, including pictures within the article.

Winner: MobileRSS

Cost
At $3.99 or $4.99 there really isn’t much of a difference here. While Pulse seems more like a polished product, and probably worth much more than $3.99, MobileRSS has won the Battle, so it’s really up to you at this point. No Winner.

Judgement

So, in the end, Pulse beautiful, wonderful and definitely one of the best RSS Readers on the market. If you have a 3G iPad and don’t need offline viewing – I highly recommend it. Especially if you subscribe to feeds directly, and want to be able to find & subscribe to feeds from within the App. Visit Alphonzo Labs website to see even more info (the company story is a fun one).

MobileRSS HD is The App for Google Reader users, and wifi only folks like myself. Not as elegant, but very useful, and full of sharing and social features. For now, it will remain my default RSS reader, but will keep you updated if that changes. Here is the link to the Nibiru Tech site.

I’m obviously emotionally invested in this App Category now. Let me know if you’ve tried out either of these, or if you have another option you think I should consider. Comment or Tweet me!

I did know, that since I have recently starting using public transportation again, I would need one that caches/saves feeds for reading while not connected to Wifi, or 3G. My official reason for this is that it’s not always possible to be online in places like Subways or suchlike, but the fact of the matter is that I am still using a 2G iPhone, without a data plan.

It was a relief, and mildly unsurprising, to find out that pretty much every RSS App can pull from my Google Reader subscriptions, because having to manually resubscribe to each feed would have been a pain in the ass.

With all of that in mind, and not having any promo codes for Paid Apps (hint hint, developers), I also limited my search to Free Apps, and here is what I churned up:

Free RSS Reader
I’m going to assume that this is the most popular Free App for RSS feed reading. I am sure that this would be a great App, if I could get it to import all of my feeds, which it did not do. It only imported three. So I uninstalled, and upon re-installation it imported zero. So, instead of fussing over and over again, I had other options, moving on…

Next up:
NetNewswire
This App properly imported all my Reader Feeds, already an improvement!

Very, very basic reader with little/no user Customization. I’ll bullet-form the features, and then describe the experience:
- Imports Feeds from Google Reader only
- Main page offers Show/Hide feeds option
- Sharing an article is offered via Email, Twitter and Instapaper

The main thing that really bugs me about this App is that, in order to cache a feed (to read offline) you have to open each article/post individually. Otherwise download/caching is spotty at best, even for text.

Sorry NetNewswire – you fail. I’d be willing to try out your Pro Version, if it weren’t $4.99!

Will iNews O Win?
Maybe…

This was the App with the sleekest design, and certainly the most user-customization. Quick feature rundown now:

- Imports feeds from Google Reader, has Twitter Integration (Auto-tweets ‘favorite’ articles).
- Main page has a crazy amount of features for customization. (Here’s a Quick screen-cap of most of them).
- Once you click your feed of choice, you can continue to scroll through the headlines of all your feeds. In addition, there’s further custom features for this page, where you can set up your on quick-button menus (for favorites, download all, mark as read… and more).
- Finally you arrive at an article, here you can share via Email, Instapaper, Read It Later, Twitter (with or without Comment) or Facebook.

I also wanted to mention that it’s got a “Left Handed” setting, I tried it, but as I’m now a southpaw, I didn’t see any difference!?

Two things I found important to note.
1) When reading an article, you have a button to ‘Read Next Article’ but not ‘Read Last Article’ – you have to go back to the previous page for that. Annoying. And as it’s a button, you can’t simply scroll through articles like the headlines. Also Annoying.
2) Unless you specifically ‘Download’ each article you want to read later (or set up the button and remember to ‘Download All’), the caching is spotty for images.

I suggest you download this App and try it out yourself, because it’s probably going to appeal to a lot of people, especially considering the massive custom options/settings. With that in mind, I can’t think to imagine what their iNews Premium ($3.99) must do!

But even though this App has a billion, frillion customization options, the most important thing I was looking for – reliable caching for offline reading, was still missing. And then I found:

MobileRSS Free

Like a beautiful ray of sunshine, split from the rainclouds above, causing a perfect rainbow to crest across the sky, MobileRSS Free ‘Google Reader’, came into my life. And lo – there was rejoicing.

Ok, maybe not that epic. But have a look at these sweet features:

- Customizable Menu/Main Page, just enough not to overwhelm you. Simply hide/view the options you need like Favorites, Read Items, Notes, Shared, etc.
- Scrolling through headlines and articles up/down all from finger sliding – way more natural than buttons.
- Sharing of an article can be done via Email, Reddit, Facebook, ReaditLater, Instapaper or Delicious. (See Screencap of this beautiful menu)

However, by far, the best thing about MobileRSS is it’s caching. Not only does it load all articles (not just the feed headlines) upon start – it also gives you a nice little alert, letting you know images have been cached, too.

Another feature with this App that I didn’t know I wanted until I had it in the palm of my hand, was that it imports my “People I’m Following” Feeds from Google. And, similarly, I have the option to share items via my Shared Google Feed. Awesome.

If you’re a Google Reader user (as this App only works with Google Reader), this is my #1 pick for an App for you. For heaven’s sake, it’s FREE. However, if you want to dish out the $2.99 to get the Ad-Free version, it’s available. (I think I just might!).

Remember that any Feed Reader is only as good as the feeds you subscribe to, some blogs post horrible ‘excepts’ of their articles instead of the full thing, so that you have to visit their site. Ick.

Even though I linked to the US iTunes store for all Apps in this post, they’re all available on the Canadian Store too. I’m glad I found a reader I love, and if you have too, please let me know.