iPad Apps Buzz

Feedler for iPad: An average feed reader with a nasty surprise

Posted by James Eunson | May 19, 2010

Feedler is a fairly spartan feed reader for the iPad with a nasty surprise for those expecting the free pricetag to actually mean the app is free.

Feedler is basically an iPad wrapper for your google reader account (you do have one right?) and it fulfils this function fairly well. The app is quick to load and initially asks you for your google account email and password, which I must admit, I was reluctant to give to an unknown free app from the iTMS.

My inbox hasn’t been flooded with penis enlargement and horse porn as a result… yet. To be fair, reviews on the App Store are generally negative but certainly not because of misuse of user’s Google accounts…

The scrolling on the actual feed list in portrait view stutters a little, which is unfortunate because this is the orientation the app works best in. In horizontal view, the feed selector is always present which eats into otherwise useful screen real estate.

Feedler doesn’t offer much in the way of configurability beyond changing the Google Account it reads – it simply provides a thin application layer over the contents of your Google Reader, and a limited subset of the web features at that.

The good, the bad and… ugh

So if the app is mostly harmless, what are the negative reviews I referred to earlier about? For reference, Feedler currently holds the ignominious honor of 2 1/2 stars on the App Store and the rating is well deserved. The ploy run by the app author Che-Bin Liu is a classic case of Caveat Emptor or “Let the buyer beware”.

You see, after a week of usage of the free version of Feedler, the user is notified of a previously undisclosed “trial period” as having expired. This restricts you from updating all your feeds at once, and only allows single feeds to be updated. So while the entire application is not crippled, a good deal of the already limited functionality is.

User reviews on the app store express outrage and rightly so:

I thought this app was free, but tonight I got a message using the app that to sync to new feeds, my “trial” had expired and I had to purchase Feedler Pro to sync to new feeds.

There’s nothing I dislike more than being deceived about the actual cost of an app. – theweatherguy

Listed as free then stops working after a week. It says that I must buy the pro version to keep syncing. No mention of that on the app description. I find that to be offensive. – Doggmann1699

While acting as a serviceable feedreader, the author, who attempts to trick users into a cheap conversion probably doesn’t your precious time or iPad disk space. Head elsewhere.

Stay tuned – tomorrow we look at Newsrack, An RSS reader for the iPad done right!

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