RSS readers have definitely gone through a transformation over the years, becoming very ornate applications with a ton of features. MyTimes for iPhone (99 cents) takes a step back from the flashy apps, and keeps things simple when it comes to reading your RSS.
The app syncs directly with your Google Reader account, so you’ll need to sign in for it to work. Once all the feeds are synced, you are presented with a list of all your unread articles, which you can view in one big stream, or by folder. Each article includes the title, a short excerpt, the feed source and the date and time. You can swipe on each article from right to left to bring up a quick menu. Here, you can star the article, like it, or save it to your Instapaper account.
You can read each article in a number of ways. You can read it as it’s presented in the RSS feed, or you can read it as it looks on the web, or you can read it as a simple, text-only document. From this same screen, you can also star, like, share, or mark it as unread. It’s a bit confusing at first, but when you share an article, it does it through the Google Reader. You don’t actually get to share anything through Facebook or Twitter, which is very unfortunate.
There is little customization included in this app. You can choose how many articles to show at one time, the sort order and a toggle to go back to your list after marking an item as read. There are no options for visual customization or text size.
Even though the app functions well most of the time, I did experience some crashing every now and then. Also, the menu animations and transitions seem a bit choppy at times. It just seems like the app could use a bit more tweaking to smooth everything out.
If you’re in the marker for a new RSS reader that doesn’t have all the bloat and eye candy that some modern readers have, MyTimes might be just right for you. I, on the other hand, will stick to my bloated apps.
