A simple and, erm, somewhat colourful way to read the news
Rather than visit lots of sites and root through to find stories you’re interested in, you can use a news reader and subscribe to feeds that are relevant to you, thus having the things you want to know about in one place.
Horus displays the news in rows of tiles, in a similar way to the app Pulse. The difference is that rather than categorise your feeds, Horus puts them on one screen, so you can get to the articles by scrolling vertically and horizontally. Things can get unwieldy if you add lots of feeds, but you can jump to a particular one that appears on the side.
However, Horus doesn’t feel as if it’s ready for use. There are several things that seem badly thought out.
For example, scrolling takes you beyond the top or bottom of your list, leaving a blank screen for a few seconds until the news feeds come back into view. It sounds like a small gripe, but it trips you up, and a good app wouldn’t allow you to scroll so far. Then there’s the overly narrow window that pops up when you add a feed.
Some titles of feeds are too long to fit, so you’re not always sure exactly what you’re adding. Also the 16-colour palette varies between bright and garish, making some text tricky to read. There are updates coming, so we’d hold off buying and see how it develops.
Verdict:
A nice idea, but this app doesn’t have the panache required to make it worthy of a place on your Mac.
Pros/Cons:
- Easy to search for new feeds
- App feels unfinished
- User interface lacks polish
- Poor use of colour
Price: £5.49
Developer: Francisco Escudero Reyero, fallenleafsoft.com
OS: 10.6 or later
Requires: 64-bit processor