Getting things done

How easy are the apps to use?

Breaking is simple: swipe the Notifications area out to read, swipe back to get rid of it again. Clicking or tapping a headline opens it in Safari and optionally in Readability.com, and scrolling makes the text overwrite itself to make everything unreadable.

Daily’s single scrolling window goes semi-transparent when it isn’t the focus – but it remains on top of other windows, so if you click them Daily reappears. That’s annoying.

Pulp is like a newspaper, with a wooden shelf to which you drag things you want to read later. Clicking a story gives it most of the window, and Magic Reader attempts to turn part-articles into full ones without formatting.

Leaf, NetNewsWire and ReadKit take a more traditional approach with feeds and their contents in sidebars and the current article in the main window. NetNewsWire supplements this with tabs that keep articles open while you browse feeds. Leaf and ReadKit also offer clutter-free views that remove items such as inline adverts from feeds.

Pulp is unlike anything else here, taking feeds and showing them newspaper-style.