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I’ve updated my Uses page with a new RSS reader and Office Suite, Unread and Libre Office respectively.

I’m a firm believer in RSS as a way to discover new and interesting, tailored content, and in the constant firehose of information coming at us daily, especially try to keep up with world events, RSS is a calm and curated way to consume that (for more info on the many benefits of RSS, check out Molly White’s “Curate your own newspaper with RSS” post.

For years I’ve been bouncing between RSS readers but none have ever really stuck. I loved NetNewsWire for a long time but the syncing between devices never really worked right for me. Before that, I had used Reeder 4 (now “Reeder Classic") but the UI always felt too unintuitive and off to me (and while I never mind paying for good software, having to buy a license for Mac and iOS separately always stung a bit). And until a few months ago, I was using Lire, a pretty solid and dependable and enjoyable app that I was happy to pay for. Then I came across long time RSS app Unread and my world was changed.

It’s interface for mobile is all about swiping, but I found it to be very intuitive and almost instinctual to use. Swipe left to go back, swipe right for other actions. Simple as that. On Mac, it’s a more traditional setup of columns but can be tweaked to the way you want it to be and works just as well. It syncs with it’s own syncing service but can use all of the other services out there like Feedbin and iCloud and Feedburner, etc as well as offers all of the usual sharing and bookmarking options. Best of all, none of it’s killer features are locked behind a paywall - you can pay to get some other niceties like different app icons, more article actions for sharing and setting up shortcuts - but otherwise it’s a fully featured and well thought out RSS app. After using it for a few months, I was happy to kick over the $30 a year subscription to keep development going and think that I’ll be using Unread for a long time.

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As far as LibreOffice goes, I’ve been off of the Microsoft/Google cloud office suite for a few years now for personal use (sadly still have to use both for work). There are many many reasons not to trust either of these two with your important docs, but for me it really just boiled down to convenience. I don’t want to pay for a cloud subscription and I want an app on my computer that I can use offline and open without fear of it sending back a bunch of data to god knows where. And my office suite needs are pretty basic - occasionally writing out a doc to print out on my ancient printer, opening a spreadsheet or CSV file here or there, or just making a PDF from a doc file to send along. That’s basically it.

And for years I was happy with ONLYOFFICE and the tools that it provided, however basic they might be. But after an update a few months ago, the inevitable integration of AI bullshit into it was present (who wants to plug an AI into their word processor? Some people apparently) and that for me is a no go. I will go out of my way, and pay if needed, to avoid AI and general enshittification of any software, which of course MS and Google are cramming full of AI at every step. Libre Office was always one tool I considered but it’s clunky interface was confusing and a mess. Thankfully, after evaluating other options after the ONLYOFFICE AI betrayal, I found this post on how to customize LibreOffice to give it that MS Office look, without the MS bullshit and that sealed the deal for me. Best of all, it offers some pretty great options for making a PDF, compared to ONLYOFFICE just having “Save as PDF”. (The back story here is that my printer won’t network anymore so I have to load stuff onto a USB stick to print and it will really only print PDFs and is picky about those. I know, I need a new printer, but I don’t want to get into the mess of buying new ink because the printer decides I need to).

So far, I’ve been happy with LibreOffice and just hope that it avoids AI integration as well, though I feel like that is sadly inevitable in all software these days.

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Check out my Uses page for other stuff that I use on the regular!