When Apple launched OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) one of the heavily pushed features was integration of RSS into Safari. This was extended to add RSS integration into Apple's Mail.app. As I recently upgraded to a shiny new 13" MacBook Pro I've not yet reinstalled all my favourite apps. Partly this was through being too busy but another part of this was to see which I apps I really used and which I could live without.

I've been using NetNewsWire for ages and it's a great app - particularly as it now offers iPhone syncing via a free web service. However, I've never really put Apple's built-in RSS support to the test till now. In my view, the RSS support in Safari and Mail is only barely usable. I suspect that if you only look at 10 or fewer feeds it's OK but even my relatively slim collection of a hundred or so feeds is too many to be effectively managed.

Non-existent OPML Support
Why didn't Apple support migrating feeds into Safari and Mail by OPML? By ignoring the lingua franca of the RSS world they have effectively stopped potential users from migrating to their software from third party applications.

Last night I searched for a way to migrate my RSS feeds into Safari. I had an OPML file that I'd created by using Google Reader's export function. However, I had to visit the Google Fairy to find a way to import this into Safari.

Safari can only import feeds from a HTML file. That means that I needed to find a way to convert the OPML file to HTML. After some searching I found this article. Basically, you need to copy the script on that page into a text editor (I use TextWrangler). Then save it to your desktop as convert.php.

To make life easy, I saved the OPML (actually XML) file from Google Reader to the desktop and renamed it to "subscriptions.xml". I then opened a Terminal (it's in the Applications | Utilities folder on your Mac) and ran the following:

cd Desktop

This line makes the current directory for executing commands the OS X desktop. If you don;t do this you'll need to ener the full file paths for the various files referred to in the next command.

I then ran this:

php convert.php subscriptions.xml > MySubscriptions.html

If all goes well, you should end up with a HTML file that will open in Safari and display a nicely arranged list of all your feeds.

You can then import that file into Safari (File | Import Bookmarks...). I then dragged the imported feeds into a folder called Feeds that's on my Bookmarks Bar.

Broken and Missing Functionality
Once I had all my feeds imported I was mightily annoyed that none of my carefully arranged folders, for logically grouping feeds were retained. There's another half an hour of my life I'll never get back! On the upside, this did get me to clean up dead and unwanted feeds - a task I'd been putting off for some time.

Apple's approach is then to use their bookmark folders for managing feeds. If I open the highest level folder I see all of my feeds. Open a lower level folder and I see the appropriate subset. It'd be nice if I could set that up as a sidebar. However, I can see how many unread items I have.

RSS in Mail.app
I don't know how many people use RSS in Mail.app but I imagine that the number would be small. You'd expect that all those carefully arranged folders could be brought across to Mail nicely. Well, you'd be disappointed. You can bring the feeds across but only one at a time. Which fool thought that would be a good idea?

Pop over to the File | Add RSS Feeds... command and you'll see what I mean.

The Better Way
Clearly, Apple's implementation of RSS leaves a bit to be desired. Perhaps it'll be one of the hundreds of enhancements we'll see in Snow Leopard although I'm not holding my breath given that Safari has only just been updated.

As I mentioned before, NetNewsWire is a great alternative.

However, if you're a Firefox user then there are several plug-ins that work nicely. Wizz RSS Lite isn't too bad and works with Firefox 3.5. High on people's favourite list is Sage although when i looked last night it wasn't FF3.5 ready so I couldn't test it out.