Top all-time · #221
Brent Simmons
Personal blog · inessential.comprogrammingweb
Brent Simmons's personal blog at inessential.com covers programming and web. Since 2007, 206 different Hacker News readers have linked it 398 times, most often “Why NetNewsWire Is Fast”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Brent Simmons' blog for posts on NetNewsWire, app development, syncing and Apple platforms, and call it a good blog to read.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Good blog; "great job" on PWAs; "good summary"; "great perspective"; a paragraph that made one commenter chuckle.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why NetNewsWire Is Fast6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-05-19
- Writing Mac and iOS Apps Shouldn't Be So Difficult6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-08-28
- Inessential: Last Vesper Update, Sync Shutting Down5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-08-21
- “In Case I Don’t Write Here Again”5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-10-05
- The Next Era Ends, the Swift Era Begins4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-06-07
- Freedom4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-04-24
- When the Weapon Was Pointed at Me4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-10-17
- That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UI4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-22
- Why “Just Store the App Data on Dropbox” won’t work for RSS readers4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-11-15
- Vesper Sync Diary #3 - Immutability, Deleting, and Calculated Properties3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-11-05
What Hacker News says?
That only gives me http://inessential.com/2008/11/ , not http://inessential.com/2008/11/04/that_new_sound .
Comment linking /2008/11/04/that_new_sound
on “Google Memory Loss”Submitted Network Solutions Auto-Enroll: $1,850 as a story · 917 points
HN discussionI'm using NetNewsWire, they recently shipped 5.0. RSS is slowing getting back. https://inessential.com/2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home
Comment linking /2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home
on “Please Add RSS Support to Your Site”Submitted Why NetNewsWire Is Fast as a story · 298 points
HN discussionYes it is. There was an SDK called TapLynx back in the day made by Brent Simmons of NewsGator and Innesential [0] fame. . It was $600 and a quick way to get an App released in the late App gold rush days with only an XML file. It was acquired by PushIO which was acquired by Oracle. Along the way the SDK stopped getting updates with new iOS versions and Apps stopped working. The yearly updates of the iOS SDK will imp…
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: Make an app by adding JSON to this app”Submitted Social Anxiety as a story · 179 points
HN discussionBrent Simmons has a good blog where he writes about the development about the RSS reader Netnewswire https://inessential.com/ (Netnewswire itself is not a solo project though)
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted What Happened at NewsGator as a story · 178 points
HN discussion> I'm aware of that–that's why I said it is possible that you can do it from JavaScript. What I'm saying is that the JavaScript layer generally causes issues like this, because UINavigationController only works in specific cases. For example, scrolling only works if you're a singular top-level scroll view. Getting the titles to animate only works if you don't try to modify it after the fact. Putting a button in the…
Comment linking /2018/04/25/youre_practically_a_mac_developer
on “Proton Native – React Native for the desktop”Submitted Corporations are not to be loved as a story · 115 points
HN discussionInterestingly, the guy who wrote NetNewsWire says Dropbox and RSS readers can't work together: http://inessential.com/2011/10/25/why_just_store_the_app_dat...
Comment linking /2011/10/25/why_just_store_the_app_data_on_dropbo
on “Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh”Submitted The iOS and Mac markets are almost the same size? as a story · 98 points
HN discussionLoving the app so far - I love how speedy it is. I'm glad to see some resurgence of Mac-assed Mac apps [1]. [1]: A term coined by Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire, (in my opinion) the best Mac-assed RSS reader. https://inessential.com/2020/03/19/proxyman
Comment linking /2020/03/19/proxyman
on “Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail”Submitted Why Care About 30,000 Notes? as a story · 82 points
HN discussionIf you're in the Apple ecosystem (Mac, iPhone) NetNewsWire is an absolute delight. It's not a commercial product any more, Brent Simmons runs it as a (very serious) passion project. Here's a recent post by him explaining part of his philosophy for it: https://inessential.com/2025/10/04/why-netnewswire-is-not-we... Crucially, it syncs feed read state between my laptop and phone.
Comment linking /2025/10/04/why-netnewswire-is-not-web-app.html
on “The RSS feed reader landscape”Submitted Performance These Days as a story · 79 points
HN discussionThey've also started using open-source technologies like Node.js and javascript (must be typescript). Microsoft is finally adopting open source with open arms. source: http://inessential.com/2014/02/04/azure_takes_over
Comment linking /2014/02/04/azure_takes_over
on “Microsoft launches Office for iPad”Submitted What Happened at UserLand as a story · 70 points
HN discussionI used to use NetNewsWire like 12-15 years ago, so I was surprised to see it pop up here in this excellent article. Turns out this is a completely rewritten app and the NetNewsWire name went on quite a journey: https://inessential.com/2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home
Comment linking /2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home
on “Why NetNewsWire Is Fast”Submitted The No-Algorithms Follow-Up as a story · 57 points
HN discussionWhy do people keep building stuff on Twitter? All the app developers that have been fenced off should create a simple protocol to make Twitter irrelevent. Brent Simmons suggested a great way do it awhile back: http://inessential.com/2012/06/29/matthew_on_twitter_restric...
Comment linking /2012/06/29/matthew_on_twitter_restrictions
on “Twitter shut down Emojitracker's access”Submitted Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web App as a story · 56 points
HN discussionBrent Simmons seems to be keeping pretty good spirits—the last paragraph of his blog post made me chuckle. Good for him, he seems like a lovely person. https://inessential.com/2020/03/31/looking_for_work > The hard part of all this: normally everyone would get together for a happy hour for a few drops of encouragement and friendship. These rituals are nice, and they matter to me. > But — (gesturing again at this fal…
Comment linking /2020/03/31/looking_for_work
on “Omni Group Layoffs”Submitted Mac Text Editors and Navigation as a story · 53 points
HN discussionYou're right — users shouldn't expect their apps to get major updates for free. But this is a PR problem, solvable by other means. As a user, I'm OK with it. I've been using Adobe CS 5 for the past 3 years and it's still working great. Were there an upgrade path where I could pay some cash and get the latest version, I would probably do so. Unfortunately, Adobe has decided that they're not the company for me, and so…
Comment linking /2016/06/08/seeking_clarification
on “Coming changes to Apple's App Store”Submitted That Pretty Much Wraps it Up for C as a story · 52 points
HN discussionAs a developer of a feed reader that supports both RSS/Atom and Twitter/Facebook/Google+/Instagram/VK ( https://bazqux.com ) I say that making client for well defined API hosted by one provider (silo) was much more simple than support RSS/Atom feeds. Here is an incomplete list of various problems you'll have if you want to write a feed reader http://inessential.com/2013/03/18/brians_stupid_feed_tricks It requires a…
Comment linking /2013/03/18/brians_stupid_feed_tricks
on “The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS”Submitted Apps and web apps and the future as a story · 50 points
HN discussionBrent Simmons has an interesting habit of writing blog posts in order to help him think about the problems. His blog is http://inessential.com , which includes some non-technical stuff too. For the start, open one of his “diary” pages from the bottom of the page, like “Vesper Sync Diary”.
Comment linking /
on “A Simple Approach to Building a Real-Time Collaborative Text Editor”Submitted How NetNewsWire Handles Threading as a story · 41 points
HN discussion
