What, you want to EAT?

So I’m a little pissed this morning. I’ve been using NewsFire as my RSS reader on my iMac for the past few months. I really like it. I has fun little animations, and it’s reasonably fast. Of course, today I finally got around to upgrading to 1.0, and found that it’s become shareware. Fine, I thought; I don’t need fancy features, just my news, and I can live with clicking through a nag screen at startup. Of course, then I tried to subscribe to a new feed. “We’re sorry, the unregistered version can only support 25 feeds.” Excuse me?

OK, look, I know I already look like a real whiner for even mentioning this, especially when I’ve already said I like the software, and it only costs $19 (not even $20!).

So I’m looking for an alternative reader now. It’s not that I have a problem paying for software, and I certainly understand that developers need to eat. I just somehow feel, well, duped.

RSSOwl looks sorta cool; I’ll have to try it when I get back home. And I’m feeling a little guilty about complaining in the first place, since who should support software developers if not those who really use their products. But I still feel duped.