Flipboard versus Early Edition

We last posted about Flipboard in August last year, at the time the App was relatively new.

While the curated feeds in Flipboard are ok, the real power in the application is around your personalised content. The latest version 1.1.1, for me really pushed this personal content angle with the introduction of Google Reader support. This added to the ability to be able to have your Facebook and Twitter streams also accessible from within Flipboard.

For a long time now I’ve used reader to managed RSS feeds from all kinds of sites, reader allows you to categorise them into folders – so I do this by topic.

Now that Flipboard supports reader I can in effect browse through my Google Reader feeds just like a magazine. You can just work through in chronological or just by topic (folder).

Until recently I was a daily user of Early Edition, it’s another take on RSS reading and also presents your content in a newspaper/magazine style format. Note that it’s only RSS, there is no other content options.

It’s a good APP don’t get me wrong, it supports Google Reader as well, although I still find strange things happening when I add new feeds to the reader interface on the web. Early Edition doesn’t pick these up, I’ve had to reset it and get it to connect again as if it is the first time.

Flipboard on the other hand just works through your reader feed as it sees it. Without knowing truly what is going on underneath the hood, it doesn’t look like it is storing a local copy of the reader info. So that would explain there is no sync problems to be had when new feeds are added.

Speed is also driving a wedge between the two apps. Again I suspect that it’s down to the difference in the way each apps receives its data. Flipboard you can see working away in realtime. You turn the page and you see the images updating. Early Edition takes a painstaking amount of time on boot up to download my Google Reader feeds. (Ok… I do subscribe to a good number of feeds)

Everyone who uses a Mac or an iPad loves the design, the feel and the consistency of apps. This is one place where Flipboard really does shine – it looks great and is a pleasure to use. One other key thing I have noticed that sets it apart from Early Edition is that it seems to retrieve a lot more media (both images and video) from the RSS feeds that it is working on.

The screen shots below show both Early Edition and Flipboard every page seems to have more of a visual angle in Flipboard.

So in conclusion, I still have both apps installed on my iPad but Flipboard is the one that I’m using each and every day. Better than a newspaper!

If you’re completely new on Flipboard, try this video from their web site that walks you through the App, it’s a good introduction.