[UPDATED] QuickAdvice: Starry Reader HD Will Have You Seeing Stars
Starry HD ($4.99) by BeX.mobile is an elegant looking Google Reader app for your iPad that claims that you don't have to worry about syncing all of your feeds and only seeing feeds that you care about.
I found Starry HD to be a bit confusing to use. There's a Dashboard view and a Play view. The Dashboard has the screen split into two with a panel on the left with Starred Items, Shared Items, People You Follow, and Tagged Items. The items in those sections will appear on the right hand side in a style that reminds me of Reeder for iPad. The Play mode shows single items at a time and you can scroll through them by horizontal swiping.
Along the right hand side, there is a thin menu bar with a few options. First, you can adjust the text size to be smaller or larger. Then the check box lets you mark all items in the current view as read, then you can toggle between the Dashboard or Play views, and then the last two options are for viewing Recent and Unread items in the current section.
I noticed that under the Dashboard view, in the left panel, that there is a little icon that resembles a book. Tapping this, I found that I could "select" which of my feeds that are in my Google Reader account to show or hide.
I repeatedly checked off various folders to show and didn't check off ones I wanted to hide. After saving, I thought that I would be able to find these items synced and under the "Tagged Items" section.
I'm not sure what the developers had in mind with the Tagged Items section, but that's not where my feeds appeared. Instead, the Tagged Items section contains a drop down menu of 1 to 5 star rated items.
Honestly, I never "rate" items in Google Reader (not even sure if there is such an option?), so I found this to be a bit useless. After searching through the app and even having everything toggled "On" in the Settings menu (found in device settings), still nothing.
As I've tried Starry HD, the only items I was ever able to view are the items that I've marked in the past as favorites (Starred) or Shared. I was not able to get any of my folders or individual feeds synced with Starry HD, and the more I tried, the more I found myself going nowhere.
Instapaper and Twitter are supported for saving and sharing items, but no additional services like ReadItLater, Facebook, or others supported by Reeder are found.
The only thing that I can really like about the app is the elegant interface, which is reminiscent of a real book, but otherwise I found the app unintuitive and confusing to use. There is not even a help guide to help me with solving the app.
If you're looking for a RSS reader for your iPad for $4.99, Starry HD is not it. Until the developer can improve this app and make it more intuitive, there are better options out there.
UPDATE: The developers got back to me after the initial review was posted, and informed me that the function of showing/hiding individual feeds and folders should work. Miraculously, somehow, after I read this the app actually did work the way it should, despite me having attempted that same method about 10 times the night before with no result to show. I did nothing different than what I had done last night - yet somehow, the app starts working properly.
It's a decent reader if you want more control over what you sync and see as a result of Google Reader overload.
