Bulletin Reviews

Update:

I tried the free trial period and have determined that the AI summaries are very poor. They don’t summarize the main point of the article. It merely summarizes the beginning of articles which often do not get to the main point of the article in the first few paragraphs.

The iPad still has the same horrendous UI with no customization in Bulletin .

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I continually do not understand why RSS apps don’t use the full iPad screen in portrait orientation for reading articles. It should at least be an option to hide the sidebar. This issue alone makes it a hard pass from me.

Bulletin looks good at first, but after just a few minutes you realize how restrictive it is. It doesn’t allow you to hide categories and you can’t customize feeds beyond hiding them. It also doesn’t allow adding any feeds either as far as I can tell.

And a personal nitpick of mine: I much prefer opening articles in Safari Reader view by default. It's a better UX in my opinion and provides consistency across the OS. It should at least be offered as option as some other apps do.

I had VERY high hopes that I could replace Artifact. I read news all day long and need a great news aggregator. With a few tweaks this app could have been it. But now, I’m stuck. I changed some setting that was only for paid I guess and now I can’t click on any article to read it. I sent a request to create a rest button for standard settings, but that has yet to appear. So I’m stuck. I can’t read any articles with out the “pay now” pop up. I would TOTALLY pay for Artifact and was prepared to pay for this app, but I just needed more time to feel comfortable with Bulletin before plunking down the lifetime license. Since Bulletin is essentially bricked with no guidance on how to get out of it, it gets 1 star.

So tired of text-centric apps such as this where all you do is read text and yet there is NO WAY to change the font size of the article text, even using iOS app-specific font size feature. What is the deal with these devs? It’s like making a car without the ability to adjust the seats. Unbelievable. Navigation from the tiny text article view is horrible. No way to swipe to next article or even dismiss the pop-up view. No easy way to mark articles as read. No mark read on scroll. This is just horrible… go check out other apps like Inoreader or Readkit and copy their main reading features. Then build off of that with your AI. Add more voice options. The default iOS voice is unbearable. Also your price is too high for what this offers. I like the idea of this which is why I care to leave such a review and it’s a great start to something amazing. It is just unusable… for me. Main gripes are above. Fix the problems and I’ll change this to a glowing 5 star review.

If you turn off the other categories and just want your OPML to get the this app treatment, it doesn’t display anything. Not worth paying for something that can’t do its most basic tasks.

Bulletin on the mac does not have 1/3 of the settings options. Bulletin on ips is low to update and does not retain the read status of articles. The list goes on. If you know the history of this developer with apps such as Planny, (abandoned then sold along with many apps on his website) Aviary, (abandoned then replaced with Aviary 2). You will not trust the developer to continue the development of Bulletin. Think about this, how will they pay for yhe AI features over time if someone purchases a lifetime subscription? The answer can be found in their prior work. Save your money and use feeeed.

But not for Bulletin

“A new notification has been posted” is not the type of notification I want went a new article gets posted, why can’t it show the title and the content of the posts like other rss apps?

Tile per story consumes so much space, that even on the smallest setting you are only ever able to see 3 maybe four headlines at a time, so be prepared for tons of scrolling.

Font sizes also too large, and no way to just show headlines without parts of the article.

No way to search

Duplicates and similar topics continue to expand feed. Thought this was about smarts, so should be seeing d duplicates, and similar topics would be combined?

Smart off not RSS readers need to be light mobile and easy to scan lots of headlines quickly, which this app does not support.

No Inoreader/Feedly sync
Everything in the UI is just too big. Looks like it was designed for the elderly. Not enough information density.
Useless button on the bottom to scroll down when you can just scroll.
AI button on the main page is summarizing the top article, not the feed. Super weird to have that button there.
Turn off categories disables them, but it looks weird because it doesn’t toggle off all the feeds under them as you would expect.
Feels very half-baked. Might revisit in in a year, but it’s just a first draft of an app right now.

I continually do not understand why RSS apps don’t use the full iPad screen in portrait orientation for reading articles. It should at least be an option to hide the sidebar. This issue alone makes it a hard pass from me.

Bulletin looks good at first, but after just a few minutes you realize how restrictive it is. It doesn’t allow you to hide categories and you can’t customize feeds beyond hiding them. It also doesn’t allow adding any feeds either as far as I can tell.

And a personal nitpick of mine: I much prefer opening articles in Safari Reader view by default. It's a better UX in my opinion and provides consistency across the OS. It should at least be offered as option as some other apps do.

It’s like if a music app only had 10 selected bands and no easy way to make your own playlists. The presentation is pleasant so hopefully Bulletin will expand its capabilities.

Tile per story consumes so much space, that even on the smallest setting you are only ever able to see 3 maybe four headlines at a time, so be prepared for tons of scrolling.

Font sizes also too large, and no way to just show headlines without parts of the article.

No way to search

Duplicates and similar topics continue to expand feed. Thought this was about smarts, so should be seeing d duplicates, and similar topics would be combined?

Smart off not RSS readers need to be light mobile and easy to scan lots of headlines quickly, which this app does not support.

Smart summary is not working, at all. The only thing that sets this apart from other news apps. Also, please consider ditching the subscription model for a single time price, or at least make that an option.

meh first impression… lots of loading spinners, no ability to search and add by site name or URL (only by RSS URL), persistent header wasted where it could show what category or source you’re viewing, odd list of default sources, no way to reorder or prioritize categories or sites, no thumbnail images.

Great concept but in my usage I notice a lot of slow updates and/or Bulletin appears to hang on a blank screen.

The summaries are worthless. Other than than Bulletin feels like one of many sub par news aggregators.

I love the idea behind Bulletin. The care and attention to the UX is clear. Appreciate push notifications, iCloud syncing, and the full Apple ecosystem support.

If you want a basic “already configured”news/RSS app, this app fits the bill. Which leads to what’s missing…

It’s missing some critical things for long-time RSS users though:

* Yes, you can import in your own OPML feeds, but organizing them and essentially wiping the slate clean to just bring my familiar feeds in my own organization style…that’s a daunting process. So much so, that I gave up for now.

* It doesn’t appear to offer options to use Postlight or Readability to parse/extract articles from feeds that only provide headlines, but admittedly I only tested a couple of feeds with this.

* Customizing notifications in a more granular way by feed, number of topics, or keywords would be a lovely addition.

* Hierarchical sorting beyond a single category.

* Customizing the sidebar area.

This is an opinionated app…I love that about it. It’s just not quite my aesthetic. Longtime users of Reeder or News Explorer are going to enjoy the UX, long for the AI summarization features that come natively here, but struggle to embrace a paradigm that wants you to do things the this app way instead of the way you’ve become accustomed to in other RSS apps. That’s not a bad thing, but I do long for significantly more customization features in feed organization, hierarchy, parsing, update times, and a “just start from a clean slate and import my stuff and don’t add anything to it” option. I’d happily spend money on Bulletin if it evolves in that direction. For now…I will envy some of the summarization features but go back to my trusted long-time RSS apps.

Pros:
Beautiful
Lovely to look at
Easy to read feeds

Cons
Limited font options
Cannot customize main tabs (News, Technology, etc)
Hard to move feeds into main tabs if you import your feed
Load times are slow
Imported feeds show up as one tab called “Imported” it regards your categories inside the feed file *****
No bulk editing

It would be nice to be able to set up automatic summaries and beautify the headline language. I need Chinese and Japanese. I would definitely buy it if it was available in both languages.

Crearly an MVP. Needs a fremium option instead of a very short trial. Usability is poor to impossible on on an iPad mini but normal on an iPad air or iPhone. Thumbs up for frequent updates to improve features and usability. Didn't really got a chance to test out the AI features.

So fantastic,so expensive!

Love that this is truly a universal app, even on tvOS. That being said, the tvOS version is pretty weak and close to non-functional.

Still worth four stars and went ahead and bought the life-long option; consider it an investment into future development. 😉

When I first installed Bulletin I was a fan of the UI/UX. It’s very clean. At first - I was experiencing several bugs and suboptimal performance. After the past few days, these issues are becoming non existent. The developer seems to ship updates 1-2 times daily and welcomes feedback/suggestions.

It would be nice to eliminate stories with the same subject / context from each feed — otherwise it’s a great app!

Loving Bulletin, exactly what I needed now that Artifact is shutting down. Lot’s of potential and flexibility

Wonderful app that works across all devices. Lets you import your own feeds via OPML. Just needs a way to make text larger for those of us with older eyes.

This is the news best app I’ve ever used! Really good job

Love the interface. The next toggle is really noice. A lot of sources. The AI summary is a cool feature. Great job!!