Now that I’m cleared maritally for iPhone ownership and plan to purchase one it seems I must make some effort to prepare. No, I will not be picking one up today. As it is now being treated as a standard phone and subject to the vagaries of phone subsidization I just cannot justify the expenditure of 200 extra dollars. My current plan allows for a discounted upgrade on September 29, 2008. Conveniently, this is one day after my birthday. The coincidence of this date does wonders to alleviate the pain of not being able to snatch one up immediately after over a year of waiting.

My preparations are rather long-term, actually.

It became apparent to me that I would have to consider the manner in which I read RSS feeds once I added a device like the iPhone. Some time back I chose NewsFire as my desktop RSS reader. I still stand by the choice purely based on design aesthetics alone. Everything in NewsFire is big, friendly, colorful, and obvious. It’s perfectly Apple-esque inasmuch as it does what it’s supposed to do without a lot of cruft. I’d recommend it to anyone and particularly to anyone new to RSS. It’s a wonderful program, but NetNewsWire has a huge ace in the hole: syncing.

NetNewsWire’s feeds can be painlessly and instantaneously synced to the web through a free web account available at newsgator.com. News items you read on any device — Mac, PC, iPhone, or web — will be marked as read on any other device. It’s all in that “cloud” you’ve heard so much about. I hear the newly released iPhone client is pretty damned good too.

So last I began in earnest to switch over. I could have imported my list of feeds from NewsFire in OPML format, but I deigned not to in order to weed out the less frequently read feeds. There were an awful lot of things I’d subscribed to and read almost never.

My first reaction was not entirely pleasant. NetNewsWire has a very staid, workmanlike appearance. It looks rather like an email client, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but NewsFire is just so different.

I’m warming up to it very quickly though. It has some serious power under the hood, power I’ll likely never fully tap. For instance, in addition to the standard feed subscriptions, folders, and smart folders NetNewsWire allows a set of “Special Subscriptions” that allow the ad hoc construction of subscriptions to a search engine query, a local folder, a particular tag, or even a script. I will probably never figure out how to best use that functionality.

But the best feature of NetNewsWire I wasn’t expecting is the support of user-created stylesheets. This affords a phenomenal level of granular control of the way news posts are displayed. These are much more than simple CSS. They support JavaScript (if enabled in the Preferences) which, in the right hands, transforms raw XML into some of the best looking websites I’ve ever seen. In many cases the text visible in NetNewsWire is actually better looking than it is on the site from which it is derived. It ships with a bunch, and there’s a list of more user-created styles. I recommend the Ollicle Reflex and Bullit styles.

Forget “iReady,” this is how I prepare for iPhone.

This is installment two of my series on Mac software I’ve found useful enough to pay real honest-to-god money for in the hopes that you too might find something you love. I started cataloging all of the applications I’d purchased a little while back to contrast against the amount I’d spent on software (excluding games) as a Windows user. The two figures are not even close. In all fairness, I didn’t start using a Mac until around the time I got a “real job” and steady income. Still, I spent a hefty sum on PC games and very little on other software, choosing to make do with freeware or unregistered shareware. Take that to mean whatever you will.

Salling Clicker

Salling Clicker is quite possibly the nerdiest app I’ve ever paid money to use. It turns your Bluetooth enabled mobile phone into a robust remote control for your Mac. I was so excited about the possibilities of it that it influenced the phone I bought — an aging Sony-Ericsson T616 that I still use to this day despite a bent charging connection because I hate every other phone offered by the major phone carriers. At the time — way back in 2004 — finding a phone with Bluetooth capabilities was no easy feat.

As it uses Bluetooth you don’t need to worry about line-of-sight as you would with an infrared device. So long as you can stay connected (and with the Bluetooth receiver in a G4 PowerBook that’s unfortunately a bit iffy) you can browse your iTunes library, check for new email in Mail.app, or do any number of other nifty little things. Not only that, it’s scriptable with AppleScript. Now that the current line of Macs (aside from the Power Mac variety) come with Front Row and remotes it might not be as novel to control a Mac with a remote control, but Salling Clicker makes up for that with increased expandability and compatibility.

Salling Clicker costs $23.95 and is available at salling.com. There’s even a Windows version available.

Cha-Ching

Before I got a checkbook I started writing all of my incoming and outgoing cash flow in a little notebook. By the time my checkbook finally came in I realized that I hated writing in that little register and I kept using the wee notebook. Well, now I don’t write it down anywhere. I use Cha-Ching.

Cha-Ching is a great example of what differentiates a Mac app from a Windows app. It’s simple, pretty, and effective. Using Cha-Ching is no more complicated than my little notebook solution, nor should it be. You enter a transaction, Cha-Ching does the math for you. Once you’ve entered a transaction you can assign tags and make smart folders (in case you ever wanted to see just how much you spent on software recently). It integrates with Address Book to autofill fields. Cha-Ching even lets you take photos of the stuff you bought with iSight. You can back up your data to .Mac. It does what it needs to do and never gets in your way.

Cha-Ching costs $14.95 while in beta and is available at midnightapps.com

NewsFire

When it comes to Mac RSS readers there are really two choices: NewsFire and NetNewsWire. Preference is split divisively between the two camps. I took them both for a spin and my choice was NewsFire.

NewsFire, like many Mac apps, is an attractive one. It’s got your neat fades. It’s got your rounded buttons. It’s got pizzazz. When a feed is updated it swoops up to the top of the window. NewsFire also lets you create Smart Feeds much like other “Smart” groupings in OS X. You want to know which feeds have audio? Video? NewsFire can do that. Not keen on the iTunes podcast system? NewsFire has an integrated audio player. And because it uses Safari’s WebKit engine news posts appear exactly as they would in Safari, embedded YouTube videos and all.

NewsFire costs $18.99 and is available at newsfirerss.com

So there’s part two. Agree? Disagree? Have an alternate list? Comment away!