When comparing DEVONthink vs The Old Reader, the Slant community recommends The Old Reader for most people. In the question“What are the best news readers?” The Old Reader is ranked 6th while DEVONthink is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose The Old Reader is:
People from Facebook or Google can be found on The Old Reader so posts can be shared and discussed.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can store any file type
File types containing text are indexed.
Pro Very flexible
An extensive feature set makes it easy to adapt to your work flow.
Pro Completely offline
Pro Sync
Sync between different macs and/or ios devices is fast, safe and easy. You can sync via iCloud, Dropbox, WebDAV or WiFi.
Pro Full text search
Pro Webpage Clipper
A flexible web clipper can add contents of any web page to DevonThink.
Pro One-time purchase vs monthly subscription.
Pro Paperless office functions available in PRO Office version
Includes processing of scanned documents, OCR etc.
The OCR function is based on FineReader and is probably the best one on the market.
Pro Social
People from Facebook or Google can be found on The Old Reader so posts can be shared and discussed.
Pro Very similar to the dismissed Google Reader
Ever since Google Reader has ceased to be an option, The Old Reader has grown in popularity.
Pro Great UI
A clean, easy to use interface.
Pro Easy to use
Intuitive, easy to overview service.
Pro OPML import
Allows for easy migration from any service that supports OPML.
Pro Freemium
Free version has a limit of 100 sites, upgrade to unlimited sites costs $25/year. Being freemium is a nice option for those that would like to try the app out without putting down any money first.
Cons
Con Only runs on Macs, iPoneOS, iPadOS & Web
It does not run on Windows, Android, and Linux.
Con Stores in a proprietary format
It stores the whole database in a proprietary file package, that you cannot easily access from another app or from the Finder. Considering you might be classifying a huge quantity of files there, it is quite problematic if you want to interact with this data from other applications.
Con Very limited automation
While the marketing claims are about an intelligent document manager, it actually does not offer many automation features, such as automatic classification, tagging and renaming of the files. It's much more like an extended file explorer.
Con Costs US$79.95 for just the Personal version
One-time purchase instead of monthly subscription.
Con Non free/libre (proprietary)
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure. Also, if the developer abandons it again, there will be no way for others to continue to update it.
Con No mobile app
Lacks an official native mobile app, but the mobile version of the site is quite usable and there are apps which support syncing with The Old Reader.
However, users have created many apps for a variety of platforms using The Old Reader API. You can check them out here.
Con Not very customizable
While the sources can be added or removed, the feed cannot be filtered in any other way. Display options are limited as well, leaving the user with the standard view.