Q: What happened to RSS in Safari 6?

Apple dropped RSS support in the new version, but you can use another reader

It is gone.  So far, it is the only downside I have come across

in Mountain Lion.

You can add a Safari 6 RSS extension here:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/44228/subscribe-to-feed-safari-extension

I just want to remind everyone that RSS is old technology. It is inefficient because everyone has to poll for updates and slow because updates take hours. Apple is moving towards notifications where web sites will be able to push stories directly to your web browser.

It's not just Mountain Lion. Please don't confuse things -- they dropped RSS feeds from Safari, no matter what OS you're running!

Mountain Lion won't run on my MacBook and I thought I was safe from changes. Then Safari updated itself and I lost all my RSS news feeds with no warning they were being trashed.

You Mountain Lion types might have some new wizzy alternative but what about us without the cash to buy a new MacBook? No push feed stuff either!

RSS might be "old technology" but its model fits reality so much better.

I don't have to visit every web site manually with a web browser to see if there's new material to be pushed to me. My RSS client polls for updates (at a time and rate suitable for me and my ISP's network provision) and presents me with a list of things I might like to view.

I can then choose which to view rather than having them shoved down my throat with yet another notification. It's bad enough on the iPhone when someone decides their news item is so important they have to notify me about it. I'd rather decide for myself to be honest.

Then again, without Mountain Lion I don't get the notifications either do I?

Andy Mcmullin wrote:

 

I don't have to visit every web site manually with a web browser to see if there's new material to be pushed to me. My RSS client polls for updates (at a time and rate suitable for me and my ISP's network provision) and presents me with a list of things I might like to view.

I would think a notification would be far more timely and less taxing to networks than hourly polling of any number of RSS feeds.

I can then choose which to view rather than having them shoved down my throat with yet another notification. It's bad enough on the iPhone when someone decides their news item is so important they have to notify me about it. I'd rather decide for myself to be honest.

I'm a bit confused about this one. If you want to subscribe to an RSS feed, why wouldn't you want to be notified. Notifications are pretty unobtrustive. If you don't click on them, they go away in a couple of seconds.

Then again, without Mountain Lion I don't get the notifications either do I?

Nope

So I lose my RSS feeds and get no replacement. Great.

I subscribe to a number of news feeds. I can scan their headlines in seconds or ignore a couple of days worth as I choose. With notifications they're in your face all the time.

This might help you...

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/2624/subscribe-to-feed-safari-extension

Old technology? Why does Apple still have this then?

Yes, this is a ridiculous and foolish decision. I don't know who at Apple is making these decisions, but this is one of the least thought-out decisions I've come across in the 16+ I've been using Macs.

It's very disconcerting to me that RSS was removed all together. There is this little thing inside operating systems and software called "Preferences". Why not have something like this available as a resource?

It makes no logical sense to have your entire support site integrated with RSS feeds and your own browser doesn't support it. Thank you Apple for preventing me from subscribing to your support forums, support searches, threads, etc within your own browser.

*Facepalm*

all you have to do is put the RSS feed in the mail app side bar instead on lion,  and i think Mountain lion too.

as a matter of fact i believe if you click on the old RSS feed link in safari,  it basically asks you if you want to place the RSS feed into the side bar of the mail app. (although the wording is not clear that this is what is happening)

(probably so the RSS feeds are polled the same time you set your Mail to get mail account updates)

The background on this is interesting.  The RSS functionality in Safari was dropped by Apple in v6 (Mountain Lion or Lion) - its apparantly been gone since the first beta of what became Safari v6 (called v5.2 initially).

However the plumbing for the RSS functionality still exists in Lion but was removed in Mountain Lion (this is why Safari v5.1.7 if added to a separate folder in the Applications folder in Lion after v6.0 is installed still runs, but v5.1.7 crashes immediately in Mountain Lion).

So, for the folks running Safari v6 on Lion if you really want the original RSS back (or the Top Site web page update indicator functionality to work which depends on the RSS to indicate updates or not) you can grab a copy of the Safari v5.1.7 package from Time Machine or another Mac that still has it (all Snow Leopard Macs still have it as Apple didn't update v6.0 to them) and add it to a separate folder in the Applications folder in your Lion machine and run v5.1.7 - just make sure you do not run both versions at the same time (file corruption errors could result).

If you're in Mountain Lion you're basically stuck with v6 and use the above listed ways of accessing RSS, short of going back to Lion (although that might be worth to some folks).