“Given the discontinuation of Google Reader, I wanted to take a moment to talk about our plans for NetNewsWire.”

Check out the post on the Black Pixel blog for the details.

Thanks to the helpful Friends Of NetNewsWire who contacted support and allowed us to test some theories on their computers, we’ve confirmed that this is a close cousin to crashes written about by Daniel Jalkut and AgileBits. Third-party apps are affected under 10.8.0, but we’ve also heard about similar trouble affecting Safari 6.

We believe the instability is affecting a few percent of our users, but it’s occurring too deep in the bowels of the networking stack to be fixable on our end, leaving us dependent on Apple to correct it in 10.8.1. However, disabling automatic proxy detection has thus far proven a successful workaround. If you’re seeing these crashes, here’s how you can put the fix into effect:

• Open System Preferences, and click Network
• Click the “Advanced” button in the lower right corner, with your favorite network interface selected
• Click the “Proxies” tab
• Uncheck “Auto Proxy Discovery” and “Automatic Proxy Configuration” (here’s a screenshot)
• Click “OK” to close the Advanced sheet
• Click “Apply” to update your network settings

Note, of course, that anyone whose network environment requires an automatically detected proxy server will be ill-served by turning this off. You could be solving the crash problem at the cost of breaking your internet access. This advice is intended as a short-term fix for people who’ve enabled proxy detection just in case, or who only need it part-time.

We apologize to anyone who’s being inconvenienced by this glitch, and we are eagerly anticipating a permanent fix from Apple.

A huge thank you to our beta testers (including the ineffable Brent Simmons). And as always, please let us know if you have any trouble. Enjoy!

For many of us, NetNewsWire was the inspiration to quit our jobs, get serious about learning Objective-C, and go indie. The fact that we have the opportunity to become a part of its story is a dream come true.

Also check out John Gruber’s interview with Brent Simmons and Daniel Pasco for an in-depth look at the deal. And some of my own thoughts on NetNewsWire.

Finally, Brent’s own words on the acquisition.

There’s no particular update schedule, and there are just a couple articles so far. Most of the time the articles will refer to the Mac versions, since there are so many more things to document.

The site has a feed, so you can get updates when they appear.

Fixed at least one cause of a bug where syncing could appear to get stuck. (It would sometimes start but not finish and the indicator would keep spinning.)

Fixed a bug where synced feeds wouldn’t get Growl notifications.

Fixed a bug where synced feeds that are suspended would get refreshed anyway.

Fixed a bug downloading enclosures for synced feeds.

Stop button now works for syncing in the Activity window.

Fixed a bug logging into Google Reader where it could lock up the UI.

As always, you can download it manually, or do a Check for Updates in NetNewsWire.

It’s designed to be fast and light — and it’s definitely a Lite version in that it doesn’t have Google Reader syncing, tabs, Combined View and other features you might be used to. It does the basics, for folks who like their apps light and lean. (There will be a full version of NetNewsWire 4.0 with Google Reader syncing and other features.)

A couple of posts on inessential.com go into more details:

The Return of NetNewsWire Lite

Some Details about NetNewsWire Lite 4.0

Also see the The Making of NetNewsWire Lite 4.0, a photoset on Flickr.

Here’s a screenshot — click it for the larger version:

(There are more screenshots on its App Store page.)

Edit: 03/12 This application has been removed from the Mac App Store. 

It also fixes a bug where subscriptions weren’t getting re-sorted after a refresh session.

Unfortunately, the app-update system may still change your news-items font size preference. This build contains the fix — but that fix won’t be able to work until the next update.

If you download it manually, you can avoid that font size reset. Or you can do a Check for Updates, get the new version, then go to preferences and restore your font setting.