Reeder For Mac Beta Released
The pretty-much-default RSS reader for iPad and iPhone - Reeder - has burst out of iOS and onto our desktops. My browser homepage is set to Google Reader, which even with performance-enhancing Chrome extensions is an ugly and unwieldy page, so this is real progress in my bid to stay fully abreast of the important things in the world.
It’s basic (which is great because it’s simple and clean) and we’re warned the beta is buggy but it’s working brilliantly so far and I demand that you install it on your Mac. Here’s why:
Clean Interface
Just like its mobile counterparts, this version is very clean and simple, which in the information-overloaded world of RSS feeds is a godsend. There are basically four areas of the app:
Feed Types
Show all items, your noted items, RSS feed items or items shared from people you’re following.
Feed Groups
Showing the groups of feeds (as set up in Reader). I have my feeds grouped into ‘Tech’, ‘Business’, ‘Music’ etc and this makes it easy to just look at one category of news.
Feed List
Your feed items, auto-updating as much as very 5 minutes (or just press ‘R’ to manually refresh).
Reading Pane
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Just like the mobile version, displays the news story with cached image and text in a pretty Helvetica-esque font (or is it just Arial?). From here you can do various things with the above toolbar like post to Twitter, Instapaper, Google and open in your browser. This toolbar is customisable so you can just keep the stuff you use there.
Dock Icon Badge
Unlike the mobile versions of Reeder, the desktop version updates automatically as often as every 5 minutes, displaying the number of unread items in the dock which is handy for keeping an eye on the zeitgeist passing you by.
All-in-all this is a robust, simple app and has already made it into my dock and allowed me to set my browser homepage back to the calmness of google.com . Get it for yourself over at madeatgloria.com
