Reeder for Mac arrives, looks like the future of Mac apps

Even with Twitter, Facebook and so many other social discovery tools popping up, I’m still a big fan of good old-fashioned RSS for my news and entertainment reading needs. That’s why I’m excited about the release of Reeder for Mac, which became available via the Mac App Store on Thursday.
Reeder for Mac is the desktop version of the popular iOS application, and it lives up to the terrific example set by its predecessor in all regards. The interface is clean, simple and intuitive, and the program loads and works with a snappy quickness that makes scrolling through long lists of articles a pleasure. It uses your Google Reader account to populate its content, but you can also register new RSS feeds to follow directly from within Reeder, and manage and remove your existing subscriptions, too. Note that making changes to your subscriptions in Reeder even syncs back to your Google Reader account.
Reeder also features built-in Readability support, which allows you to apply Readability’s distraction-free algorithm to any content from your feeds, and lets you set up full Readability synchronization if you have an account with that service. There’s also a built-in browser for viewing additional linked content in stories, and the app features lots of customization offers so picky users can fine-tune the experience to get it just right. There’s are two viewing modes, once of which is a compact view where all your browsing takes place in one pane, which can be very useful if you have limited screen space.
If you want a look at the future of OS X Lion Mac apps and you don’t have access to the developer preview, Reeder is a great place to start. The interface is perfect for using full-screen on a Mac laptop, and the multitouch gestures really add to the experience without being overdone or feeling clumsy. It’s probably the iOS roots of Reeder that make it such a nice fit for the iOS-inspired Lion, but you can definitely expect more iOS developers to follow suit when 10.7 arrives in July.
Like the iOS versions, Reeder for Mac isn’t free. It costs $9.99 in the Mac App Store, which, although more expensive than either of the iOS versions, is still a great price for what you get.