When Google killed its RSS service last year, the Mac community lost one of its best apps: Reeder. The beautiful and useful RSS app relied totally on Google Reader, and so it disappeared from the Mac App Store when Google ultimately shut the service down on July 1st. Once the dust settled and alternative RSS services rose to the challenge, Reeder’s developer, Silvio Rizzi, began to reintroduce the app, first with an iOS version last September. Now, after a long wait, Reeder is back for Mac, too.
A public beta of Reeder 2 for Mac was released on Friday, featuring a new slick interface that matches the iOS version, new animations when browsing RSS feeds and articles, and expanded support for integrated services. Users also have a relatively wide selection of RSS services from which to choose, including Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, and Fever.
Those looking to check out the beta should note that there are a few expected quirks, especially relating to the integrated services such as Readability, but the app is quite stable overall and perfectly capable of daily RSS browsing. We don’t know yet if Reeder 2 will be enough to draw us away from ReadKit, the app we migrated to when the first version of Reeder died last year, but this new version is off to a good start from what we’ve seen thus far with the beta.
The Reeder 2 for Mac beta is free to all users while Mr. Rizzi puts the finishing touches on the code. A paid release on the Mac App Store is set to follow once development is complete, although there’s no word yet on an expected release date or price point.
