It has been months since I opened Reeder, my longtime app of choice for RSS. I don’t have anything personal against Reeder, it’s just that RSS has lost a lot of its appeal for me. Twitter is where I mainly get my news now.
Reeder 2 for Mac, which launches as a public beta today, might just make me give RSS a second chance.
Developer Silvio Rizzi abruptly took Reeder off the Mac App Store last summer after Google Reader was shut down. Reeder on iOS has received some love since then, but the desktop was seemingly been abandoned.
Nine months later, and Rizzi has finally released a Mac app for the post-Google Reader world.
While many proclaimed the death of RSS when Google Reader rode off into the sunset, services like Feedly and Feedbin have carried the torch admirably. Reeder 2 for Mac now supports Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, Fever, and local RSS sync.
The design of the app looks basically the same, although Rizzi has given it a subtle facelift. The interface and menus are nice and clean. There’s a limited list of sharing services to begin with, like Twitter, Facebook, and Reading List. Noticeably absent from the first beta are Pocket and Instapaper, which will both be added in future updates.
A feature that has been sorely missing in Reeder since the beginning is search, and I was pleased to find that it is included in Reeder 2. Tapping the f key in a list of items lets you search by keywords. Another cool addition to try out is the new gesture for opening an article in the web; swipe from right to left on the trackpad.
I’m pleased with Reeder 2 as a first beta, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. For those with more advanced needs, ReadKit is still the way to go. But even if I decide to give up on RSS altogether, Reader will always have a special place in my heart.
If you’re interested, check out the free beta of Reeder 2 at the link below.
Source: Reeder 2 for Mac
