Amazon Releases Kindle for Mac

In news to excite Apple fans world-wide, Amazon has expanded its e-book reach by unveiling the Kindle for Mac application.

The free application is available from Amazon's website, and will let you buy, read and organise your Amazon e-books, available from the Kindle store, which houses more than 450,000 e-books.

First impressions are good, but more basic than outstanding. To turn pages you can use your mouse's scroll wheel or arrow keys which is easy enough.

To zoom in on an area within the page, there's no option to use Mac keyboard shortcuts, but instead you need to open a separate panel, which isn't the end of the world, but is also not the most intuitive way of going about it.

There is no functionality to create notes, highlight or clip text, but you can at least view notes and highlights that you had made from a Kindle reader.

Kindle newspapers, magazines, and blogs are also not currently available on Kindle for Mac.

What it does have is Whispersynch, which will automatically synchronise your last page read and annotations between devices.

Amazon has said that this release is still in beta, and we can look forward to full text search, as well as the ability to create and edit notes and highlights in future upgrades.

“Kindle for Mac is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX,” said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle.

“For those customers around the world who don’t yet have a Kindle, Kindle for Mac is a great way to instantly access and read the most popular new releases as well as their old favourites.”

Amazon e-books can now be read on a wide range of non-Kindle devices including the iPhone, iPod Touch, RIM's BlackBerry and Windows PCs. A new Kindle app will also be released for the coveted Apple iPad.

Are you a Kindle convert? Drop us a line and let us know.