NetNewsWire for Mac started syncing with Google Reader in their latest betas, which makes me really excited because it opens up a ton of choices as to what reader I want to use on my desktop and iPhone. And, since NetNewsWire on the iPhone doesn't yet sync with Google Reader, I figured I'd take the chance to try out Byline, by Phantom Fish.

Setting up Byline is as easy as entering your Google account email address and password. While the app has quite a few settings available in the Settings app, I didn't really find that any of them were all that interesting or important for me to tweak.

As soon as you are logged into Google Reader, Byline gives you the choice of looking at New Items, Starred Items, or Notes. Browsing into New Items lists all of the new posts available for you to read from the last sync. The posts are nice because they not only show the title of the item, like NetNewsWire does, but they also show the first couple of lines of the post.

Clicking on an item gives you a full view of the post. It's your typical post view, with title, author and date, and of course the body of the post. While I think the view is clean and terrifically formatted, I would like to see the title be a clickable link to the web view for the post. The post view also provides a toolbar with options to view the post on the web, email the post, view the post in Safari, star the post in Google Reader, share the post in Google Reader, or write a note about the post. The toolbar icons look good, but aren't totally clear as to what their function was. It took me a bit of testing and searching around, especially in the case of the share button, to figure out what each one did.

Another feature within the post view in Byline is the ability to quickly browse through posts using the up and down arrows. Overall, I think it's a great feature, but it does get on my nerves at times that the buttons are in the top right corner. I hold my phone in my left hand since I'm right handed, and reaching across the screen to click those buttons feels a bit awkward.

One of Byline's greatest features is its caching. Byline caches new posts when they've been downloaded, so that you can read them offline. It also caches starred items and the web page where the post originated, so that they can be read later. I'm not usually away from an internet connection, but I can see where this would be really valuable if part of your daily commute is spent offline, or if you're flying somewhere.

Overall, I feel like Byline has a solid lead over NetNewsWire. Byline does a terrific job with browsing to the page where a post originated from. When I browse through a few links in NetNewsWire and click back, I end up back on the post where I came from. Byline goes back to the previous web page, rather than back to the post view, which ends up being really valuable, not to mention what almost anyone would expect to happen. Additionally, when I'm clicking through new posts, NetNewsWire sometimes stops letting me click through new posts prior to me actually reading all of my new posts. Byline has yet to have that issue for me.

I highly recommend spending the $4.99 and picking up Byline from the App Store, especially if you've already made the switch to the NetNewsWire 3.2 Beta for the Mac. It's got a clean interface, tightly integrates with Google Reader, and certainly improves on NetNewsWire in several clear areas.